Movie Players
1. Pot Player
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Daum PotPlayer is our current pick for the best video player for Windows, and it's clear from the nominations round that a good number of you agree with us. PotPlayer is Windows only, but it's lightweight, free, and plays just about every file format, codec, media container, or type of file you throw its direction with ease. In addition to broad format support, PotPlayer also gives you a wealth of features and controls to get your video playback looking just the way you like, or appropriate for the type of screen you're watching your movies or TV shows on. It packs filters for noise reduction, DE interlacing, brightness, contrast, hue, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. You also get audio controls, tons of skins to customize the UI, and subtitles.
2. MPC-HC
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MPC-HC (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema) has been around for a good long time, born out of the stalled development status of the original MPC back in 2006. MPC-HC is a community effort that's largely fixed the bugs and issues with the original player, and added a ton of useful features in the process. MPC-HC is Windows only, and remarkably lightweight—in fact, in many cases, you can be up and playing video with MPC-HC before other slower media players bother loading. MPC-HC includes key commands to eliminate screen tearing when watching video, tons of video format and codec support (and can, most often, play anything you send its way without the need for additional codec packs), and there's even a 64-bit version available. It's completely free and open-source (or rather, GNU GPL licensed), and it's also available at a portable app.
3. XBMC
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XBMC is more than just a media center application it's also a highly configurable player that you can use on a desktop or laptop to get a real media center experience on screens large and small. While it's obviously great on a big screen connected to an HTPC, it works just as well on your desktop connected to a large external display, or on your laptop's 15" display while you're on a train or plane. XBMC is open source, available for Windows, OSX, Linux, and a number of other platforms. XBMC can seriously play just about anything under the sun without worrying about file format, encoding, codecs, or even subtitles—if they're in the same place as your video, XBMC can handle it for you. XBMC can also retrieve useful information from the web for you, like movie and TV show information, ratings, episode order, and more, and it'll show all of it to you as you browse and select what you want to watch. It also handles music and streaming video beautifully, and is ridiculously customizable thanks to its wide variety of third-party plugins.
4. Other Open Source software
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VLC Media Player