THE BIG LIST OF PLAYERS & CODEC PACKS by Cold-NiTe

So you need a media player and the right codecs to watch your anime right? Well here's some media players that you may have heard of, and are commonly used for our very purpose.

MEDIA PLAYERS

Media Player Classic - "MPC", often confused with Windows Media Player. Probably the best player you can get. Huge amount of options, incredibly basic with no forced codecs, and highly adaptable.
Video Lan Client - "VLC", the self contained player. Don't need anything external. Download this and it plays everything with INTERNAL codecs, that is, it relies on its own library of codecs iniside its folders, and ignores any codec packs you download. Becareful, as it often messes up subs made with specific codec packs in mind, etc.
The Core Media Player - "TCMP", a relatively reliable player that covers the basics of .mkv and .ogm files. Has been known to have conflicts with other players and their codecs. Still useful in many cases.
BS Player - A very reliable player that is preferred by many anime viewers. Handy, compact and fairly streamlined.
Zoom Player - A compact player with good capabilities. I have never personally used this, but I have not heard any noteworthy complaints about it.
Windows Media Player - "WMP", probably the most well known, as it comes standard with Windows. However, I don't recommend you stick with this. Eventually, you'll run across .mkv and .ogm files, or codecs it doesn't know how to read. And trying to adjust it isn't worth it.
MPlayer - Think MPC, but compatible with linux and MacOS. I may have forgotten it earlier, but it's worth taking a look at. Thanks to Volvo for the heads up.
Xine Player - Another quality player with a good track record and high reliability. Worth looking into. Thanks once again to Volvo.
Quintessential Player - A nice looking, reliable media player with good playback and lots of options. Although, like winamp, it's a music player first and an all around media player second, its still up to par.


CODEC PACKS
FFDSHOW - Probably the most expansive package of codecs available, it is continuously updated to allow you to play the latest media files available online. They were some of the first to release an H.264 ready pack. If you don't know what I'm talking about, disregard that. With a pack like this, you won't need anything else. Sadly however... with a pack like this, there's no room for anything else. This pack will annihilate any other codecs you have by way of conflicts. Uninstall and remove any other codecs you are using. And be prepared to tweak your settings to stop all those weird things that start happening when you watch an episode, like sound distortion and video errors. If you were to put ffdshow on a computer that's just been wiped, it'd run perfectly. In any other situation, don't count on it.
The Combined Community Codec Pack - CCCP, by the folks at KAA, a noteworthy anime ripping group, is a sort of "for the community, by the community" take on the whole business of codec packs. This is, all in all, a very reliable pack of codecs that covers all the basics and the more recent stuff. Very worth your consideration.
The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack - K-Lite, is an old codec pack that has all the basics and includes a handle replacement set of codecs for quicktime and realplayer. Very very handy. This was my first codec pack, and at the time, it was absolutely perfect. Whether it's near as good now, with all the new formats out, I can't really guarantee.
Nimo's Codec Pack - Nimo's pack was one that you heard thrown out a lot when people talked about good codec packs, and generally it supports what you need, however I have not used this in ages, and cannot tell you whether that still applies now. But it was once extremely popular, and it may still be as reliable now as it was then.
The Tsunami Codec Pack - I cannot give any sort of description of this pack due to my never having touched it previously. However, it is one of the packs previously in heavy use.
Cole2k Media Codec Pack - Another quality media pack that includes
a plugin for Nero, both the Zoom and MPC media players and video and audio dubbing packs. Very expansive stuff.

Regards,
Cold-Knight of the HolySentinels
123 Awesome St.
That One Place, Texas, U.S.
...

MORE TO BE ADDED AT A LATER DATE.

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Dear cousin choppitychop89, you were a good relative, though I hardly knew ye.

nice list Cold-nite!

But just saying my 2cents to everyone--DO NOT download them all. Don't go crazy/overboard thinking "more is better" (been there, tried that, and it really screws you over.)

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Not bad Cold. Not bad at all.

CPR is right. Never install more than one codec pack at a time. Installing individual codecs is fine (providing you didn't install the pack first), but never more than one pack. I know that K-Lite has an uninstaller if you ever need to remove them and start over, and I think that CCCP has one, the others I don't know of (I would think that they would).

I recommend Media Player Classic for Windows, and MPlayer for Linux (or windows, or Mac). Actually, I really don't know what the best choice for Macs would be. :P

*cough*MPlayerAndXineArn'tOnTheList*cough*

Here is the MPlayer codec packs.

http://www4.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html

Read the instructions for what one you should get. If your are running Linux on an x86 processor, then I would just recommend getting the 'All' package and not having to deal with anything. If I remember right, this package should be another with MPEG-4 AVC/h.26x support (I think I played one before). The Xine player also uses this codec pack.

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Vol~

LOL, I used Xine for like 6 months, and somehow I forgot to put it up there. >__< What the hell is being put in my morning coffee?

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Dear cousin choppitychop89, you were a good relative, though I hardly knew ye.

I'll add my 2 cents... :-D
cole2k media codec pack
check it out, i don't know about the other packs but, from what i see ffdshow is in here as well as a whole bunch of other things i have no clue about, check it out...even has a nero plugin to "allow Nero Burning Rom to burn a variety of formats to audio disc which it doesn't normally support," also has dvd and cd rip packs, dubbing packs (beats reading subs), and other stuff...i also saw on their site that they hold the title of the best codec pack from smartdownload.net since version 5.42....check em out here:
http://www.cole2k.net/

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K

This is just something that I wanted to add- I saw that Quintessential player wasn't on the list and I highly recommend it. It's an all-in-one player that can convert and play music files.

It also has a plug-in architecture, so it's capable of expanding it's abilities. With the right plug-ins, it can handle even realplayer files. Seriously. Quintessential player also doubles as my music converter- for those ogg files that mp3 players can't handle.

As for appearance, it's pretty good looking IMO, but some people think it's ugly. It's nothing to worry about, though, as there is an option to skin.

Heres a pic of what it looks like straight out of the box: http://photobucket.com/albums/a48/Wy...=QCDplayer.jpg

The sideways rod-shaped thing is the "remote." I like to keep it docked away in the corner. The box shaped thing over it is the pop-up playlist. Pretty awesome, IMO. (btw, this is what i replaced Winamp with, after i found out that this doesnt eat resources)

http://quinnware.com/<--- Get it here!!!

Have any questions? Just reply or PM me.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, it's in the list now. I've heard of Quintessential Player before, but that other one, cole2k, that's new to me. A nero plugin? Hot damn, it might be engineered to burn DVD's with playback on stock dvd players.

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Dear cousin choppitychop89, you were a good relative, though I hardly knew ye.

Audio formats CN, audio.

There are a ton of plugins for Nero to do ogg and flac and monkey (etc.) floating around (http://www.bitburners.com/Nero_Audio_Plugins/). Nero also offers a LameMP3 and ogg plugin that requires a simple registration. Also, with the Nero 6 ultra and Nero 7, you get NeroVision that will allow you to burn DVDs (as well as make menus, add chapters... I haven't figgured out if you can add subtitles though) for stock DVD players (MPEG2) from a variety of formats... just not the ones we really like, such as OGM and MKV.

The Nero Digital encoder/decoder is also included with these two. That allows you to make MPEG4/AVC (h.264) video. As of version 7 though, it doesn't allow decoding outside of Nero Showtime. Sucks, because it was a pretty damn good codec.

Had to install x.264 after I upgraded (stupid!STUPID! Wait a year on Nero! Gahh!!! *Volvogga fails*).

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Vol~

Real media player is also a good one. wth were you thinking? lol

Haha, real player. Funny.

...

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Dear cousin choppitychop89, you were a good relative, though I hardly knew ye.