by Johnny Karp 7 July 2009 17 Comments

Overview

KMPlyer is a versatile freeware media player that supports many video file formats and containers. It can also handle various types of subtitle files.

Review

My favorite video player right now is the open source SMPlayer, I like the way it works and of course I love the fact that it’s open source. But since many people asked me over and over to try KMPlayer I finally decided to give it a go. I installed it in my PC a few months ago and I played some video files with it from time to time. Now it’s the moment to evaluate the program and see if I’ll keep it or if it will get uninstalled.

First of all the program supports various types of container formats such as VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg Theora, OGM, 3GP, MPEG, WMV, RealMedia or QuickTime. So you can say that it plays just about anything. It can also handle various subtitle formats, from the widespread .srt to closed captions or transport stream subtitles. And above all it has a quite low memory footprint.

The first impression that I had after looking at the interface was that it’s quite simple and clean, not clogged with too many commands, bars and menus.

But if you get deep into the program settings you’ll have quite a good time, there are countless options that you can customize to suit your needs and taste.

The feature that I liked the most was the nice control box that can be opened alongside the main video window. That’s when KMPlayer can no longer be simple, it gets very complex for the users that want to customize and play with the various video, audio or subtitle settings.

Overall this freeware program looked pretty solid, it never crashed while I used it and it is versatile indeed – you can use it as a simple video player or you can tweak your heart out through the control box or the preferences panel.

Version Tested

2.9.4.1434

Author

KMPlayer.com



Operating System

Windows XP, Vista

Download link

Summary

Simple and complex at the same time.

Can play virtually anything you throw at it.

The latest version was released in December 2008.

Rating

Verdict

The only concern that I have regarding KMPlayer is that the latest version was released in December last year, nothing new since then. Overall it looks better than SMPlayer, it has way better DVD support and can handle some file formats that SMPlayer does not just yet. On the other hand SMPlayer is open source, so there’s much more potential for future development. I can’t make up my mind yet, so I’ll keep both programs for a while and maybe wait to see how and if they develop.

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If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I’ll help you out! If you know better free programs in the same category, please let me know!