GOM Player

For the last few years, I have used a classic media player that I downloaded from freshmeat.  Since I switched to Vista last summer, the media player has been quirky.  Last week I heard someone mention GOM Player on one of the podcasts I listen to and I decided to give it a try.

http://www.gomplayer.com

To me, there are two important components to a good media player.

1 – it plays everything (audio, video, whatever)

2 – there must be simple keyboard controls (preferably configurable)

There are many players that will handle that first requirement.  With a little work, you can even get Windows Media Player to do everything.  But the second requirement isn’t always available.  For example, if you want to pause the Windows Media Player the keyboard command is Control-P.  That’s crazy. 

I want it to be the space bar because every media player I have ever used has been that way.  Besides, why should I ever need to press two keys (Control-P) to perform a basic function of a media player?

GOM Player plays everything right out of the box.  I installed it on a fresh system and it brought all the necessary codecs in automatically.  If you don’t like the default keyboard shortcuts (which are good), you can change any or all of them in the preferences menu.

I like this media player so much I have switched all my machines to GOM for both audio and video.