Most everybody who uses a computer these days plays their videos in Windows Media Player if they use a PC and QuickTime if they use a Mac. That is just the way it has been for as long as anyone can remember. We’ve all heard of alternate web-browsers, but nobody talks about alternate media players. Unless you live in Korea, where the most popular player is something called GOM Player.
Okay, the name doesn’t sound very exciting, I’ll admit. But after I tried it a few weeks ago, I’ve set it as my default audio and video player and never looked back. The thing is, I was satisfied with Windows Media Player, or at least I thought I was. There were lots of little things that always bugged me about WMP, but I always assumed it was the best thing out there, so I never bothered to try anything else.
What started it all for me was when I bought a new Sanyo CG6 digital camcorder that records directly to SD memory cards. I started making home movies, but I realized that when I tried to email those movies to my friends and family, they couldn’t open them. I tried and tried to find some kind of codec that you could install in Windows Media Player that would allow them to view the video, but nothing I tried would work. The only solution seemed to be to install the whole software suite (which takes about 20 minutes) from the CD that came with the camcorder. So I started looking on the Internet for a small, self-contained program that could play MPEG4 video. I came across several, and tried many of them out. But GOM player just blew me away.
So what makes GOM Player different? Here are 12 reasons.
1) Small. Yes, the entire install file is only about 4 MB in size. You can email it to somebody. Anyone checked to see how big the full Windows Media Player is lately?
2) Fast. Because it is small, it is faster and more efficient than Windows Media Player. When I click on a movie to play, it opens and plays almost instantly. Media Player is slow to start even on my Pentium 4 and often starts playing before it even finishes resizing the screen. GOM player even seems to be able to play high-definition videos at full speed that Media Player chokes on, with my Pentium 4.
3) Built-in codec’s. That’s right, it comes built in with its own codec’s, so it does not depend on anything else being installed on your system. So you won’t have to go hunting them down for most things. Also, the built-in codec’s seem to work far more reliably than Windows Media Player.
4) Codec recognition. Okay, so if you are using Windows Media Player and it doesn’t have the right codec, it just gives you an error about not having the right codec. GOM player will actually tell you what codec you need to play the file, and point you to a place where you can download it for free. Don’t worry, the place it points you to go is totally free of spyware and viruses.
5) Simple & Compact. One thing that drives me crazy about Windows Media Player is that when you first open it, you entire screen is filled with useless things, while the video you want to see is a very small little portion of the player. True, you can apply a skin to Windows Media Player, such as “corporate” but most people don’t know how and it never happens.
Controls. Yes, in GOM player you can adjust EVERYTHING. Ever tried watching a video in Windows Media Player and it was too dark? Ever tried finding the brightness control? Sometimes it is there, sometimes it isn’t (depends on the codec) Or, have you ever tried turning off visualizations in Windows Media Player when playing an MP3 file? You’d think it is a no-brainer, but you’ll find it can’t be done. With GOM Player, every single control imaginable is there, and it is always there and always works.
7) Full Screen. Yes, Windows Media Player has full screen mode too. But have you ever noticed that often it doesn’t work right? How many times have you tried to make a video full-screen and instead what happens is that you get a full black screen with a tiny little video playing in the middle? Also, some people never could figure out the alt-enter or double-click to go full-screen. With GOM player, you click one icon and it just works. It’s fast too.. No blanking of the screen and waiting several seconds for the video to come back.
Sequential Playback. So, you have several files called “video1.avi” and “Video2.avi” etc. Just click on the first one, GOM Player automatically looks for sequential filenames and starts playing the next one automatically.
9) Safer. Less chances of contracting a worm through a security hole, since Windows Media Player is a more popular target for hackers.
10) No Genuine Advantage. That’s right, you won’t have to worry about using Windows Update or installing/passing the Genuine Advantage hassle in order to get it installed and periodically update it.
11) Easy to Uninstall – If for some strange reason you don’t like it. Have you ever tried to uninstall Windows Media Player?
12) It’s Free! So it can’t hurt to try it, and if all else fails, see reason #11.
Okay, so there are 10 good reasons to switch to GOM Player. So far, I haven’t found a single reason not to. Over the years, I have wound up with a lot of videos in various different formats that have required hunting down tons of codec’s in order to play correctly. So, from my personal experience, here are some of those:
1) My Sanyo CG6 Camcorder – Uses MPEG4 compression, AAC Audio, and MP4 container format. None of these are native to Windows Media Player.
2) My Aiptek IS-DV2 Camcorder – Uses MPEG4 Compression, in .ASF format. – Not native to Windows Media Player
3) My Home CCTV Security Camera Recorder. It uses Intel Indeo 5 inside of an .AVI – Not native to Windows Media Player
4) My wife’s Fuji Digital camera – uses MJPEG inside of an .AVI – not native to Windows Media Player.
5) Videos I download from the Internet in XVID or DIVX – not native to Windows Media Player. Some also use AAC or AC3 Audio – Also not native.
6) MKV files (Matroska) from the Internet – not native to Windows Media Player.
7) DVD Video in MPEG 2 – Not Native to Windows Media Player
FLV video (Flash video) ripped from YouTube, amongst other places. – Not native to Windows Media Player.
All of these essentially play “out of the box” for me. It can actually do a ton more types than this, but these are the ones I use regularly.
Every now and then, I come across a piece of software that makes me go, “Wow! Why didn’t I know about this before?” This is one of those. Now it is installed on every computer I own or use.
For more information visit: http://www.gomplayer.com/main.html
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