One of the main use of my laptop is to watch movies. Having a great video player would help when watching a film comfortably. I have always tried to stick with the “alternative” players instead of the Windows standard Media Player. One reason for this is that most other players are far more stable than Windows Media Player. Earlier I had introduced a fine piece of open source software which goes by the name Media Player Classic (MPC). But the MPC development has be stalled for some time. So searching for a more up-to-date freeware video player, I came up with GOM Player.
GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) supports a wide range of standard video formats MPG, AVI, VOB, WMV, 3GP etc. It also supports playback of HTTP Streaming (Internet Streaming) ASF, OGG, MP3 and AVI contents.
Usage/Interface
Right after installation, the setup shows a basic wizard to configure the quality, output mode (VMR7/VMR9), sub-titles, the video/audio codec to use, speaker channel support, automatic file association, process priority etc.
The interface is quiet clean and simple. Just a section to view the video and all the basic controls (Play,Previous,Next,etc.) and seek bar at the bottom. Most users should quickly get comfortable with this interface.
The seek bar is a quiet comfortable one, and the mouse wheel can control the volume. The only problem I found at the interface level was that double clicking on the screen does not automatically switch to full-screen, like most other players.
One simple question you could ask is “Where are all the menus?”. If you are very much used to modern media players, you know very well where to look for it. Simply right-click the screen, and you are presented with a host of options. All major options including Opening a DVD/VCD, Playback settings, Video/Audio settings, Aspect ration, Pan & Scan, Skins etc. are directly available in this right-click menu. So, not much to learn.
Speed/Stability
On extensive usage of the software, I found it to be quiet stable. It can read most “scratched” DVDs without actually “crashing”. Since the interface is so simple, it is no surprise that the software starts-up in no-time. The response time is also quiet quick.
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