Talk:Comparison of video player software/Archive 2

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Tables

Not every table includes every player listed on the first table. For example, the last table (video table) doesn't include PowerDVD or WinDVD though these are primarily video players. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.177.52.4 (talk) 18:25, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Yahoo! Music Jukebox vs Musicmatch Jukebox

Are these the same or different products? Has Musicmatch been discontinued? JMJimmy (talk) 19:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Pounds to dollars

Can someone convert the pounds to dollars and for the dollars, can someone state the currency? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubew (talkcontribs) 14:28, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

MMS protocol support

The mms (= microsoft media stream) protocol support should be partial for most of the players. For instance there is no working seek (fast forward, rewind, goto 50%, ...) in mplayer and xine at least. And my guess is that the most of the other players will fail the seek test as well, because its very hard to implement. Only players I know that do seek are MS media player and vlc. The seek property is a must for playing internet streams, because if your connection breaks you cannot continue where you left and have to start all over again. 88.195.116.109 (talk) 18:53, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Amarok filetypes support

At first amarok can't play any audio (http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/FAQ#What_media_types_does_Amarok_support.3F) it is using backends - xine, helix and NMM, so why according to this article xine can play audio files that amarok can't? Aaron LoveP 22:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, there is 2 Amarok entries in the "Protocol Support" table -- Pior 23 Sept 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.52.210.68 (talk) 20:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

WMP free video not

Windows and WMP do NOT come with a free video decoder, and so are NOT able to play video, free.-69.87.203.181 20:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't WMP play MPEG1, WMV7, WMV8 and WMV9 (VC1) out of the box? --CE 192.35.241.121 18:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

DVD Menu

Does the player display the menu of a DVD or not? This is a very important minor question!

Container formats

I think RealMedia container format should be added to the comparison. 88.196.38.179 21:16, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Quicktime and mp4 are the same, real media should be in there. --Compn 20:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


Bloatware analysis?

How about some statistic on how fast each player is? I know this kind of thing is hard to rate, but it also happens to be one of the most useful aspects of defining a video player. Perhaps, attempting to run the five most popular video formats through each one?

Also the size of the install should also be a factor, again as another statistic, as well as how fast the program loads. --Skytopia 14:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Zoom, speed, frame step stats...

More important statistics which this excellent page doesn't yet offer would include:

1: Zoom options (such as, touch border from inside/outside, ignore aspect ratio). 2: Frame step (backwards and forwards, preferably with cursor keys) 3: Speed of play (not time or pitch stretch, just basic speed up/slow down - the sound as well as video would go proportionally faster/slower). --Skytopia 14:50, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


Aspect Ratio - more important that which allow ignoring it, which players support it (i.e. notice aspect ratio is set and respect it). Cefu (talk) 18:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

SACD

Shouldn't SACD be deleted? The wikipedia article claims there are no drives for PC hardware, so how should any software play this back? --CE 192.35.241.121 18:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Removed --CE 192.35.241.121 (talk) 13:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Page layout

A couple of things:

  1. Why, for the first four sections, are audio and video players in separate tables, but not the other sections? We should do one or the other. Personally I would prefer that we had separate tables for all sections.
  2. Any objections to making all tables sortable?
  3. For the features set, wouldn't it be better to group the two audio tables and two video tables together. So instead of V1, A1, V2, A2 it would go V1, V2, A1, A2.
  4. Wouldn't it be helpful to mention if it can rip CDs to mp3/ogg/whatever? Either have a single yes/no column in the features section for if it can rip to anything, or another table with a column for each of various formats. Koweja (talk) 04:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
  1. I concur, either that or two separate sections altogether, with subsections. Maybe with the exception of the 'General' section?
  2. Can't really see a reason not to.
  3. I believe this would be preferable over how it is now.
  4. How about, one section for formats it can write to and add 'disc media' riping and streaming media riping to the features section? --Execvator (talk) 09:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

FLV player(s)

The link to FLV Player has many external links, none of which are GPL-licensed. Hence, I am changing its entry to "Proprietary". FSHero (talk) 18:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Last.fm

In audio player features a Last.fm column should be included. If you really want same size tables, then move one column from features (continued) to features and add Last.fm and Gerpok to features (continued) for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BerVi (talkcontribs) 16:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Use of "Free" to describe Xware

It is this user's opinion that adware is not free. Bloatware, nagware, crippleware, and the like are also not free. They are not libre(free as in free speech), as they lack vital features, may have malicious effects, restrict what you can do with them, or do things without the users explicit consent. Implicit consent clauses in the license, i.e a screen that shows up after you have already downloaded or finished installing it and says "if you download or install this, you agree to forfeit all of your rights and your eternal soul to the developer", are legally dubious/ethically indefensible and are not considered to be "consent" by this user in this context. They are not gratis(free as in free beer), as their only purpose is to make money from advertisements, or to make you buy the paid version. Also, bloatware that fills the hard disks of new computers, adware and the additional infectious agents invariably carried in served ads, and repeated nag screens in programs, can take hours to mitigate, and sometimes cannot be entirely removed. Time is money- those hours spent dealing with it, if spent working even at US minimum wage, would amount to enough to actually purchase a full software product, maybe several. Even if the developer receives no profit, you still pay when using these programs.

This user suggests changing the software labeled "free" but also having a paid version or having unwanted behaviors be relabeled. Possible options include "demo", "*ware" where * is a descriptor of its limitations or negative behavior, "crippled trial", "limited functionality" etc. I have not used most of the players listed, so I can not make claims about individual programs. It is the nature of tiered software to sell the user up to the next tier, but I recognize that there may be software that does this without using these tactics, so each item should be changed by people who have used the program personally.

Also, Windows Media Player communicates with the internet and Microsoft without the user's explicit consent, collecting identifiable information and tracking usage, has integration with music stores and other paid services that cannot be removed as well as occasionally interfering with other uses, and I personally suspect the software as a whole may be downright spyware. Also, it is my opinion that it should be listed not as "windows-license needed" but as "WGA protected" with WGA linked to the appropriate page, since this more specifically and concisely describes it.

In conclusion, my neutrality on the topic is obviously compromised, therefore no changes have been/will be made by this user. Moonlightfox (talk) 00:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. Free is incorrect verbiage, many of the products listed as free are in fact marketware. and Wikipedia should not recognize malware products beyond identifying them as such. I think you're a bit too paranoid about WMP though. They can't be THAT evil, they're just microsoft. 71.87.24.2 (talk) 10:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Auto Resume for iTunes

I don't know if anybody knows this (maybe you all use something other than iTunes) but iTunes has an auto resume for podcasts and individual media files and has had it for a while now. Not DVDs, but it certainly has it for video files and audio files. And automatically adds that capability to podcasts when it downloads the podcasts. You can get to this option for individual files by right clicking on a song or video file and choosing "Get Info" and in one of the tabs (I'm not sure which since I'm not on Windows right now. I think it's the Playback tab) it'll let you check a box next to an option for that.--FazzMunkle (talk) 22:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

HD DVD and Blu-Ray

Is it necessary to have columns for HD DVD and BluRay if none of the players support them? Perhaps it would be better to have a note at the end to the effect of: "None of these players currently supports playback of HD DVDs or BluRay disks." Matt White (talk) 19:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

VLC

I thought VLC was also an audio player... shouldn't it be under the audio player section as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.170.53.118 (talk) 23:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Read the "definition" at the top of the article. --Execvator (talk) 13:08, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Flac and Cuesheet support

What player does support Flac files with embedded cue sheets?--92.229.174.58 (talk) 08:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

See the metadata support section. --Execvator (talk) 21:28, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Cue sheet and embedded cue sheet support are quite different. Also, there are multiple ways to embed cue sheets, not all of which are compatible with one another.74.215.119.104 (talk) 13:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Software Not listed

Why isn't Miro in this list? 89.214.25.177 (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
because it's too much of a pain in the ass to add anything. article is a total mess —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petchboo (talkcontribs) 20:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Opinion I don't feel this article is a "total mess." Indeed, I'm glad that I'm not the one entrusted to write it. This took a LONG time, and a LOT of work. Blondesareeasy (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:01, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

  • Apollo
What's about Apollo? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.179.38.88 (talk) 19:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy in video player table

Do we really need to state that every video player has video playback in the features table? Dan (talk) 05:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Nero ShowTime

I would be interested in knowing how Nero ShowTime compares with the rest of the players. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 06:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Double Fail

by placing video and audio players on the same page, some wiki-nazi has saved one page, and made this one useless. double score!

This really needs to be split into 2 pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.137.177.241 (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Link to Listen media player broken

Leads back to this page, lolwut? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.166.138.88 (talk) 10:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Kantaris

FFplay is distributed in source form and can either be compiled as a GPL binary, or an LGPL binary. Kantaris is distributed in binary form, so is must be either GPL or LGPL. Since the programmer claims that his software is GPL and LGPL (if one uses the installer, the also distributed run-alone binary simply contains no license statement which already infringes libavcodec's copyrights) at the same time which is impossible, because the GPL explicitely forbids this. --62.178.80.242 (talk) 09:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Amarok does not run on Windows yet

As stated on the Amarok download page:

http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Download:Windows

"Please be aware that no stable version of Amarok for Windows has yet been released. This means those builds are FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. There is no official support for them. Those builds might be unstable, have bad side effects, kill your cat, start WW4 or might even not work at all. You have been warned!"

I've downloaded and installed Amarok 2.0.1.1 on WinXP32 SP3 and it crahes on startup, so I don't cosider this Windows Operating support, yet. That's why I'll change it to not yet in the list. --Kobelix (talk) 09:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Secondary/dual subtitles

The information about support for secondary subtitles could be included in subtitles support section. As far as I know this feature is implemented in The KMPlayer and PowerDVD. Eresus (talk) 04:42, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Feature to filter the Comparison Table

It would be great if Wikipedia had a function to filter the table by keywords. For example i want be able filter for players that are "open source" and run on "Linux" and than Wikipedia should create a new page with only these players, that have this feature. --78.43.182.114 (talk) 04:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

A-B Repeat Unavailable on Several Players

The players Kaffeine, KMPlayer, and Smplayer were marked as having A-B repeat available, but I've examined their menus and key-shortcuts and can't find that feature, so I've flipped the feature boxes from yes to no. I could be wrong, but before anybody changes them back to yes, please state where that feature is found on the player. --Farry (talk) 19:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

 http://smplayer.berlios.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3
 Seems to have just been implemented in SMPlayer. Talldog9 (talk) 10:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Fluendo DVD Player missing

Just want to say Fluendo DVD Player is missing from this article... SF007 (talk) 12:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Zune Software Missing

Just wondering why the Zune Software is not on the list, it's both a Audio and video player and can be used as a standalone app.

15:41, 1 August 2009 (GMT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.205.29.33 (talk)

I agree —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.138.61.2 (talk) 19:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

VPlayer subtitles format

VPlayer subtitles format (.sub) should be added, it is text based subtitle format which unfortunately is still in use by some people today, (very latest XBMC builds from SVN for example supports this subtitle format now). 83.227.151.27 (talk) 12:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

New player: Moovida Why isn't it on the list.

I haven't tried it already, but it seems to be able to play and display almost everything, so I think it's worth adding it to this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Impocta (talkcontribs) 13:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

Is there a criteria for inclusion on this list? There have been complaints to the length of it going back a long time. If the list of players was culled to remove non-notable and legacy players, it might be a lot more manageable. Miami33139 (talk) 19:25, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Trimming the "general" chart

The columns author, data, and version do not actually do anything to compare between any media players. The information is readily available by clicking through the players article. Any reason to keep those? Miami33139 (talk) 23:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Split page

Okay, we're way beyond recommended article length at this point. We should probably move all the audio tables to their own article. Chris Cunningham 11:48, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

My vote is no. The articles would be too specific then. Yes, a disambiguation page would help, but that kills the whole point of splitting up the page. BlueCanary9999 16:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)BlueCanary9999
i agree with splitting the page into audio and video pages Acasperw 12:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with splitting audio and video, but "split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page" seems a bit unnecessary. That would spoil the whole point of having a comparison page. Isn't that what categories are for? GeiwTeol 22:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
What part of "move all the audio tables to their own article" do you guys not understand? That sounds reasonable to me. SamB (talk) 01:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, unless audio players have features exclusive to themselves, I don't think it's an absolute must to split the article. --Jw21/PenaltyKillah VANucks|17-12-3 20:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
From a user's perspective I vote no. Consider this: many of the video players also play plain audio files. The resulting audio page would either end up about half as long as the current setup, or just as long to include the audio capabilities of the video players, and then the video page would either be nearly as long as the current article, or lose half of the relevant data! Therefore, in the end it would be a large net increase in the size of the article across the two pages accompanied by a hit to ease of use and organization. I say reorganize the list into a more compact and efficient format(by sacrificing or simplifying the OS compatibility list, for instance), and leave it one article.Moonlightfox (talk) 01:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I do not think this article should be split!
Having all this information in one place is rare and should be maintained —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.168.121.231 (talk) 03:12, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I think this article should be kept in its current form. However, I suggest that other articles be added in addition to this one. If someone is looking for a video player, the audio player tables are useless, but not too difficult to skip over. If someone is looking for an audio player, there is a lot of interspersed information about features only applicable to video players, which is much harder to ignore if not relevant. For example, time-stretching obviously applies to both, but colour controls do not. However, some video-players may support e.g. time-stretching only on audio or only on video (becoming out-of-sync), and that would further complicate the table with features that do apply to both. I realize this would be harder to maintain, but I believe it makes it more user-friendly. Kaldosh (talk) 08:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I do not think the audio and video should be seperated but the tables should be on seperate pages from a disam. page. i.e. one for the audio features, one for vid features, one for the OS list, one for format support, and so on. 71.87.24.2 (talk) 10:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I would also say "No". I came specifically looking for a media player which would handle both video and audio. (I have several "music videos" in my collection.) Having lists for both features on the same page is handy. Kf7xm (talk) 17:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I vote "No", too. I totally agree with the guy above me ("From a user's perspective..."). 85.127.158.255 (talk) 16:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Why not split it into three pages... ? Video, Audio & Hybrid? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.125.233.49 (talk) 04:23, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Isn't that going to result in a fair amount of duplication of data, and with the problem of version drift - ie, some piece of data is changed on one page but not another. And we will need a full alphabetical, or by OS, or both, table of contents page (or disambiguation page) so that people can find the player they are interested in. Seems like a lot of work to set up and to maintain properly. Also we loose the comparison feature across all players. Not dead set against it, just pointing out potential problems. In either case, the page needs work, although I'm leaning more towards keeping it as one article. — Becksguy (talk) 05:18, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
This is my first edit in Wikipedia, so please be patient. While I understand the potential problems associated with splitting the page, right now it just seems bloated. And I think part of the problem is that, as others have pointed out, many players play both audio and video content. So...option (1) would be to split the page into two, with one page concentrating on video players and the other concentrating on audio players. In the video page, there could be an additional column to indicate whether the player also played audio files (if yes, the "yes" would link to the audio page); in the audio page, there could be an additional column to indicate whether the player also played video files (again with links). Option (2) would be to leave all the info in one page, taking out the alternating headers of "video" and "audio." Just say what features the various players have, and this would obviously include whether the player handled audio files, video files, or both. I guess that's what bothers me about the page as it is--by splitting the page into "video" and "audio" sections, it begs either to be split or to be rewritten.... Personally, I favor option (1), as I tend to be more interested in audio than video, but that's just me. :-) Ddgdrs (talk) 18:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, as far as I know, every video player has got audio playback capabilities. Also, you have things like Media Database and Skins that doesn't really fit in either category. So, as I see it, you either split the article right of with only media players capable of video playback in the video players article and the rest in the audio players article; or you make video player and audio player the main categories in this article and the current main categories are placed as sub-categories to them. I don't really care either way, as long as you get the ability to actually see what part of the article someone has edited... --Execvator (talk) 12:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I vote no. "Comparison Of" pages need to be as long as they need to be in order to be complete. And splitting audio off is artificial- there are very few video-only devices; almost all have audio too. If anything, we should probably consolidate pages like Comparison of portable media players should be brought into this one (Comparison of media players is rather general). --ClariT (talk) 00:28, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The page has already been split in the sense that audio and video exist in their own separate tables. The page also looks messy from the point that tables throughout the entire article are inconsistent. As of the "Protocol Support" section audio and video players exist in one large table (as opposed to two tables featured earlier in the article) separated by a non-obvious row listed as "Audio Players" which then just duplicates the headers/column tiles. Also from a readers point of view there is too much scrolling involved to compare just video or audio players. If the page is not to be split then it needs redesigning so that the audio players sit at the side of video players (as opposed to the current layout, where the audio follows video, follows audio, follows video etc). As the tables do not fit in a single window (require scrolling, even at 1440x900) it can some time get confusing as to which table you are looking at, either audio or video. Smillie-world (talk) 10:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

How about we don't make any distinction between "audio players" and "video players"? Doing this we could also just leave out any players that don't have video playback capabilities in that specific table and note this in the article. As for the splitting, I personally like how Comparison of layout engines is handled. Perhaps we could have a main Comparison of media players and sub pages like Comparison of media players (playback) where you would find comparisons for audio format support, video format support and container format support and another sub page Comparison of media players (hardware) with Optical media publication support and things like remote controllers and so on. --Execvator (talk) 11:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Split page continued

  • Now leaning more towards splitting the pages, considering the size of the article. Still need to be careful of data drift between the two pages (for the data or table formatting that is common between them). Also, we will loose the ability to easily compare audio features between audio only players and players that do both. — Becksguy (talk) 11:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I made the proposal to split along the audio and video player software as the article in its current form is basically unmaintainable and extremely difficult to use. Likely the thing to do will be to split either the audio or video player software content into a separate article and rename this one. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:52, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Page splitted

I splitted the page. The video-part today and the audio-part a month ago. Template:Media_player_(application_software) fits also already. So now what we do with this page? --Txt.file (talk) 12:13, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Please delete: If not, all three pages will be edited differently.--62.178.80.242 (talk) 12:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

GMPC - Gnome Music Player Client

missing this player http://gmpc.wikia.com/wiki/Gnome_Music_Player_Client--195.60.133.246 (talk) 16:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Revert war

First, let me state that I often disagreed with User:Miami33139 about his last changes: I seriously doubt his claim to be an inclusionist and I think it is sad that TAK is not mentioned anymore on Wikipedia. The changes of User:Tothwolf however, that were made without any discussion, are absolutely inacceptable and should be reverted. (As can be seen, I can't do that.) CE--62.178.80.242 (talk) 12:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

If I overwrote any information that had been added since Miami33139 removed a large number of entries, point out which entry is affected and I'll correct it. I tried not to lose any corrections or improvements to other entries while restoring other entries and content but due to the complex markup is is always easy to overlook something. --Tothwolf (talk) 14:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
The article is excessively long and had complaints it needed to be reduced for years. Even splitting into two articles leaves two articles with too many entries. It is so long it is difficult to edit, I'm forced to open it it an IDE because of the number of separate lines. Enforcing a simple inclusion criteria helps this and had no complaints for a month. Miami33139 (talk) 17:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Edit it in an external editor like everyone else. Complex markup doesn't work well with the default web based markup editor. This is a known issue; usability.wikimedia.org --Tothwolf (talk) 19:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Add columns to the wiki

"Video thumbnails"

The players Mplayer and Kmplayer could create video thumbnails/contact sheet.

can someone Add "Video thumbnails" column to the wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.243.207.3 (talk) 02:46, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Hardware acceleration (DXVA/CUDA)

WMP 11+ and MPC HC support it. Some other players too. Maybe this column will be usefull too.

This is not the talk page of the ArbCom case

Please do not use this talk page to discuss issues that are being discussed at the current ArbCom case. Thank you. Dougweller (talk) 19:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Mozilla's Songbird belongs in the list

Songbird belongs in this list, as it plays video in addition to audio files.64.142.9.251 (talk) 03:32, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Songbird is technically not Mozilla's, just based on Gecko/Firefox —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.183.41.252 (talk) 01:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Limiting criteria for this list

I'm trying to determine if this list is indiscriminate or not. Is there any discriminatory criteria for inclusion, or must it simply be a video player software program? JBsupreme (talk) 18:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Comparison is too limited

I am looking for a player that I can use with my Vista operating system that has the features that used to be on previous versions of Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player 9 was very useful; Vista will not accept it. Even simple things like the total time that the playlist occupies is no longer displayed. I read the article for the latest version, Media Player 12; none of the discarded features had been restored. It would be interested in knowing why Microsoft decided to gut their media players so severely.1archie99 (talk) 18:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for clean-up/re-organization

Discussion at Talk:Comparison_of_audio_player_software#Proposal_for_clean-up/re-organization. OzW (talk) 07:17, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion Criteria - discussion

The edit summary here:

("list of.." or "comparison of..." articles should not list products that are not notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article.)

caught my eye. According to WP:LIST, this is not strictly true. Further, WP:N and WP:GNG should simply never be used to limit the content of an article or a list or a comparison. There is considerable room for discussion and consensus as to what limits are placed on the content of a particular article, having mainly to do with WP:V verifiability, and avoiding WP:OR.

In general, list items are treated like claims in an article - not all claims are worthy of a whole article, and yet here we are, with articles chock full of claims supported individually by WP:RS reliable sources, both WP:PRIMARY and WP:SECONDARY reliable sources. List item inclusion criteria are determined on a case by case basis, by the consensus of the editors. There have been spirited discussions of inclusion criteria in several list Talk pages:

  1. List of common misconceptions, which uses 4 very strict criteria, clearly stated in a Talk page banner, an Edit Message, and in descriptive prose at the top of the article. Some editors don't think these criteria are exclusive enough, and yet, time and effort have shown that they are workable, and the content of the article is now, in large part, well sourced.
  2. List of alternative rock musicians, which simply requires that an article exist. Most of those articles have their own major and minor sourcing issues, but hey, not our problem.
  3. Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients, which uses an interim, still-being-discussed "must have an article or must have 1 primary RS plus 1 independent RS" standard. That might sound weird, but it turns out some primary sources aren't sufficiently verifiable or reliable about themselves! The combination of one primary RS and one independent RS are typically not enough for a whole article, but it's certainly enough for a claim, and, in my opinion, enough an item in a list or comparison. And RS can appear in the strangest places. As noted in Talk:Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients, we've found some blogs which turn out to be written by notable authors of textbooks and reference books, so the blogs inherit that reliability.

I think you know where this is going. Because this is a software comparison, I'd like to see Comparison of video player software have criteria like #3, as clearly and boldly stated as #1. --Lexein (talk) 19:45, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria in "List of..." or "Comparison of..." articles are clearly described in the Stand-alone lists guideline: "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group, and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future." Now, for the edit summary and my revert, first, BSPlayer is not notable enough to have its own article. Second, it is not reasonable to expect the article could be forthcoming, because the article has already been deleted through community consensus (so speedy deletion now applies). Which means it cannot be included in the article. It is clearly, unambiguously described in the official Wikipedia guideline, and there is no reason to discuss this fact. And thirdly, Ico-Man is a spammer using deceptive tactics to promote their product. The BSPlayer article has been deleted 9 times. So when the red link was rejected, Ico-Man recreated the article under a new name, in the hope that it will pass unnoticed. And even when the deceptive recreation was noticed and the new article was speedily deleted again, he created a deceptive redirect and included the redirect link into this article (deceptively marking it as a minor edit), which again meant there was a blue link even if the article did not exist anymore. So this was not about some general inclusion criteria, this was about a chronic spammer abusing Wikipedia for promoting their product with their single-purpose account and a possible conflict of interest. And that's also why their edit was reverted. Because this is unacceptable.—J. M. (talk) 20:53, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
The portion of the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(stand-alone_lists)#Common_selection_criteria you quoted is just one of the three mentioned common list criteria varieties. There are many other sorts of inclusion criteria which exist, as I mentioned.
I understand and agree with your perfectly valid reverts about spam and misleading recreation of articles. Not arguing that at all. That's why the title of this section is "inclusion criteria" and not "spam".
But I disagree with the assertion that BSPlayer has no place in this list: it has a review in a reliable source, and a stable primary source which describes its features:
Shall we discuss what criteria would be good enough for this list? I am in favor of including players which either have articles, or have a primary and a secondary WP:RS. Remember, WP:N refers to whole articles, not content of lists.
Yes, I mentioned only the first criterion, because the other two criteria do not apply here. And BSPlayer does not meet the requirement. Yes, WP:N refers to articles, and the standalone-lists guideline explicitly says that every list item should meet the notability criteria for its own article. It is clearly written there. If you want to change a Wikipedia guideline or policy, feel free to discuss the changes on the guideline talk page. This is not a place to discuss policy or guideline changes.—J. M. (talk) 23:13, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
And by the way, spam is not only one of the biggest problems on Wikipedia, but also one of the reasons for having such a strict inclusion criterion that says only items meeting the notability criteria for their own article can be included in these articles. I have been dealing with spam and spammers on Wikipedia for years, and these "List of..." articles are very common targets for spammers. In fact, I have seen "List of..." or "Comparison of..." articles created by spammers for spammers. Articles that only served for adding their own non-notable products (because their own articles could not survive). There are even spamming cartels, groups of professional spammers promoting groups of related, sometimes even (seemingly) competing products. And that's why we need such a strict guideline. And that's why we actually have one.—J. M. (talk) 23:57, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
An example of a player which has an article, but which has problems, is xine - it relies entirely on primary sources, and two non-reliable independent sources. BSPlayer is (IMHO) better sourced, with one RS, than xine.

--Lexein (talk) 22:24, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If there are problems with the xine article, then the xine article should be either fixed or proposed for deletion (if no reliable sources can be found). This is not a place to discuss the xine article and its notability. Until there is consensus that xine is not notable (that is, until the xine article gets deleted), it is considered notable, and can be included in this article. Besides, "other stuff exists" is not a valid argument—wrong things should be fixed instead of using them as a proof that they are acceptable. Furthermore, the community consensus (confirmed by the reviewing administrator) was that BSPlayer is not notable. One RS does not satisfy the notability guideline (it is written there, too). And this fact has been confirmed 8 times already—every time the spammer tries to recreate the article, it gets speedily deleted. This means it is not reasonable to expect the article could be forthcoming. So BSPlayer simply does not belong in this list.—J. M. (talk) 23:13, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Please don't avoid discussing inclusion criteria, and please don't belabor non-relevant guideline points with me. xine hardly matters: my point was that notability is frequently not met, but is easily met with a bit of rather easy research, rathet than deletion. "Common" is just that: one common approach. There are many others, too numerous to list. If you choose to enforce that, that's you doing that - there's still no listed, clear criteria, arrived at by consensus, in this article. WP:N was never intended to be applied to the content of articles, and its use as such, per se, is absolutely not supported by policy. The repeated deletion of the BPlayer article smacks of bias on the face of it; not at all something to be proud of. It's evidence of an editor not abiding by the full text of WP:BURDEN and "trying to seek out sources before deletion." Read all of WP:BURDEN: a full reading of it will make its meaning clear. Reliable magazine and book sources are plentiful to justify BSPlayer's inclusion in this list, whether or not it has an article. I wonder how many other players have been excluded based on misapplied guidelines and policies. It's an article about players: all that should be required are reliable sources, not whole articles. About WP:OSE: when looking at the goal of Wikipedia in the larger picture, of presenting reliably sourced facts, it pays to look at all that does exist, and not to live in a single, incorrectly applied, policy point: WP:N is definitely not to be used to keep material out of articles (it's written right in there.) If you are campaigning to keep material out of this article, that's just as unconstructive as campaigning to force unsourced material in. What matters here is this: without a consensus-driven clear statement of inclusion criteria, as recommemded by WP:LIST, you're arbitrarily claiming that it's acceptable to remove sourced content, and force criteria on others, without discussion, and that's WP:OWNing. I'm calling for that discussion. Speedy deletion is frequently misapplied, and the fact that it has been used implies nothing beyond that (certainly not that a topic deserves to be forever deleted) - if you feel strongly about it, read WP:TIGERS. If you've had terrible experiences with spammers, I'm sad about that. But in my years of editing here, I have not had that experience, because the reliable sources matter more to me than the editors, and what sources say about a topic matters more than an editor's behavior or history. --Lexein (talk) 01:12, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
While I certainly don't know WP guidelines as good as you, I'd like to add that this article is already long enough without BSPlayer.--Regression Tester (talk) 07:16, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be no explicit limit or consensus in discussion anywhere about the number of items permitted here. If you think the article is too long, then consider deleting items which are not reliably sourced. Since articles should only exist which are reliably, independently sourced (per WP:N and WP:RS), then links to those articles should only exist if they are reliably, independently sourced. That ought to shorten the tables considerably. I can't imagine any candidates (grin). It's a set of tables, and an incomplete list with no clearly stated inclusion criteria in the lead paragraph, as strongly suggested by WP:LISTS. I really don't mind discussing it. --Lexein (talk) 21:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Again, the inclusion criteria are clearly, unambiguously described in the official Wikipedia guideline. And they clearly involve WP:N. And again, if you want to change the official Wikipedia guideline, please discuss it on the relevant guideline talk page. Not here. Thank you.—J. M. (talk) 12:54, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
  • The criteria you want to enforce singlehandedly are certainly not unambiguous (there are several approaches). And, no, read WP:N again. It states itself that it is not to be used to exclude content from articles. N is about the entirety of articles, not parts of them. So stop with the false N argument.
  • It's right there in the WP:Five Pillars - #5: "Wikipedia does not have firm rules." The guidelines (not official, by the way) are arrived at, based on the WP:Five Pillars, by discussion, and consensus, which can change over time. The "ways things are done around here" are stated in, in order of priority: pillar, policy, guideline, essay, consensus, and discussion. Again, they are not "rules". And if any one of them stands in the way of improving Wikipedia, they are to be boldly ignored. --Lexein (talk) 21:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
And as for the BSPlayer article—feel free to recreate it and prove that it's notable. Anyone is free to do it. The article was repeatedly deleted because nobody has been able to satisfy the basic requirements. You could be the first one. So I would say either do it, or do not say it could be done. Until it's done, it isn't done. "It could be done" is not a sound argument, just like "other stuff exists". Ico-Man has been trying to re-create the article several times, and discussed it with an administrator, too—and the administrator always explained to him why it still wasn't acceptable. Yes, "other stuff exists is not a valid argument" was one of his replies, too. The article wasn't repeatedly deleted for no reason. So please do not say things like "it could be done" or "other things are broken, too, so it is OK". Doing it and fixing it is always the correct option. So again, this page is not the right place to discuss BSPlayer notability—that's what the articles for deletion (see the BSPlayer entry) and other pages (such as deletion review) are made for.—J. M. (talk) 13:27, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Take extreme care not to misrepresent other editor's words, or intentions, or the guidelines and policies. WP:UNCIVIL and false assertions are unwelcome.
I don't see any need to recreate the BS.Player article. The player has more than two reliable sources verifying claims about it, such as its features. This satisfies its WP:V verifiability requirement, and so, can be included in this article, with a consensus-reached inclusion criteria.
Your claim that the article deletion occurred due to WP:N is correct. Too bad that has nothing to do with the player's WP:V verifiable, and reliably sourced (above) includibility in these tables.
I feel no need to modify any Wikipedia policy or guideline in this regard, and your assertion that any would need to be altered indicates only that you have dug your heels in, and are unwilling to actually discuss. Try WP:TIGERS.
I'm here to improve Comparison of video player software by encouraging actual implementation of guideline-suggested explicitly stated inclusion criteria in the lead paragraph of the article. Not some rigid, improper quoting of an optional criteria listed as an example somewhere else, enforced here by one editor without consensus or discussion.
It is apparently necessary to remind you that the inclusion criteria you are claiming are ironclad are only Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(stand-alone_lists)#Common_selection_criteria one of many optional, (only three of which are listed), common types of inclusion criteria.
As for Cirt's comments, where he explained to Ico-Man, his comment about WP:OCE was unfortunately terse - though it is true that each article should be considered on its merits according to guidelines, not relative to other articles - there is still Wikipedia as a whole to consider, as I stated. To hunker down and stick in one policy or guideline is to ignore the possibilities of improving articles beyond a too-narrow scope. In my opinion. --Lexein (talk) 21:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

MpcStar/CometPlayer

I have installed and tested a dozen or more different media players in my personal quest to find the best ones that are available. So far as I can tell at this point, MpcStar is a good player with a distinct set of features from the other ones that I know about. For instance, MpcStar will play a multi-part series one part right after the other nonstop, which no other one I've used has done. Thus, MpcStar is an up and coming media player, more important than some that are listed, and should be included in this article. When the updated version becomes available, I will check it out, as there may be some out there I have not tried yet. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lovingthesixties (talkcontribs) 19:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

EDL support

I am tempted to add a column under "playlist format support" for EDL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list#Systems_supporting_EDL_playback.2C_not_just_EDL_cutting support, which several have. Any feedback? Rogerdpack (talk) 06:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Single-page Spreadsheet Version?

Does anyone have a single-page spreadsheet version of this article they could link? Niightblade (talk) 05:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Alleged license violations

I have removed content related to alleged licence violations for various reasons [1] however, my edit was reverted [2]

This content can not stay in wikipedia for several reasons:

  • No reliable sources, not even what I call "semi-reliable sources" (news websites or blogs of "medium" or "small" dimension but still with some reputation)
  • All sources are self-published sources and primary sources and with no peer-review whatsoever
  • Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence - Not only is the accusation badly sourced, accusations of this nature require even better references than "normal statements"
  • Burden of evidence - similar in spirit to the entries above - "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it"
  • Possible Original research and/or Synthesis - assuming the developers are violating the copyright law based on the accusation of FFmpeg (maybe the accused developers could be found innocent by a court, because they did not cause any damage to FFmpeg or maybe the court does not find any evidence of infringment)
  • Possible libel - quoting from the policy "Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information" and "[…] It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons. […]"
  • Likely violation of Biographies of living persons policy - while this article is not about a person, the (poorly-sourced) statements about the developer(s) violating copyright law can be easily viewed as a breach of policy: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion" (emphasis is from the policy, not mine)
  • WP:NPOV - giving undue weight to badly sourced accusations

I also posted on the reliable sources noticeboard to ask if the FFmpeg "Hall of Shame" could be considered a reliable source, and the answer I got (as expected) was that it was "just their assertion, and even if they claim to provide "proof", could not be considered a reliable source" and only if the accusing party took the developers to court and won, than it would count as a reliable source with another editor also agreeeing with that assessment

Having said that, please to not re-add the material until reliable sources are found. --SF007 (talk) 13:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion of DIVX?

The video player DIVX should be included? Isn't this a major player now? Almufasa (talk) 19:35, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

DIVX is not a software player, has never been a major player, and was discontinued in 1999. If you mean the DivX Plus Player, sure, why not... (I'm not sure it is really a major player now, but it is notable and can probably be properly sourced if needed.)—J. M. (talk) 20:04, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Daum PotPlayer

I see potplayer has it's own article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer but doesn't appear in this list. Tr3b0R-s3m0G (talk) 06:19, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

3D Format Support

I have casually (and unsuccessfully) looked through wikipedia and some other sites for any enumeration (let alone comparison) of video players which support 3D/stereoscopic input and output. I think this list would be a decent place to include this information. Initially this could be a single column included in the extra features table, but as the list of players supporting 3D video formats grows, it would be best to have a separate table or even article comparing the players. Short term, I think adding a column for 3D video support would be an immediate improvement. Thoughts? Elgordon (talk) 20:40, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

This is actually a very good idea. 84.152.24.13 (talk) 23:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

MythTV?

How is it possible that this article has been created and expanded without any reference to MythTV ???
LP-mn (talk) 13:45, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Because you haven't added it yet :) If it fits the bill and there's already a Wikipedia article about it (i.e. MythTV), then go for it. --— Rhododendrites talk |  17:38, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

WebM

The container formats should be sorted and need a clean-up. Apparently Quicktime Q comes before Ogg O at the moment, because it's actually Apple A. But FLV is near the end, not at Adobe A, not at Macromedia M, and not at Flash F. From my POV OGM is cruft an can be removed with extreme prejudice as of 2015. And WebM is no container format at all, it's a profile of Matroska. @Zimbabweed: are there any compelling reasons for a WebM column? I see one minor Winamp divergence, and lots of {{dunno}}, which could be handled by removing the WebM column. –Be..anyone (talk) 15:58, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Ability to rip cd should be included

Just started trying to use ITunes. Surprised to find it does not seem to include this ability. Tried to find a media player comparison to verify. Was redirrected to this article.1archie99 (talk) 12:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't know, this is a comparison of video players not audio players. Also I'm pretty sure iTunes can rip CDs.--Krystaleen 12:13, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Chromecast support

Please add a comparison of "cast to Chromecast" (or other casters') support. -79.177.192.159 (talk) 07:14, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

CPU Usage & Picture quality

Try as I might, NOBODY seems to have compared video-codecs in terms of quality (error-rate from original, uncompressed video) and of CPU power. NOWHERE gives a core-mark or Dhrystones value for this and all of the other codecs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.106.56.145 (talk) 16:58, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

how are you going to compare it, some player use gpu power instead of cpu, like windows 10 player, and gpu is divided into 4 category, do you mind explaining more of your idea, like what software used to compare error, what raw video to use, which part of the video is being used. I did try cpu gpu, battery usage most bitstream enabled player before, but i never check for error, i know some player have error using certain graphic card, and certain driver version. I think this is gonna ve very time consuming.Andrewmww (talk) 15:09, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

active/inactive

Looks like this separation took place last February. What it means isn't clear. At first I presumed it was to differentiate actively developed software from discontinued/abandoned software, but clicking a couple at random I came to Windows Media Player in the "inactive" section (it's still being developed for Windows Mobile, for example). Media Player Classic is likewise listed, although the article suggests it's still maintained -- just not by the original author. At very least, it needs to be clearer what the distinction means. My inclination is to recombine the tables and go by already existing release dates. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I think active/inactive isn't useful as well, we should combime everything, and put which year last updated.Andrewmww (talk) 15:12, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

bitstreaming

where should I add bitstreaming. players that support bitstreaming are kodi, jriver, nero(limited), powerdvd. player like vlc doesn't support bitstreaming.Andrewmww (talk) 14:57, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

my fault vlc does support bitstream.Andrewmww (talk) 15:24, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Players to be added

Light Alloy

BestPlayer

BS.Player

BS.Player ™, a free media movie player, is a product for the world multi media market and is therefore equipped with advanced subtitle options which enable the users to watch video content with subtitles from many popular subtitle formats (MicroDVD .sub, VobSub .sub + .idx, SubViewer .sub, (Advanced) SubStation Alpha .ssa or .ass, SubRip .srt, VPlayer .txt...). BS.Player is also a AVCHD player and enables you to display AVCHD video format movies (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) used in digital tapeless camcorders. It can automatically search and download missing subtitles for currently playing video, if available.

BS.Player ™ is the software movie and media player that supports all popular video and audio media file types, containers and formats such as: WebM, Xvid, avi, mpg, mpeg-1, mpeg-2, mpeg-4, 3ivx, YouTube streaming video, AVC HD (avchd player), QT QuickTime mov, RM Real media, OGM, Matroska , mkv, asf, wmv, DV, m1v, m2v, mp4, mpv, swf, vob and wav, mpa, mp1, mp2, mp3, Ogg, aac, aif, ram, wma, flv (Flash and YouTube Video) and much more — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.39.178.48 (talk) 08:03, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Celluloid

Show a good stability (it works). I have compared several players in respect to stability (it shows up and starts to play the video), and my impression is: it is pretty reliable in this respect (my OS is Ubuntu Focal / v20.04). Some players that show trouble to play the same film stored on the intranet (smb-protocoll): VLC, MPlayer, SMPlayer, KMPlayer, Kaffeine (also quite reliable)
--185.17.13.16 (talk) 19:35, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Translucent video support

Translucent video AKA transparent video AKA video with alpha channel will become more common as time goes on. Knowing which players support this, and how well they support this, would be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.255.94.182 (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

video player software intended for embedding videos on web pages

Is there some other page that discusses the kind of video player software intended for embedding videos on web pages, *without* installing any software on the viewer's computer other than the web browser? Such as, for example,

none of which are currently mentioned in this "Comparison of video player software" article. --DavidCary (talk) 00:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)