Media Player Classic review

Remember back when Windows Media Player really was a media player? No complicated library management tools, no CPU-hogging visualisations, no bells and whistles... just a clean, functional tool for playing audio and video files.

Well, with Media Player Classic you can relive those days, as the main interface is identical to that used by Windows Media Player 6.4 - the last version of Microsoft's official player before it succumbed to creeping featuritis. After the bulk and complexity of Media Player 11, its simplicity is a breath of fresh air.

But while the interface is nine years old, the feature list is bang up to date. Behind the plain front-end you'll find support for playlists, subtitles and captions, and DVD playback. And of course, it'll work with any sort of codec you care to install. It even outdoes the latest version of Windows Media Player with audio stream switching, configurable keyboard shortcuts and remote control over HTTP.

But what makes Media Player Classic particularly appealing is its supremely light footprint. It comes as a standalone executable file (no installation required) which takes up around 4MB on disk. Its memory footprint at launch runs to a mere 8MB. So for any scenario where resource usage matters, it's a great choice.

Download Media Player Classic here.

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Author: Darien Graham-Smith