Competing players

At the heart of the recent European Union insistence that Microsoft produce a version of Windows XP minus Windows Media Player is the belief that bundling Media Player in Windows is excluding competing media players, such as Real Player, from the marketplace. Microsoft's offer to include three competing media players in the Windows bundle shows that there are other players that are worth considering.

Perhaps the most important of these is RealPlayer from http://www.real.com and QuickTime from Apple - http://www.apple.com/quicktime Another is WinAmp from http://www.winamp.com. Each of these come as a free version and a Pro version for which a small fee is charged. Rapidly emerging on the open source scene is VLC (originally VideoLAN Client). This last is a cross-platform media player that runs under Windows, Mac OS-X, most version of Linux and most versions of Unix. It is available from http://www.videolan.org.

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Try them all and see which you prefer.