Sick of windows media player

Factual Questions
1

Does anyone know what makes this thing do what it does?

It won’t give me my progress ribbon so I can’t go back or forward like I want. It seems to be saying it will give it to me when it feels like it. Sometimes it loses picture and goes black when I try to FF or rewind and won’t come back without restarting the movie.

So it’s programmed to do this so you have to watch the damned ads again and again or what?

Nvidia player doesn’t do this but the picture looks like I’m watching through a smoky haze.

Anyone know why these things have to be? What is a good media player with features that don’t torture you?

Why does windows do this? is it a function of the DVDs instructions? Is it windows?

2

VLC player is probably the thing you’re looking for.

(At least, it doesn’t impose much stupidity of its own. Some of the problems you describe could be due to the way the DVD is locked down).

3

I second VLC Player.

4

I third VLC Player. It’ll also play things that WMP can’t, like Flash Video (FLV) files.

5

While it is usually quite annoying when someone posts a question about a piece of software and the response is “Use X instead.”, in this case it is fully warranted.

If you want something that looks like Windows Media Player (or at least an older version of it), then try Media Player Classic or one of its forks.

6

I was a longtime user of VLC. I’ve switched to Daum Potplayer which is another one of the big names with high file compatibility. Mostly that was driven by my slow netbook. Potplayer loads faster and seems to be a touch less CPU intensive. That drove using it on my faster system just so I wasn’t swapping interfaces.

7

I have found the picture on VLC to be not as good as WMP.

So just asking: Am I hallucinating that? Is it rational? Are there settings to adjust? It seems muted, sandy or milky to me for some reason.

8

A metric buttload of them. It’s highly configurable. It’s been too long for me to be much help though.

9

I second MPC. Mainly because I like screwing with all the settings. VLC is great too, but simpler. Or it was. Or maybe I didn’t mess around with it enough to know. It has been a while since I’ve used VLC. I’ve used versions MPC almost everyday for years. I should probably update it, now that I’m thinking about it.

10

I am not sure why you are using WMP, anyway. It hasn’t been supported for years, although I think you can still download it. Microsoft has dropped it. I am very much a VLC fan and even have it on my Android phone.

Bob

11

Maybe because it comes with Windows…it’s far from unsupported and continues to get updates (that make it more of a PITA to use, IMO)

12

It appears that it is available only on the Eurpoean and Korean version as standard, and that the latest version is 12. I know that is is not part of the professional version of Windows 7 (64) and that I had been warned not to download it because it is not kept up to date except for security fixes.
Anyway, I still think that VLC is a better choice.

Bob