Best Alternative to Windows Media Player to Play Videos and Music

Question: I have a huge number of albums, some videos that I downloaded from the internet, and some Blu-ray movies. I don’t want to use Windows Media Player; can you introduce me a better alternative?

Although it is true that it is much convenient for us to watch online HD videos, we prefer to play media files videos on local sometimes, for instance, watch 4K movie, watch some videos that need to download first, watch videos that stored in flash drive, or listen to ape or flac music. For these reasons, we need a local installed media player. As your already know that, we have a pre-built Windows Media Player on Windows. While, it is not full-featured, we need a real good media player to handle our local videos or audios.

Therefore, in this article I will recommend some best alternatives to Windows Media Player. As a matter of fact, we can do a lot with Window Media Player, so I will split the recommendation into parts:

One the one hand, more and more people are listening music online with apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, or Amazon Music. On the other hand, there are still some people prefer to listen to local music that they stored for a long time, or maybe they just don’t want to subscribe for a streaming service.

If you got similar case, you need a free music player for Windows PC that can deal with all your music files smoothly.

MusicBee – Best Music Managing and collecting Music Player

MusicBee is our prior choice and best fit for those who have huge collections of songs that need to be organized meanwhile. It can import your existing iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries automatically. At that moment you launch this player, you will be attracted by its uncluttered and clean interface. This free music comes to support various audio formats including tta, tak, wav, alac, ape, falc, not to mention mp3, aac and ogg.

If you just listen to music occasionally, it is enough for you to use Spotify or maybe Google Play Music. And If you like to download music sometimes and don’t have a huge collection, then maybe foobar2000 or iTunes will do a good work for you. However, if you are a music guru with thousands of songs by hundreds of producers, this professional music management tool is a better option for you.

Compared to other similar music management tools like MediaMonkey or Helium, MusicBee got equivalent features to manage music, and the biggest advantage is that MusicBee is free. It has dominated the only one music player alternative to Windows Media Player.

Foobar2000 – Professional Music Player for extreme tone quality

A PC-FI (PC Hi-Fi) passionate fan must have heard about foobar2000. With plenty add-ons It is a very powerful music player for users, you can even create your own profiles. It is a highly customizable music player on Windows. You can do a lot of tuning. and you can even redesign the whole interface with several predefined layout options (and a lot of free layout templates online).

Above all, the biggest feature of foobar2000 is the tone quality. Either you have a good audio card or have an expensive headphone, you should use foobar2000 for the music playback, since it can give you the best quality that your device can reach. You can play music with foobar2000’s DSP (digital sound processing) and decoding DTS without a hiccup.

In brief, if you want better audio quality and have substantial local music files, foobar200 is an option that you can’t ignore.

We have to say that Windows Media Player is not doing a good job as a movie player on PC. Almost everyone installs a third-party video player to replace Windows Media Player. The biggest weakness for WMP is that it is no longer updated, without mentioning that Windows Media Player can not play many video formats.

Here I will introduce 3 most popular video players for you.

PotPlayer – The most powerful Video Player on PC

Fans of PotPlayer say it is the best multimedia player on Windows, no ads and roguery with clear layout. It is born for video playing.

PotPlayer can perfectly satisfy the playback needs of a normal user and It can also satisfy the special requirements and deep customizations of a music enthusiast.

Overall, there are 6 important features that may typically represent PotPlayer in my opinion.

1. Full-featured with complete setting options provided.
2. Designated video player on local, good user experience and no annoying ads.
3. Robust performance, excellent playback effects with multiple enhancing add-ons.
4. Fully support all audio and videos’ formats.
5. Abundant personalization options.

Diverse interface appearances and elegant layouts.

KMPlayer

Just like PotPlayer, KMPlayer is a versatile video player that supports a huge range of media formats. You can even have 3D immersive watching experience with KMPlayer. Pre-build almost all Codecs that you can find online, it is quite powerful for you to play any video files.

One thing you may don’t know that PotPlayer and KMPlayer have the same product manager – Gang Yonghui. As a result, these two players have similar simple layout and good playback performance. One slight difference that is often talked about is that PotPlayer got better hareware decoding than KMPlayer. More over KMPlayer is not being well upgraded like PotPlayer.

So, if you are wondering between KMPlayer and PotPlayer, choose PotPlayer.

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is the one that can be found in any top media player lists. It is so powerful and reliable. And Many people would regard it as the only one media player that you need on your computer, including Windows and macOS. As an open-source media player, we do have a huge operation room for playback, tuning, settings, and even video editing. If you are Ok with the un-designed layout of VLC. I think you will have a good time with it.

As an open-source Media player, it runs on almost all operating systems, you can make it more than an alternative to Windows Media Player, you can even replace QuickTime Player on macOS with VLC.

Windows Media Player can play DVDs but not Blu-ray discs. As we know that we can play some un-protected DVDs and Blu-ray discs with VLC Media Player, while the vast majority of DVDs and Blu-ray discs are DRM protected. In this case, we need to find a better Windows Media Player alternative than VLC Media Player.

We have tested several players, I think Aiseesoft Blu-ray Player is the best alternative to Windows Media Player for playing DVD/Blu-ray disc.

If you have had ever tried to play Blu-ray disc or iso file on your PC, you would know that the process is much more complex than playing normal digital videos. With it would be another story with Aiseesoft Blu-ray Player, just 3 simple steps, you can start to watch the Blu-ray movies on PC.

Step 1 Download and Install Aiseesoft Blu-ray Player.

Step 2 Insert your Blu-ray disc into a valid Blu-ray drive. A DVD drive can’t read Blu-ray disc, in other words, if you don’t have a built-in Blu-ray drive, use an external one.

Step 3 Move to the interface of Blu-ray Player, click on Open Disc button. That is it.

If you prefer a free alternative then read: How to Play Blu-ray on VLC Media Player.

It can be very important for many users to be able to manage all their media files from a centralized location. Moreover, we want to stream the media wirelessly to a smart TV for a better viewing experience. So, with Windows Media Center abandoned, an alternative is in need.

Kodi – open-source and multi-platform media sharing center

Kodi was first created for Microsoft Xbox, even had been called XBMC (Xbox Media Center). Kodi can help you to cast videos and music around the home, it provides a way to store and watch media content among different devices including your TV, laptop, mobile phone, tablet, and others. It is well developed and reliable.

With Kodi, you can stream videos either from your local storage, home network or even from the internet. It well supports all video formats. And videos, movie,s and TV shows will be well organized with tags and descriptions.

Another famous streaming media center is PLEX. You can have a try if Kodi is not working for you.

In conclusion, I list several media players that can replace Windows Media Player, you can choose those suits you best. Hope you have a good time with your videos or audios on those alternatives to Windows Media Players.