Windows Media Player is the one of the default softwares which comes with all the windows operating systems like windows 7, XP, Vista, 98. It is the default application in windows for playing videos & audio but it has certain limitations too. So, I am going to share some of the best alternatives of windows media player which you can use at free of cost for playing your audio & videos.

1.VLC media player

VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework. It is a cross-platform media player, with versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, GNU, Linux, BeOS, MorphOS, BSD, Solaris, iOS and eComStation.The toolbars are fully customizable, so you can have only the buttons you need in the interface, there are AirTunes streaming, and there’s better integration in Gtk environments. A a wide range of video and audio formats can be played, including OGG, MP2, MP3, MP4, DivX, HD codecs like AES3, Raw Dirac, and even support for playing back zipped files.
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2. Media Player Classic

Media Player Classic (MPC) is a compact media player for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows a  lightweight Media Player. This single player easily replaces the four or five video players installed on most systems. The Media Player Classic is available in many different languages (English, Belarusian, Catalan, Portuguese (Brazilian), Mandarin Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish and more).This program also plays most audio formats.Media Player Classic also easily loads and plays DVDs. We liked how you can easily increase or decrease playback speed.
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3.Winamp

Winamp is the one of the most famous and widely used media player designed for Windows, Linux and Android. Winamp supports music playback using MP3, MIDI, MOD, MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV and WMA. Winamp was one of the first common music players on Windows to support playback of Ogg Vorbis by default.Winamp have ability to sync non-DRMed files to your PC from your device, an optional new interface layout and a built-in browser for media discovery.Winamp have playlist options to make playlists while playing media another effective feature it have inbuilt equalizer setting. Winamp has thousands of skins and plug-ins that allow you to change the look-and-feel of the player, as well as add new features.If you want MP3 encoding and full-speed CD burning, you have to shell out $19.95 for the Pro version.
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4.RealPlayer

RealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.RealPlayer for Windows already had most of that down, offering a sweeping array of features, from one-click video downloading to automatic transcoding to social network sharing.The latest version of the software adds even more devices to the ever-expanding list of compatible handsets. Plus, RealPlayer now shows USB-connected smartphones and cameras inside the library in the main app window, allowing users to quickly and easily transfer content to the devices via drag-and-drop. It have hundreds of Plug-ins.
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5.ALL Player

ALL Player is a most popular program for watching movies with matching subtitles freeware media player. Unlike other media players, it does not use Windows Media Player to play media, but rather asks DirectX directly. The amazing features, Detection of missing codecs needed to open a media file, Integration with a reader (a speech synthesizer) for subtitles reading, Intelligent subtitles, in which the time they are displayed is dependent on how fast users can read them, Password protection of media, Creating a menu, Automatically downloading subtitles from the internet, Downloading video files from YouTube, Playlists. ALL Player is available in different languages (English, Polish, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Czech, Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Slovak and more).
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