GOM Player

GOM Player

Price: $

One would think that watching a video on your computer would be a no-brainer and that you would never have to worry about which program to use. It's true that Windows arrives with the Movies & TV app and Windows Media Player, which can all be used to watch videos.

However, other issues may arise, such as subtitle handling and file support, which may ultimately lead to you trying to find an alternative. GOM Player is a free video (and audio) player, which can support pretty much any file format, including 360-degree VR videos.

One thing worth mentioning here is that you should be careful when installing the player, as you will be prompted to additionally install also numerous other programs, which is annoying, to say the least!

We love the fact that you can search for YouTube videos from within the app and watch them easily. For people who want to watch movies with subtitles, GOM Player uses its own automatic search to find you subtitles for the video you want to watch, meaning you literally don't have to do anything!

Another cool feature to mention is its codec finder. If you try to play a file not supported natively, it will search for an appropriate codec and a website will open up where you can download it. Also, it can sometimes play damaged AVI files by skipping the bad parts.

Some features of the program are otherwise difficult to find. For example, the preferences button is located at the top left part of the window with a very small cog icon. Other settings are mostly accessible only by right-clicking anywhere in the window. If you don't like how the program looks, there are quite a few skins you can apply as well!