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If you are using codec packs and are on Windows, you might as well use one that is actually good: CCCP. I even perfer the Media Player Classic that is included with it over every other media player I have tried, including VLC.

You got a hand-me-down DVD player and it glitched out, what a shocker

Buy yourself a decent BluRay player that has LAN access and the ability to either decode video itself or can pick up an XBMC server and then boosh you have all your videos on your TV

I bought an LG a few years ago that can play most of my videos right off a network share or use my Plex Media Server and it still does BluRay and DVD

So yeah, disc media may be declared dying but having a cheap ($200) cross media player in your living room is pretty goddamn handy

Do not count on using your BluRay player as a player for any ripped content.
They all have (or will soon have) Cinavia DRM built in, which will trigger on any ripped content that has that watermark. There is currently no known way to detect and remove the Cinavia watermark.

I rip all my shit and play it via an old Windows box using CCCP http://cccp-project.net/ (and it all works even in Windows Media Player if you disable the media foundation thing). All HD audio formats are bitstreamed to my receiver, and you get full control over whateverthefuck you want. A PC is the ONLY true solution to playing content, because it's the only one you have any real control over. The only real drawback is the space / power requirements. You're not going to compete with those small media player boxes or the shit built into your TV, but they're come with DRM, compatibility issues (or future compatibility issues), and more often tan not a shitty interface.

On Windows, at least, CCCP tends to be better in terms of getting things to display correctly (e.g., fancy subtitles, obscure formats, etc.).

If I have to upgrade to Windows 8 (which I don't plan on doing), then I'll just wait until there's a suitable version of the Combined Community Codec Pack for Win8. Really, paying for media playback is just lame.

lame! haha!

If I have to upgrade to Windows 8 (which I don't plan on doing), then I'll just wait until there's a suitable version of the Combined Community Codec Pack for Win8. Really, paying for media playback is just lame.

Good lord, people still use K-Lite? That overblown piece of crap...I haven't used that in at least 5 years. Try out the CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) as it is a much leaner and cleaner implementation of the same idea. It also registers all the filters, codecs, etc in the system for you all nicely which allows WMC to use it AND it has its own control panel for messing around with the settings.

Have you ever tried setting up the CCCP? Go to the CCCP website to get it. I used that to set up my media center and it has all the stuff you need. I recently found that the built DXVA (an option you can select when you install or go to the configuration) actually works quite well with my nVidia card and this pack basically seems to have all the codecs you need to play like 99% of the videos around. If you're not aware, that's used for video acceleration to keep your CPU from eating itself playing back compressed 1080p video. Basically everything you need to play MOST stuff back is there. You use Media Player classic to play it.

Also, there's already a perfectly working package that does that.

http://www.cccp-project.net/

May I suggest CCCP. I don't think I've had any problems after installing that (although it's always a good idea to have VLC around - just in case).

"Hello and welcome to Youtube! To be able to watch our videos in higher quality, please download and install CCCP."

In any case, a lot of users have h.264 codec installed. At least those who watch HD movies on their PCs.

Dropping all formats that Windows play by default is IMO a bad decision. It may make the CCCP Project more popular and spur more people to install Quicktime (yuck), but it'll also drive away lots of inexperienced users.

A quick look at the Windows Media Player 12 Wikipedia page indicates that h.264 in an MP4 container (and by extension, a renamed M4V) plays fine in the current version of WMP that ships with Win 7. However, the post says that Handbrake dropped DivX and XviD, which were only given support in the latest version of WMP as well. So really, Handbrake has never supported native WMP formats before WMP 12, unless more was dropped than just DivX and XviD (I'm too lazy to do the research).

Dropping all formats that Windows play by default is IMO a bad decision. It may make the CCCP Project more popular and spur more people to install Quicktime (yuck), but it'll also drive away lots of inexperienced users.

I really believe the Anime fandom is a perfect match for Ubuntu, as they are by nature very much in line with open source and remix culture.

That is getting stupider over time - considering that out of box Ubuntu can't play 99% of anime found on say mininova.

And even after installing all possible drivers, applications and codecs, Linux video playback - especially as anime concerned - is still eons behind of CCCP on Windows.

And what about the "remix culture" reference? Manga and anime fandom is interesting because there are more people who do new/original stuff - and few who rehash the old stuff. And even if they "remix" (what a stupid word lessig came up with) they still do it their own way, not some dumb copy paste like what many CC-lovers do.

Ubunchu!

That is manga, not anime.

Quicktime Alternative, FTW.. No iTunes, no iPhone, no iToilet...

Even better, VLC media player. Hardly a need to install anything! http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Install both, FTW (including Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which is bundled with Quicktime Alternative). MPC-HC and VLC use different decoding frameworks, so they don't interfere with each other. Some stuff works better on MPC-HC (hardware accelerated decoding) and some stuff works better on VLC (broken/incomplete files). However, Apple's Quicktime is definitely NOT needed to play back non-DRM's video on Windows.

I'd rather not get into a K-Lite vs CCCP war, but I prefer CCCP plus QT Lite.

CCCP

Anime went MKV way (x264+Vorbis) for HD release quite some time ago.

Also I hear recent DivX supports MKV files too.

It plays every freaking codec under the sun with dead simplicity! That's such a herculean task, what more could you ask from it!?

Agreed Bro, (wish I could add the ascii image of brofist, silly slashdot filters)
But I also like to add to my system just to be sure.
http://www.cccp-project.net/

eball wrote just now of the Combined Community Codec Pack, and on a page on their site is the only set of API-level media player reviews I have ever found. I have been looking for this a very long time, they are covering all of the Windows comprehensive media players I've used. The reviews all start at the API level, and I hope that some more Windows developers out there start to work to the standards recommended; if they do, things will get much better.

eball wrote just now of the Combined Community Codec Pack, and on a page on their site is the only set of API-level media player reviews I have ever found. I have been looking for this a very long time, they are covering all of the Windows comprehensive media players I've used. The reviews all start at the API level, and I hope that some more Windows developers out there start to work to the standards recommended; if they do, things will get much better.

I think you're exactly 180 on that. mplayer plays any media I throw at it, from FLV to Real to H.264 (including my AVC files). It's the only media player I have installed on my media center PC. Windows Media Player won't play much of anything unless you install K-Lite or something similar, and still won't play AVC properly, nor MKV contained files. It certainly doesn't just work nearly as easily as you say it does. I mean, just read this link: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/how_to_play_mkv.cfm

Gotta install one set of codecs and filters from one place to play mkv files, and you have to install RealPlayer to play back RealMedia streams in a markov. And just look at the install instructions: http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page#Installation_Instructions

Insane. And it needs a damn reboot! For a codec pack! WTF? I just needed to add the medibuntu repos, and then "apt-get install w64codecs libdvdcss2" and poof, it all works. You can't tell me that isn't easier. It may not be what you're used to, but it sure as hell is much easier.

Try the CCCP codec pack - http://cccp-project.net/

With CCCP, I'm able to play everything (including AAC, Div-X, indeo, quicktime, etc.) using just media player. I had to follow the FAQ to enable ffdshow or something like that for QuickTime -- I forget the details but it was pretty simple.

The good thing about the CCCP pack is that they are pretty paranoid about the quality of the codecs, and not bundling malware etc. (unlike K-Lite). Just getting rid of quicktime is a pretty big win.

Personally, I only know about the CCCP, and I don't use that either. Best to just grab the players and decoders you need instead of installing one big pack.

And anyone who watches anime in quality higher than "youtube" already knows about CCPC. Among those groups, MKV is incredibly popular due to its smooth handling of styled subtitles and multiple audio tracks.

I, too, laughed out loud at the Matroska => Windows disinformation, along with the "AVI is not flawed" posting above. Then there's the "no one supports Matroska in hardware" meme.

1) You can play files in the Matroska container on any platform that mplayer supports, and that's quite a few. But like the poster above me, maybe I was hallucinating when I watched those files on my Fedora box. The xine engine also supports Matroska. Have a file in the Matroska container with H.264 encoding, soft subtitles, and multiple audio tracks that you want to watch in Windows? Just install the CCCP. VLC isn't a bad alternative either, though it's just now catching up to mplayer with support for ASS subtitles.

2) As for AVI, how well does it support multiple video tracks? Multiple audio tracks? Soft subtitles? Chapters? You may not care about features like these, but I assure you there are many people who do.

3) As for hardware devices, aside from the support for cell phones/PDAs already mentioned, you can play Matroska files on the popular Popcorn Hour set-top box and on the COWON A3 portable media player.

I suppose it's naive to think that any open format like Matroska can possibly compete against ones that come from Redmond and its partners in big media. A couple of years ago I might have agreed with that statement, but the arrival of hardware-based Matroska players tells me the format might stand a chance. Revulsion at DRM might play a role here, too.

We all know how badly competing against closed platforms from Redmond turned out for Linux.

So why doesn't Dell pre-load Open Office or Star Office on their computers instead of or with MS Office trials?

Maybe because Dell collects a percentage of the revenue from every MS Office installation they sell? What would they collect if they installed OpenOffice?

I've advocated in past postings here that OEMs include Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and maybe even the GIMP on all new Windows machines. But the financial incentives all run the other way, especially in the case of OO.

Next week's class will cover why we don't see installations of CCCP on every Windows machine.

(excluding already mentioned ones in up-moded replies)

NOD32 - probably least bloated antivirus, I don't notice it on 5 year old PC (even better when you turn off IMON module)

Google Talk (native Windows client) - while it doesn't have all the functionality of Skype (notably landline calling and video)...well, just compare them. Bonus: while Skype and Gtalk are roughly the same, quality-wise, on fast connection, Gtalk wins hands-down on slower ones.

Combined Community Coded Pack (CCCP :P - http://cccp-project.net/ ) - pretty much created because the authors had enough of bloat in other solutions.

CutePDF Writer ( http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp ) - PDF printer, considerably outperforms PDFCreator (from Sourceforge) when creating laaarge documents.

Dorgem, Fwink - light webcam software, both on Surceforge.

Speedfan ( http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php ) - very light temp/fan speed/SMART monitoring app.

Most apps from Slysoft.

Official Last.fm player - quite good considering its download size and RAM usage (and well...basically its running all the time here)

Winrar - for a long time I'd recommend 7zip...but really, Winrar isn't that much heavier, but is...considerably faster than 7zip in decompressing large RAR archives here.

FFDShow support Ogg Theora via libavcodec.

I use the CCCP pack. Seems fine here.

Legitimate questions: aren't matroskas in .mkv format? I thought it was a wrapper format, not a codec. What don't you like about TCMP? the interface is hardly optimal, and the keyboard shortcuts are ugh, but is there specifically something wrong with it? AND: media player classic and zoomplayer are two players that play matroskas fine. (see: http://www.cccp-project.net/). and finally, mplayer plays matroskas perfectly. along with everything else.

who missed an episode of Lost and just wants to watch that one without having to spend 6 hours hunting through download pages and message boards just to get the entire house of cards perfectly balanced on my PC long enough to watch the damnded thing.

You should try the CCCP:
http://www.cccp-project.net/

I hear it works well for windows.

OTOH, you could switch to mplayer on linux and have everything work automatically.

At least link to the project page....

Don't have mod points, so I'll just second your post. CCCP is actually a bunch of separate packages, including ffdshow and others. Lots of work goes in to making sure all the codecs work together, and that it's installable / uninstallable / upgradeable with minimum hassle.
I haven't seen a file yet they won't work on, and they're efficient enough to allow my underpowered laptop to have full-screen video.

A side note: I knew this whole "No! Vorbis is the format! OGG is just the container" idea would bite me on the ass some day, and it looks like today's the day. I clicked on the movie links only to have my Winamp playlist destroyed. Even worse, Winamp didn't even know how to play the file. Is there a solution to this absurd problem?

Since you mention Winamp, I assume you're running windows. Try installing the Combined Community Codec Pack and play the file in Media Player Classic (just drag the file onto the MPC icon)

They only recommend it for anime playback if they know nothing about the fansubbing community.

For ALL your anime playback needs (and just about any other video playback) use the CCCP:
http://cccp-project.net/