How many video players do we need ?

My initial answer was one – of course – but then I realized that it is not that easy to answer. One video player is enough to play most videos on my computer, I use SMPlayer for this purpose. But what about all those video portals from tv companies or other companies that rent or distribute videos online ? It is beginning to get a little messy now.

Each tv company that sets up a video portal with the option to download videos is building their own video player. We got NBC Direct and HBO on Broadband for instance, Netflix and Apple of course. That’s four different video players each with its own restrictions. If you want to use all four services you have to install four different clients that basically do the same, they restrict usage.

The messy part begins when you take a look at expiration dates and the like. Do you know when videos that you have downloaded expire in all of these services ? Is there a way to keep track of the dates without having to open all the applications to take a look at all downloaded videos ?

What I mean is that it does not make much sense from a consumer point of view to create one video client per service. The companies on the other hand want full control of the player and their content which is probably the main reason why they do not create cooperations with other companies that basically do the same thing.

I can’t give an answer to the question above, a universal answer I mean. I still say we only need one player but we probably will end up with one player for each company that is entering the market which could be quite a few.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday January 23, 2008 -
Tags:drm, hbo on broadband, nbc direct, tv shows, video players

Responses so far:

1. Cheryl says:

   January 23, 2008 at 4:09 pm

   I use SMPlayer for all my video playing needs. I really don’t see the point in having a million media players.

   Reply
2. gokudomatic says:

   January 23, 2008 at 7:38 pm

   don’t exagerate. It’s not about a million but three or four players. MPlayer is very nice and good for almost every format but it doesn’t cover everything perfectly. Sometimes, I had to use VLC because the file didn’t work in MPlayer. Sometime, the problem is an unrecognized subtitle or audio track. But the only recurrent problem I have in SMPlayer (MPlayer alone is fine) is to launch the DVD menu; it starts immediately the movie with default prefs.

   Reply
3. avi says:

   January 23, 2008 at 10:55 pm

   i use vlc for everything except for flash video (flv) which i use the new real player for (because you can seek through videos).

   Reply
4. gokudomatic says:

   January 23, 2008 at 11:21 pm

   with smplayer, you can seek through flv videos too

   Reply