They say necessity is the mother of every invention. This has been proved absolutely right by the manner in which technology has been evolving at such breakneck speed. Every day there is a new facet to technology. In fact, our very life is dictated by all the latest gadgets and we are completely dependent on them.
In fact, ones the computers made its entry in the 20th century, things have been moving at a much faster rate. In fact, with the devices getting smaller and smaller, nowadays even our smartphones work as a tiny computer. It provides us with news, movies, serials, music and so on and so forth.
In fact, media players are the in the thing and most of the developers are trying to provide different types of media players with a whole lot of features. There are many operating systems available but over here we will be dealing with Ubuntu operating system of Linux distribution. We will list out a few of the best media players for Ubuntu and you can go through the features and home on to the one which you feel meets all your requirements.
1. VLC Media Player
VLC media player is quite popular and it entered the market under the VideoLan project in the year 2001. It supports almost all media files and is an open source media player. VLC is compatible with almost all video formats and it has codecs. In case it is not able to support a particular format, then it tries to download the specific codec from the internet which supports the format. It has a very simple and efficient interface as well to ensure that you always got control over the videos or audios.
2. Bomi (CMPlayer)
Bomi is more popularly known as CM Player. It is a GUI, a graphical user interface which is very user-friendly and all his features are easily available in the context menu. It has playback history which is unlimited. Bomi player can cater to multiple subtitles and also to ASS and SAMI format. It is also equipped with hardware accelerated decoding by the GPU.
3. SM Player
This is yet another amazing media player that supports all the media files and formats. It has built-in codecs and you are saved the trouble of finding and then installing codec packs. It is a graphical user interface and it plays YouTube videos as well. You can enjoy all types of movies irrespective of the language because it has this feature of downloading subtitles from the internet.
Another catchy feature of SM Player is its ability to save your settings, in the case while watching a movie you have to stop in between when you start watching again you can resume from the very same place where you had to stop previously. Isn’t this a very useful feature?
4. Miro Media Player
Miro is an open source, cross-platform and totally free application that supports all video formats. It has a video converter which will enable you to convert any video into the format which is compatible with your mobile. Miro plays both video and audio in HD quality and has certain features which give it an edge over its competitors like it has its own BitTorrent client and you are able to share media and buy your favorite music directly from Amazon MP3 store.
5. MPV Player
MPV is a media player which is a fusion between MPlayer and Mplayer2. It supports a wide range of video files, codecs, subtitles, and file formats. In fact, it has an additional codec that will enhance the picture quality manifolds. It is also equipped with OpenGL that has features such as the color management, frame timing, high standard algorithm.
6. XBMC – Kodi Media Center
XBMC – Kodi Media Center is a Linux cross-platform video player which is written in C++. It plays both video and audio files simultaneously. It can be considered as an excellent media player which is packed to the brim with entertainment. Kodi is very user-friendly and can be customized according to the requirement of the user.
It also supports all the audio files and it can play all your favorite music including WAV, mp3, WMA and FLAC formats. To enhance your music listening, it is capable of tag reading support, cue sheet, and smart playlists. One of the added advantages of Kodi is that with the help of skin, it gives a totally new look to your interface.
7. Banshee Media player
It is an open source, cross-platform media player having the ability to play podcasts, radio, audio, video and more. Since Amazon mp3 store is integrated with Banshee media, it facilitates in buying your favorite music online. This popular video player was released in the year 2005 and supports most of the audio and video formats. It has some useful features like iPod manager and multimedia keys support sweetening the features further.
8. Xine Multimedia Player
Xine is a video player which supports almost all media files like MP3, AVI, WMV, and MOV. Xine will help you play your video without any hassle from local drive, CD, and DVD. The CPU processing required by Xine to play videos is comparatively very less and it also offers fast memory transfer, high-performance communication, unified configuration system and many more.
9. MPlayer
MPlayer plays most AVI, VIVO, FLI, RealMedia, ASF, MP4, WMV, NUT, and WMA formats. An added advantage of MPlayer is that it works with DGA, X11, fbdev, GGI, VESA, openGL, Xv, AAlib and such rare media formats. Since a maximum of them support hardware and software scaling, you will be able to watch movies full screen. MPlayer is a cross-platform media player which is mainly written in C.
10. Gnome Videos
Gnome videos were earlier known as a Totem, it is an official audio and video player for Gnome shell. It is equipped with a full-screen mode, playlists, keyboard navigation as well as seek and volume control. Gnome supports video files like SMIL, Media player format, Wmp, M3U, and Real Audio Format. It also offers added features like adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation, still capturing and subtitles for videos.
Hope the above list of the best media players would be of use to you and will help you get an insight into the features of the media players. Also, check out the best media players for Windows.