In this article we shall compare 3 video players to see which is the best, by  testing: resources, user friendly interface, options, quality of the playback. The video  players were chosen by popularity and functionality.
Ok, shall we begin? The players are: Vlc Media Player, Radlight and Realplayer.

Vlc Media Player the cross-platform media player and streaming server
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Next on the list is Radlight, another popular player. With a slicker interface than Bsplayer, you can say it's a beautiful  video player .
It has a very nice option named 'Time correction' for those moments when your subtitles are behind or ahead the movie. The interface is rather simple but it's incomplete, some functions don't work, they are 'grayed' meaning that you can see them but can't use them. This is a pretty big downside. The 'settings' menu it's not very easy to find too, you have to search for it.
The playback quality is good, no problems there. When it comes to testing the resource consumption the output is good, but not as good as Bsplayer's. It has more CPU usage and memory usage. Another downside, it also can't play .rm, .rax, .ra or .rmvb.

Ok, now let's see what RealPlayer can do.
The interface is a little confusing, but not so bad, unlike the update pop-ups wich are annoying because they appear very often.

The main 'preferences' menu is easy to find and the quality of the playback is very good as well. The resource testing showed that it consumes somewhere near Radlight. RealPlayer can play all usual types of video files, but also it can play .rm , .rax, .ra, .rmvb  extensions with no problems. Compared to the other 2 players above you cannot use the increse/decrease options for the subtitles and it takes a litlle longer to load the video files. Another downside is the crowded interface.
But nonetheless a good player.

Let's make a 3 places podium now.

Gold goes to Vlc Media Player. It is better then it's competitors at resource usage, user friendly interface and good playback, therefore we have a champion of popularity and functionality.  
  
Silver goes to Radlight for his superb design, menu effects, low usage of resources, pretty easy to use and smooth playback. It just waits to get Bsplayer's trophee.

Bronze goes to RealPlayer with a pretty good memory usage, very good playback quality and its extended area of video files that it can play.

You can download Vlc Media Player from here.

written by Madalin D.