...I'm not too enamoured so far, since I'm not used to the Windows 10 apps interface (getting it into windowed mode helped) and I've spent the last hour trying to reinstall my HP audio driver, as the Beats Audio had gone for a Burton. Also, the search functionality seems very poor compared to WMP. I'm willing to persevere though.
Rather than me having to leaf through all of the options for all of the settings, can you recommend a few add-ons/settings? I'd be happy to set it up more or less how you've got yours set up, to give it a fair crack of the whip.
I mostly use kodi for streaming local video from my NAS but the plugins I have installed at the moment are listed below.
To set up addons goto System > Settings > Addons > Install From Repsository > Kodi Addon Repository and select whatever you fancy from their extensive library.
There are also 3rd party addons available that aren't hosted within the kodi repository,google is your friend there :-)
Video
iPlayer
Youtube
Vimeo
Daily Motion
Live Leak
Twitch
Kermode & Mayos Film Review
Extreme Sports
Red Bull TV
VLC has cropped up quite a few times and, while I remember, I recommend only downloading it from the official site here and not from any other non-official and potentially malware-infested site.
I always used to use Winamp for mp3s, etc, but it couldn't get it to work with Windows 10 so switched to VLC instead. VLC is fine, but has a minor irritation in that I alsways find it needs the bass frequencies boosting and in spite of ticking the box to save the settings it never does. Do most modern car music players play flac files, as my current one won't.
I didn't even realise that VLC played videos so will have to give it a go.
As with most other posters, I use VLC for video. It's mostly very good but noticed a couple of issues recently: It sometimes takes a long time starting for the first time, after double-clicking a video it can take 20-30 seconds to start, subsequent videos start more or less immediately. Have also noticed the picture is sometimes jerky when the camera pans horizontally. Maybe these issues can be easily resolved but have not looked into doing that yet.
Use foobar2000 for playing music. It's very customisable and plays virtually every music format, there are also third-party components for even more formats. Although it's a bit niche, have got mine playing surround sound music. You can make it look almost however you want, this is how mine looks which is a fairly simple layout but you can see here many different possibilities.
Like some who have already commented I have VLC, but I prefer MPC-HC (Home Cinema). Both are great, but VLC sometimes takes ages to open, for one thing.
For music MPC-HC is fine to quickly open a couple of tracks, but for all-day listening I prefer something more visually appealing, and the best I have found is MusicBee. It also has a DJ feature, where you pick a track to start, and after that it will randomly select and play tracks from your collection.
I mostly use kodi for streaming local video from my NAS but the plugins I have installed at the moment are listed below.
To set up addons goto System > Settings > Addons > Install From Repsository > Kodi Addon Repository and select whatever you fancy from their extensive library.
There are also 3rd party addons available that aren't hosted within the kodi repository,google is your friend there :-)
Video
iPlayer
Youtube
Vimeo
Daily Motion
Live Leak
Twitch
Kermode & Mayos Film Review
Extreme Sports
Red Bull TV
Music
Shoutcast2
I use Kodi for managing virtually all of my media from my extrnal storage as it doesn't rely on a server running on a separate computer like Plex and Emby does. It plays any file thrown at it and has great subtitle add ons.
However a huge plus for those wanting to use Kodi for music is that you can use Tidal and Qobuz for flac streaming and the computer audiophile forum guys continue to develop players such as the HQ player from Signalyst.
For me Kodi takes a lot of bashing for the ease of all the add ons for illegal streams etc but for those who want a media management system and use official add ons it is for me the best system out there. The one caveat is that you cannot stream content from outside your network, systems such as Plex and Emby do that but don't get me started on how frustrating the experience is trying to use the remote access on Plex, I have given up and use the Mycloud app to accesss my content when away from home.
I'm currently trying out MediaMonkey and Kodi based on all your suggestions. Well, mostly MM at the moment but I'll give Kodi a proper road test in the coming weeks. I already have it installed.
It's still early days but they're actually making me realize how much I like WMP12. Being able to type into the search bar and get instant results per key press is extremely helpful.
I'm currently trying out MediaMonkey and Kodi based on all your suggestions. Well, mostly MM at the moment but I'll give Kodi a proper road test in the coming weeks. I already have it installed.
It's still early days but they're actually making me realize how much I like WMP12. Being able to type into the search bar and get instant results per key press is extremely helpful.
I didn't even know WMP had a search facility.
I don't think I've ever done a search on any media player I've had.
I scroll down the list of artists and choose one. I then choose which album, and play it.
I do sometimes forget which album a song is on, but I just tend to look through until I find it.
Next time I'll try a search, as I've just looked, and MM does have a search facility (hadn't noticed before).
I didn't even know WMP had a search facility.
I don't think I've ever done a search on any media player I've had.
I scroll down the list of artists and choose one. I then choose which album, and play it.
I do sometimes forget which album a song is on, but I just tend to look through until I find it.
Next time I'll try a search, as I've just looked, and MM does have a search facility (hadn't noticed before).
If you already know which album you want to play it saves a lot of time. If I wanted to play the Beatles white album, say, I can just type "beat white" and there it is, before I've even typed the final 'e'. One problem with every media player I've tested is the scrolling. Having 1000s of tracks available, dragging the scrollbar just a pixel or two can skip over several screens worth of listings.
The search function's also great for generating playlists, by first typing in a random keyword and ordering the results by rating, and then choosing tracks. It doesn't have to be random, of course. If I wanted to listen to music about 'fire', for example, I'd quickly find Light my Fire by The Doors, Fire by Jimi Hendrix, Lake of Fire by Nirvana, Firestarter by The Prodigy, etc.
iTunes - For general music via my library (I know, but I'm lazy and own an iPod)
Winamp - For odd/individual files that I may not want to add to my library
Media Player Clasic - For most video files
VLC Portable - For anything that wont play correctly under MPC
Most of my music is also synced to Google Play Music. I also use TVersity to stream video files from my PC on my Playstation.
I used to love Winamp but that seems to have died years ago which is a shame.I was using UMPlayer but after reinstalling Windows 10 I am now unable to download from anywhere,keep getting "File not found"so lord knows what's going on.
VLC was my default choice but subtitling downloading is broken at the moment. Have switched back to Kodi for Windows. The organisation and metadata is good and it tracks what you have watched, newly added shows and movies, subtitles downloads still work and the interface is easy to use. The main downside is that it is resource hungry.
Comments
To set up addons goto System > Settings > Addons > Install From Repsository > Kodi Addon Repository and select whatever you fancy from their extensive library.
There are also 3rd party addons available that aren't hosted within the kodi repository,google is your friend there :-)
Video
iPlayer
Youtube
Vimeo
Daily Motion
Live Leak
Twitch
Kermode & Mayos Film Review
Extreme Sports
Red Bull TV
Music
Shoutcast2
I keep VLC around for web streams and IPTV etc.
For listening to music I use MediaMonkey. However, if I just want to preview a track or 2, I'll just open it with MPC-HC.
My HTPCs all run Kodi, plus a couple of Android tablets use Kodi as their main media player.
1 of my HTPCs also runs Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5 for HD DVD playback and Cyberlink PowerDVD 15 for Blu-Ray playback.
I didn't even realise that VLC played videos so will have to give it a go.
As with most other posters, I use VLC for video. It's mostly very good but noticed a couple of issues recently: It sometimes takes a long time starting for the first time, after double-clicking a video it can take 20-30 seconds to start, subsequent videos start more or less immediately. Have also noticed the picture is sometimes jerky when the camera pans horizontally. Maybe these issues can be easily resolved but have not looked into doing that yet.
Use foobar2000 for playing music. It's very customisable and plays virtually every music format, there are also third-party components for even more formats. Although it's a bit niche, have got mine playing surround sound music. You can make it look almost however you want, this is how mine looks which is a fairly simple layout but you can see here many different possibilities.
Yeah, flac files are pretty huge. I only have a couple. The vast majority of my music is 320kbps. :erm:
That's nothing, I have over 4TB
For music MPC-HC is fine to quickly open a couple of tracks, but for all-day listening I prefer something more visually appealing, and the best I have found is MusicBee. It also has a DJ feature, where you pick a track to start, and after that it will randomly select and play tracks from your collection.
I use Kodi for managing virtually all of my media from my extrnal storage as it doesn't rely on a server running on a separate computer like Plex and Emby does. It plays any file thrown at it and has great subtitle add ons.
However a huge plus for those wanting to use Kodi for music is that you can use Tidal and Qobuz for flac streaming and the computer audiophile forum guys continue to develop players such as the HQ player from Signalyst.
For me Kodi takes a lot of bashing for the ease of all the add ons for illegal streams etc but for those who want a media management system and use official add ons it is for me the best system out there. The one caveat is that you cannot stream content from outside your network, systems such as Plex and Emby do that but don't get me started on how frustrating the experience is trying to use the remote access on Plex, I have given up and use the Mycloud app to accesss my content when away from home.
For stuff on my file server i use Emby to handle all the metadata, and Kodi with the Emby addon on client devices.
Hopefully from the official, safe site here: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
It's still early days but they're actually making me realize how much I like WMP12.
I didn't even know WMP had a search facility.
I don't think I've ever done a search on any media player I've had.
I scroll down the list of artists and choose one. I then choose which album, and play it.
I do sometimes forget which album a song is on, but I just tend to look through until I find it.
Next time I'll try a search, as I've just looked, and MM does have a search facility (hadn't noticed before).
If you already know which album you want to play it saves a lot of time. If I wanted to play the Beatles white album, say, I can just type "beat white" and there it is, before I've even typed the final 'e'. One problem with every media player I've tested is the scrolling. Having 1000s of tracks available, dragging the scrollbar just a pixel or two can skip over several screens worth of listings.
The search function's also great for generating playlists, by first typing in a random keyword and ordering the results by rating, and then choosing tracks. It doesn't have to be random, of course. If I wanted to listen to music about 'fire', for example, I'd quickly find Light my Fire by The Doors, Fire by Jimi Hendrix, Lake of Fire by Nirvana, Firestarter by The Prodigy, etc.
Winamp - For odd/individual files that I may not want to add to my library
Media Player Clasic - For most video files
VLC Portable - For anything that wont play correctly under MPC
Most of my music is also synced to Google Play Music. I also use TVersity to stream video files from my PC on my Playstation.
Under Linux I use Banshee and VLC.