for windows download Zoom Player MAX 18.0 Beta 4

You can use products like XPlite and Nlite to get rid of WMP leaving just WMP 6.4 so that you can install the WMV and WMA codec pack. Not really any more messy than WMP install. You are then given the opportunity to automatically download and install the missing codecs of your choice. When you first install Zoomplayer your system is scanned for the most important codecs and you informed if any are missing.

There is no limit to the number of video and audio formats that can be played back since the choice depends on how many codecs you have installed. For instance, I deselected the Nero codec for DivX and instead selected the latest DivX 6.4.3 codec to produced enhanced playback of my DivX4 movie. Zoomplayer provides the ability to select from more than one source of codecs installed for each format so that you can experiment for best performance. A DivX4 movie that was unwatchable under WMP 11 is adequately presented by Zoomplayer.

There is a noticeable improvement in rendering of movement compared to WMP for all formats. ZoomPlayer is a lightweight rendering engine with no built in codecs and filters and which places less demand on system resources than WMP. However, each new version of WMP becomes more bloated and feature rich thus demanding more system resources and cancelling out the improved performance provided by the Nvidia and Cineplayer decoders.

Commercial mpeg-2 decoders like Nvidia have a much reduced CPU load with the Cineplayer DVD decoder 2.3.1 having the least CPU load. Free products like the DScaler mpeg-2 decoder and Media Player Classic give particularly poor results when playing DVDs. This is particularly a problem with DVDs. I have a machine with a 1.2 GHz CPU which ought to be adequate for playing back videos using software decoders, but in practice I find that various media players that I have tried have a problem of excessive CPU load giving jerky playback.

For windows download Zoom Player MAX 18.0 Beta 4