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MKV Player - Best media players that will play MKV files
In this article I am going to talk about two different things: MKV files and MKV players. The first part of this article will be concentrated on what is an MKV file and a short introduction ( just a little history ). In the second part I will present you one of the best media players that I currently use and I will try to create a complete list with all media players capable to play MKV files.
What is an MKV file ?
MKV stands for "Matroska Multimedia Container" which is an open standard free container format that is able to hold a large number of file such as video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside of a single file. This popular format is being used mainly to store HD video files. It is another universal format that is similar with other popular ones such as AVI or MP4. There are three file types of Matroska and those are :
.mkv - this format is for video that includes subtitles and audio.
.mka - this format is for audio only.
.mks - this format is for subtitles only.
Best Media Players to play MKV video files
There are a lot of multimedia players able to play .mkv files and I will mention all the free media players but I think that you are curious to see which are those that I currently use. I will start to say that I currently have 4 media players that I like and I use, but there will be another 4 that are also popular but I don't use them so it will be a list with 8 players. Not to mention here that all of them are free :
- VLC Media Player
- GOM Media Player
- Media Player Classic
- BSPlayer Free
...and the other 4 players :
- ALLPlayer
- ALShow
- DivX
- The KMP Player
I will provide each player with a picture and I will talk about them and in the end it's your decision which one is the best for you.
VLC Media Player is an extremely popular media player. It is released as an open source and supports a lot of audio, video and file formats. One of the greatest features of this player is the ability to stream over networks, to transcode multimedia files and save them into various formats. Another ability that made this player popular is the power to play all kind of video content that are incomplete, unfinished, or damaged downloads. So if you have a video file that has not been fully downloaded ( only a part of it ) you will be able to play this file. It has a huge list of features but we are not going to mention here all of them. It can play Matroska (MKV) file formats and as I said it's one of the best four media players that I personally recommend.
GOM Media Player also known as GOM Player is another free and popular media player. Coming from South Korea which is the most popular media player in that country, makes it a great player that is able to play .MKV file formats. It has the ability to play most of media files without the need to obtain a codec, and the ability to play some broken media files, both advantages that we mentioned at VLC Media Player. However, there are years since I am using this media player combined with K-Lite Codec Pack and I must say that I can play 99% from all movies that I want to see on Windows. It has one of the best compatibilities with this codec pack and even if he is able to play most of media files without the need to obtain an additional codec, I would recommend you to use K-Lite Codec Pack.
Media Player Classic now known as Media Player Classic Home Cinema is a small, fast media player for computers running Microsoft Windows. It looks like Windows Media Player version 6.4 but it has much more features and it can be used to play almost all files formats of similar programs. It can be installed as a single media player software or it can be installed on a basic installation of K-Lite Codec Pack. Like VLC Media Player and GOM Player, this program is capable of VCD, SVCD and DVD playback, without installing any additional software or codecs. It also has codecs for MPEG-2 video with support for subtitles and codecs such as MP2, AC3, LPCM and DTS audio, and also comes with an improved MPEG splitter that supports playback of SVCDs and VCDs using its own VCD/SVCD/XCD Reader but those are only the most important codecs capabilities. For this article is enough to say that this player supports all .mkv file formats.
BSPlayer Free has been the most popular media player for Windows but everything went wrong for this player when the developers decided to include a form of spyware others said something about an adware package called "WhenU" in an effort to pay the development costs. However, this has been several years ago and now BSPlayer Free is a clean player that is able to play .MKV files. As you may notice I intentionally left this player as the latest even if I said that it was the most popular media player for Microsoft Windows. That is because, this player doesn't have the ability of VLC Media Player and GOM Player Classic to play such a large area of video file formats. That doesn't mean that is not able to play MKV files but it's better to install K-Lite Codec Pack in order to extend his codec capabilities.
Now I will mention the other 4 media players that are also free and able to play MKV files. I wanted to separate those from the others since I really don't use them. I tested them to see if they can play MKV files but I don't really use them since I already use VLC Media Player, GOM Player, Media Player Classic and BSPlayer Free.
ALLPlayer - a free player that supports all popular file extension (.avi, .mp3, .mkv, etc). Once installed it will allow you to playback any associated file by simply double clicking the media file. It is a relatively new player but I managed to test it on Windows and it worked great so it definetely deserves to be here.
ALShow- is one of the easiest free media player on the Internet according to authors. It is another player that uses low system resources, comes with built-in codecs and supports HD H.264 (.mkv) videos, VobSub Caption Support - CVID & TP support and many other features that makes is a good program that deserves to be listed on this article.
DivX - You can watch high-quality digital videos on your computer running Microsoft Windows, including HD H.264 (.mkv) videos with AAC audio and videos created using all previous versions of DivX technology. It is an excellent choice for this format.
The KMP Player also known as K-Multimedia Player is another powerful and popular player. It has a huge list of features and includes almost all the essential decoders required for media playback. And yes, you can play MKV video files with this program.
If you don't understand why I didn't created a single list and I chosed to split this one in two I will repeat myself. The first 4 players are extremely popular and I really use them while the other 4 are also popular but I am not using them for a simple reason : I discovered the other ones first. As you can see I didn't mentioned shareware players here. I really believe that right now, if you need to use a good MKV Player the programs listed here are as good as any other similar shareware software. If you know another MKV Player that is free, clean and works on almost all Microsoft Windows versions, please contact me and let me know.