Daum PotPlayer: The New Champion of Video Players
There are a lot of video players in the market, and even more importantly, there are a lot of really good video players in the market. In the past I have reviewed a few of them like SPlayer and Neuview Media Player. VLC and MPC-HC (Media Player Classic Home Cinema) are probably the most popular media players among the internet savvy users. However, my long-time favourite has been KMPlayer. It’s feature packed, easy to use and provides great video and audio quality out of the box. Unfortunately, since its sale to Pandora.TV, the development of KMPlayer has stalled. On top of that, the recent version of KMPlayer takes ages to startup and has severe performance issues with HD videos. After looking around for an equally powerful alternative, I have settled on Daum PotPlayer, and guess what? It’s from the same guy who made The KMPlayer.
PotPlayer Interface
Looks wise, PotPlayer is not too shabby but won’t blow you out of the park either. The good thing is that there are scores of skins available for PotPlayer. In fact, Windows Media Player, VLC, KMPlayer, GOMPlayer and Zoom payer skins are available out of the box. Here’s the default English skin.
If you have used KMPlayer before you will instantly recognise the similarities between the two. All the features I loved in KMPlayer including its ability to resume playback from where I left off last time, shutdown the computer when done, use my own decoders/filters, capture a screenshot or even record the file currently being played, powerful A-B repeat, automatic playback of similar files in a folder, seamless playback (move from one file to the next seamlessly), and insane amount of flexibility with subtitles.
PotPlayer is KMPlayer enhanced, without any of the annoying performance and playback issues I was experiencing with the latter. As you might expect, it comes with internal decoders that are capable of playing pretty much anything that you throw at it. It has internal DXVA video codecs (H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG2) and EVR. The default video quality is same as KMPlayer, which means very very good.
PotPlayer Video Processing Options
PotPlayer is highly recommended for both novice users and pros. It works well of the box, and has an interface that is simple to use. However, if you want to dig deep you can do so. Advanced users can knock themselves out by using their own filters and decoders, tweaking advanced video processing settings and more. The beta version I tested had a bug, which led to video playback settings not being saved. Other than that I didn’t find much to complain about. Unlike the KMPlayer, PotPlayer is under active development, and should only get better in subsequent versions.
Download Daum PotPlayer (12.19 MB)
Platforms Supported: Windows XP, Vista and 7(x86 and x64)
License: Freeware
Version Reviewed: 1.5 (build 25819) – beta
I want a cheap Mp3 and video player that looks sleek yet is cheaper than Ipod. And Does anybody know if you can integrate things like the Zune with itunes?Thnaks
I have some videos that wmp can’t play. What should i switch to?What video players are better than windows media player.
looks like a cool video player, thanks.
Excellent video player, thanks.
This one’s very good. I tried it just a few days back and found that not only is it more stable than KM, but the picture quality is also much better. The pictures appeared blurred and washed out in KM when compared to this.
Wow, PotPlayer looks really good. I am using GOMPlayer now which is OK, but I am going to download and try out PotPlayer!
“Daum PotPlayer” from the same guy who made “The KMPlayer” ! it’s nice,defiantly i will use this player .
Fantastic player I will definately get myself 1 of these players
PotPlayer is nice- seems to choke less on dicey clips. I like the red/green balance that it makes easier than KMP’s.
But it’s got the same damned !$%^ing Next problem… it often doesn’t work. “Automatic playback of whole folders”? Well, congrats, i envy you. But since this problem has persisted on different machines, i somehow think that others may experience it…
With no manual, such apparent quibbles are a lot more serious than they look too.
I will give it a try, hope i will enjoy HD quality with some enjoyment,
Daum PotPlayer: The New Champion of Video Players
!!! I agree !!!
I install it and plays everything until BD structure!!!
And with Stereoscopic selection in Subtitles menu, plays 3D Half-SBS in my 3D TV with correct subs!!!
Many thanks to development team.
Thanks for sharing such an informative post. I found the PlotPlayer the best player ever.
From here only at very first time I’ve heard about this port player which has good qualities for becoming good video player for video lovers as well as other people also.
Yeah, it’s great, probably the best. But best isn’t perfect.
“Play Next File” usually doesn’t work [arg!], shuffle neither [why oh why no instant shuffle hotkey, like Irfanview has!?], or one for Next, for that matter].
And video processing [sharpen, etc.] sometimes works on some types of files, but not others [currently i can tweak playback of .vob's, .mpg's, and .wmv's, but not .avi's. Tomorrow...?
WarpSharp is utterly useless by the way: just adds a blotchy watercolor effect, and basic Sharpen seems weak too [in that respect KMP is still better!]
but PotPlayer really is the best mix of usability and features! I’m just emphasizing the ungreat parts because nobody else seems to be doing so.
XP system owner