ALShow

Media players come in all shapes and sizes, making it difficult to decide which one to use more often. Some of them are compatible with numerous formats, but their options are too complex, while others may have a brilliant interface, but they can play only a handful of media files. From this point of view, ALShow is very well balanced. It supports numerous audio and video formats, while its interface is very simple, allowing you to play your movies, without any complications.

After downloading the 11.3 MB setup kit, it will take only a few moments to install the player. ALShow comes with its own codecs library, making it possible to play your movies, even if your operating system is freshly installed. The software works without any problems on both 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

ALShow is kept very simple, no matter how you look at it. When playing a movie, the image is displayed on the entire surface of the interface. Its title bar and a few playback controls will appear only when hovering with the mouse cursor over the interface. You can extend the window to reveal a playlist, with basic options, for adding or removing media files, sorting them or saving the playlist.

At a first glance, the software may look limited, but you only need to right click anywhere on the interface to find more options. Besides video files on your hard drive, ALShow can play DVD movies and online videos. While playing a movie, you can take snapshots or start recording. If you load subtitles, you may adjust their speed and save your synchronization settings, move them to a different location, change their size and more. An interesting feature is the ability of pausing the movie and minimizing the interface instantly, just by hitting the ESC key. Double clicking the application's system tray icon will restore the interface immediately.