What is the best media player for the mac (besides .mov - e.g., .mp3, .wmv, .avi, .mpg, etc)

I've recently switched from PC to Mac, so I'm slowly building a library of useful utilities. So, any recommendations for the best generic media player?

On the PC - I've found the VLC player to be pretty useful - there's a Mac version, but I don't know how it compares to other alternatives.

Many of the alternatives on the PC are full of crap - e.g., constantly pushing toolbars, add-ins, anti-virus junk, etc.

So, I'd like something lightweight and crapware free. I'd be happy to pay $20-$30 for something that was worth it.


VLC is by far the best.

Fast, extensible, and versatile. You can play just about any format video, Video_TS file, remote disks, remote streams, even pipe the output of a command into it to play. Can you say on the fly video manipulation? That's VLC.

Not to mention the main selling point, it's free.

Quicktime? Slow. Plugins? Hokey. Alternatives? Either not very "native" or buggy, slow, and prone to crashing. There is not one thing I have been unable to play with VLC that I had to use something else.

Okay, one thing. The MKV support on it is a bit of a pain. Try seeking with a 4GB MKV file.


I like Movist. It has the format flexibility of VLC, but with a nicer Mac-like interface.


I vastly prefer the experience of using Quicktime with a little help from Perian and Flip4Mac to give it compatability with 90% of the video I need to play. For the rare stubborn video that does not want to cooperate with that setup, I break out VLC, because of VLC can't play it, it's just not going to play.