I’ve never felt the need to change VLCPlayer for anything else because it plays just about any format with minimum fuss. That was until I tried SMPlayer which does everything VLCPlayer can and more.
For a start, it seems to support subtitles and stream video from the internet much more intuitively than VLCPlayer which I find very hit and miss where these two things are concerned. It also remembers where the most recent playback of a DVD or DivX file was stopped even if you close and re-open it – great for when you don’t have time to watch something in one go. Other cool features include audio track switching and seeking by mouse wheel.
The interface is also a lot sleeker than VLCPlayer. One of my biggest gripes with the latter is how plain and simple it is and SMPlayer looks a lot more modern with icons in the toolbar and glossy playing controls. It also gives you a huge amount of control over the image which is lacking in VLCPlayer including a video equalizer which allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and gamma of the video image. I won’t be going back to VLCPlayer for a while.
