Waaay OT: Video Playback on a PC

Use VLC and just select the audio track from the menu at the top., VLC will play almost anything (use media player classic with Real alternative and QuickTime alternative for the rest). VLC is good for those pesky R1 DVDs on locked laptops as well.

If that doesn't work try setting the audio to mono and pick either left or right.

Nah, it appears that DivX files actually do have the facility for different audio tracks (not just left and right, like), and the codec (Cole2k media or something) I was using on the desktop couldn't select between them - on the laptop it always played fine, so I went back to that and had a look, and bingo, that codec allows you to select which audio track to hear, so that's now installed on the desktop.

I might give VLC a try though - some of the later Ricky Gervais video podcasts didn't want to play on Ace Media Player with the selfsame codecs that worked fine for the earlier ones, instead skipping through it at around

10x. And iTunes is s**te on my PC for video as it's stupidly resource-hogging. Funny how one bit of software plays things without any effort at all, and another struggles monumentally, so it can't be "your PC's just shit", more like one bit of software's stupidly inefficiently programmed and resource-hungry.

You're comparing a stripped out media player with a fully featured multi-purpose piece of software.

It's always been the same - a specialist piece of software that only performs a single task will always be more efficient.

Yes, but when the fully featured multi-purpose piece of software hogs so many resources that it can't perform one or more of the tasks it's designed to do, to an acceptable standard, then there's something a bit wrong. It's not even a case of the hardware not being up to it - I can play full screen videos on Ace Media Player absolutely perfectly with iTunes still running, so it's not like you can say "iTunes is slow because it needs more resources than you've got".

I am dealing with iTunes as we speak. What an utter piece of shit program.

Fraser

That's exactly the point, though. iTunes may be running, but it's not the 'active' application, so it's not actually hogging any resources, it's in an 'idle' state.

Your PC is under-specced to run the latest version of iTunes properly.

Incidentally, it works perfectly well on a circa 1998 vintage Powerbook at 400MHz with 512mb of memory.

Different does not equal shit.

It's a free but still fully specced encoder / decoder / player / library for many different types of media.

Name another single programme that does everything that iTunes can do?

(Hint: there isn't one, not even paid for)

Can't update playlists on my ipod without crashing = total shit.

Fraser

Winamp does everything you could ever conceivably need to do.

Doesn't even come close.

Did it years before iTunes and did it a lot better as well.

It doesn't appear to properly handle playlists, can't do smart playlists, has a limited range of encoding options, doesn't organise your music library in any sensible way, doesn't network share music etc., etc.

Hint: Media Monkey. 'Nuther Hint: google for it.

It doesn't do video but for Audio try

Doesn't appear to have the video handling capabilities and it doesn't allow easy online music purchases.

Other than that, it looks OK - but it would do, given that it's pretty much a carbon copy of iTunes.

Video No. Only downside. Althought there other means of buying music than through iTunes store, and it interfaces with other players too through plugins.

As does iTunes. I have plugins for my phone and my PDA.

You can also use most other non-DRM sources for your iTunes collection. However, you can't use DRM sources with Media Monkey, including iTunes purchases.

DRM, though, is evil.

I wouldn't describe the way iTunes handles video as a "capability". Quicktime is just as bad, and that's nowhere near as complex an application as iTunes. Ace Media Player, combined with a DivX codec, works absolutely fine, and smooth as you like.