GOM Player- The Newest Sensation in Free Windows Video Players

Right from the first day with Windows Classic Media Player to this date, I have always searched for THAT improved Video Player which could meet my expectations. From the extremely snobbish Windows Media Player 10 to never-failing VLC media player, I have tried and tested almost all of them. But I wasn’t satisfied with any until GOM player. I may sound biased here so I have prepared an in-depth review of my treasured toy just for you. Read and then decide.

Overview

• The Interface of GOM Player is something that will impress you right from the beginning. A simple outlook with prominent buttons and a light orange backdrop is what this software comes up with.
• The video player has a very easy-to-use setup and most importantly it doesn’t burden you with options.The main feature that I can associate with GOM player is that it is precise and still rich in features.

Codecs

I know, I know. This is THE part you are most interested in. How annoying will it be to carry a heavy suitcase that has no clothes? The same happens when you have a video player that is as helpless as you are with unknown extensions of video files. GOM player helps you right there.

• From the conventional video extensions like AVI, DAT, MPEG, DivX that are embedded inside GOM, to the unknown world of .ogm, .skm, .lmp4, .k3g extensions, GOM is there for you every time while others can run out of options. Though no one can actually win over VLC in this category.
• What’s more is GOM player can also play broken AVI links just like VLC player does.
  
• Even when all these fail to recognize your video file, GOM connects online to go to a dedicated host with a huge range of codec downloads. You can choose and serve yourself with the necessary one.
  

Settings

Video

• Once you install the GOM player and run it for the first time, a window will flash up asking to select display modes. You can choose from Normal, High-Quality, and TV Output modes. Trust me, you can actually see the difference yourself.
• I have run a very high textured video in GOM player, VLC player and Windows Media Player and believe me, there was a significant amount of new things I noticed while playing in GOM player that I couldn’t in the other two.
• There is also a Video Mixing Render (VMR) option for you which varies according to the Operating System which is a surprising element too.

Audio

• The best thing is that you get to choose your audio configuration according to your speakers. They have kept a customized option for 2 channel, 4 channel, 5.1 channel audio systems. Choose whichever is yours. Isn’t it great?
• I remember watching Titanic in a Dolby Digital Audio equipped theater and the experience was really worth a life time. A good audio can do wonders to your cinematic experience. Our video player comes with 10-band equalizer and 17 EQ presets to choose from which is quite impressive and the differences are really satisfying. I was relieved to discover even the shrill sounds don’t crack on high pitch. Though to be absolutely fair, it loses some points in this segment. I guess there is still room of improvement here.

Subtitles

• This is where GOM player scores the brownie point. I am terribly impressed with the drag-and-drop facility of subtitles in this player. Imagine if you have a .srt file and a movie playing at the GOM player, all you will have to do is -

1. drag the file
2. place it on the video screen
3. and there you go; it would start playing the subtitle automatically!

• Again There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts and different buttons to align, to synchronize the subtitles with the movie. Other competitors like VLC and Windows Media Player lag miles behind on this.

Miscellaneous

If you are still not happy, GOM player comes with a host of other goodies like determining aspect ratio and very advanced and detailed screen capture facility.

Performance and Memory usage

To be true, there is not much of a difference among VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player and GOM Player in case of memory usage. The resource consumption is very similar. But to be very accurate, GOM Player is slightly more resource hungry than the other two, but you won’t feel a thing as the difference is really small.

Summary

I have been using GOM player for 6-7 months and I have to say I have grown quite fond of it. I think you will like it too. You can download it from here.