VLC

Quick post: I was very frustrated with Quicktime. I dont want to pay $30.00 for the Pro version. Yes, I am cheap. At the same time I dont want to watch my quicktime movies ( I LOVE BITTORRENT!) in a small window, which Im forced to do unless I upgrade. Off I went looking for an opensource (read: free) alternative and found VLC. Im using it on my iBook, but its also available for Windows, Linux and even WinCE/PocketPC. Blurb from the site:

VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

I originally ran across VLC while trying to figure out how to download shows from my TIVO to my iBook. This is something that Windows machines can do, but unfortunately the Tivo people dont care much about us Mac users. I found out how to do it, and have started to work out how to do it in the easiest way. Im lying, actually I got sidetracked while working on this and havent made it back.

Upshot? VLC is a good media player that happens to be opensource. Consider it recommended.