Introducing Best Multimedia Tools

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in SoftDistrict Series

March26th2008

Two decades ago, computers and multimedia were two completely different realms, but as computing power available to unleash grew, music and image became a part of any home computer, and I don't want to mention games here, because I have something completely different in mind...

Today, it's absolutely normal to watch movies and listen to your favorite music on your computer, but how many of you still remember those old days when there were only a few media players available, those days before even Windows 95 kicked in, when MP3 files were encoded in very low quality, just so the most powerful processors of the time could be able to decode them? Anyway, this is not going to be a history lesson, because the present is extremely interesting, and that's where I want to arrive - today's best multimedia applications!

Basically, we're going to talk about audio and video players, but if you're going to ask it, I'll test a few CD ripping tools, although some players offer CD ripping features, such as Winamp, Windows Media Player or Jet-Audio, to name the most notorious ones.

While a lot of things come for free in life, software is no exception, but I won't leave aside the commercial applications, if they prove to be worth the price. After all, that's what we all need - best multimedia experience on our computers, and we have soo many choices these days, that organizing them into a top requires a lot of work and research, so please take your time to help, by answering the following questions:

- What's your favorite music/video player?
- When talking about "multimedia software for home" these days, what other categories, apart from audio and video players, would you like to see revealed here? Image viewing and editing, maybe? Internet streaming/TV tools, such as Joost?
- Which features you look for first in a media player/multimedia software? Do you think functionality can overcome a bad user interface?

This is it for now, please drop us your wishes below, and we'll do our best to please you. Let's write some great articles together, shall we?