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Streaming Audio and Video

Listen to your favorite artists, watch clips of your favorite TV shows, preview movies, and put your CD collection online with these entertainment applications. You also can download and try a handful of audio players, CD encoders and programs that will help you quickly and efficiently find MP3s.

Audio Players

Winamp

Nullsoft Winamp is the ultimate hi-fi music player for Windows 95/98/NT. Winamp supports MP3, CD and audio formats such as MP2, MOD and WAV; more than 10,000 skins; and 150 audio, visualization and effect plug-ins. Screenshot.

User Review: Winamp is a superior music player that's quick to download and easy to use. Especially attractive is the capability to create and save playlists, and play MP3s and CDs in one place.

Sonique

Sonique is Lycos' media player that supports a lot of formats, including MP3, Microsoft Windows Media files, WMA, S3M, MOD, IT, XM, WAV and CD. One of the most feature-rich audio players on today's market, it carries a dynamic and animated interface; a comprehensive playlist editor; several eye-catching output visualization modes; and a 20-band equalizer.

User Review: Sonique looks very cool, but the buttons layout and design are difficult to get used to. The clumsy task of changing skins makes it even less user-friendly. Another downside: You have to constantly switch interfaces to get from the playlist to the audio control to other functions. There also seem to be too many interfaces that add clutter, making it much more difficult to use than Winamp. For basic users merely trying to play MP3s, this application isn't worth the effort.

Multimedia Players

Media Jukebox

An excellent, all-purpose free media software package, Media Jukebox supports several audio formats, including MP3; Windows Media (WMA); Real Audio and Video (ra, rv); and WAV. Media Jukebox also can convert files between/among various audio formats; record, or "rip," songs from CDs; and play tunes off of portable digital audio devices.

User Review: The free version of Media Jukebox is quite functional, but not as user-friendly as Jukebox programs like Real Jukebox. Still, the software is loaded with features that let you rip songs from CDs at up to a CD-quality 128 kbps bit rate, which few free Jukebox programs can do. There's also easy conversion between MP3 and WAV when you want to make custom CDs.

eSynch ChoiceCaster

ChoiceCaster™ is a new multimedia player with a revolutionary interface that features a built-in media player and Web browser. It's the first "broadband" media player that can support all media formats, including Real and Quicktime. ChoiceCaster™ seamlessly interacts with its browser to deliver more of the info and e-commerce offers that interest users. The player also features a media library that lets users manage and organize their media files. And the built-in media guide gives quick access to content in business, sports, news, entertainment and other categories. ChoiceCaster™ supports plug-ins and skins, too.

User Review: Thanks to its simple interface, ChoiceCaster is very easy to use. The media library lets me organize my MP3s and video clips for easy playback, and I don't have to worry about which player to use for all of my clips. I also like the fact that I can continue to watch video in the pop-up thumbnail player while I browse for more stuff in my library or on the Web.

RealPlayer (basic version):

RealPlayer is the most popular media player going. It supports most file types and lets users stream audio and video clips over the RealNetwork or Internet. Other features, among many: full-screen video and near CD-quality music capability; built-in links to other news and entertainment sources; and Internet radio service.

User Review: RealPlayer is the most popular media player because it's always upgrading to meet user demand. It's reliable and relatively simple to use. RealNetworks also makes its huge content library available to subscribers - something other media players can't do.

Windows Media Player

Microsoft's Media Player supports most file formats, including Windows Media, ASF, MPEG, WAV, AVI, MIDI,VOD, AU, MP3 and Apple Quicktime. It also has the capability to "bookmark" favorite multimedia clips; offer full-screen functionality; provide links to more content; and tap into Internet radio.

User Review: Windows Media Player offers many of RealPlayer's features, so it's difficult to say which one is superior. The Windows Media Player is very easy to use and is required on some Web sites, including MSNBC and snap.com.

Quicktime

Quicktime is Macintosh's media player that supports several file formats, including MPEG, MP3, GSM, DVI, Sorenson Video, Qdesign Music, AVI, DV, and Flash 4, among others. Other features: Kodak Picture CD support; the capability to create MP3 playlists; and streaming audio and video functionality.

User Review: Quicktime hasn't historically supported streaming audio and video, and that has limited its popularity. But it recently added a lot of new capabilities, which makes it worth another look.

MP3 Encoders

AudioCatalyst

Audiocatalyst is XingTech's audio encoder that lets users make MP3 files from CDs. It also has playback capability for a handful of file formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, layer 3 audio files, AVI and MPEG video clips. Also added: a playlist editor; CDDB support; partial encoding of tracks; and the capability to encode directly to MP3 without first recoding as a WAV file.

User Review: Audiocatalyst is a full-bodied solution to MP3 management, because it comes with the XingMP3 player. The only drawback is that you can encode only at 128 kbps in the free version. WAV files can't be encoded from your hard drive, either.

RealJukebox:

RealJukebox lets you create, play, record and manage your digital music library in several audio formats, including CD, RealAudio, MP3 and WAV. It lets you record selected tracks or entire CDs in RealAudio or MP3 formats. However, the free version records only at 96 kbps. Other features include a built-in audio player; playlist manager; support for CDDB; music-sorting capability; support for skins; and a "help wizard" to walk users through complex tasks.

User Review: The very-easy-to-use RealJukebox has some of the best features available. One of them is a dynamic playlist-management system that lets users switch between and edit playlists without loading them one at a time into the player. That lets you easily create several playlists to download to a mobile MP3 player or categorize music without loading, reloading or saving a group of songs each time you want to switch between playlists. Users who don't want all of a CD's tunes automatically recorded on their hard drives should turn off the default CD-recording feature when they download the program.