You probably have spent the last decade frolicking in the innermost regions of Antarctica if you do not know what a media player software program is. Once the MP3 format became very popular, media players became a part and parcel of virtually each and every computer.
The Windows operating system offers an inbuilt media player that is considered as one of the best in the industry. Apart from this, there are many other stand alone media players like Winamp, VLC media player and Real Player available in the market.
The providers of media players tried to position themselves as premium service providers in the market. However, the sheer volumes in the market meant that there was no percentage in offering services at a cost. People were not prepared to pay for another media player when they were getting one bundled with the windows operating system.
Of course, chances of getting media editing software application to edit and manipulate audio and video files at zero cost will be very difficult. The windows movie maker offers a basic version but the generally accepted rule is that you will have to pay for any software that involves editing of audio or video.
Today, using software applications to play digital media are available at zero cost. In exchange, the user may be required to tolerate a few advertisements or a few promotional messages. On the whole, the average user is least bothered about the minor difficulties that crop up when playing the real player or the VLC media player.
The most important factor that people consider when choosing a media player for their computer is the ability to play the largest number of formats. MP3 has been superseded by the MP4 technology which combines audio as well as video at the same memory consumption levels.
Podcasts have become a rage on the internet and there is a high demand for those media players that have the capacity to play all formats without any additions. In most cases, one simply has to download extra codecs to play different media formats.