28th Of August, 2023

I was going to have this as a monthly review page, but I decided to have it as a permanent page. So let’s see what each of these programs can do, and why it might be wise to have a bunch of players on your computer(s).
At the end, I’m going to have a table of files that I chucked at these players, and you can see which ones handled what, which ones I forgot to test, and which ones didn’t play certain stuff.

VLC basically means Video LAN Corporation. It was initially intended to play videos over a LAN. It’s definitely one of the most popular players out there, because it not only handles a broad range of files, but it also plays DVDs from other regions without screwing with your drive’s internal setting. Plus whether they have encryption or not is no worry for it either. Not only that, it’s available for multiple operating systems, so this really gives it an edge. Its other benefit, is that it allows you to skip over all the cr@p at the start of a lot of DVDs, and head straight for the menu. Although you can add bookmarks, it seems to forget them when you next load it. Hmm. Did I miss something with these, or is that an oversight? Another weakness seems to be the inability to save your graphic equaliser settings. There are a bunch of preset ones, but you can’t seem to save your own.
Years ago I didn’t really fancy it, but they improved it and I got to like it more in recent times. Initially it had issues with playing FLV files, but this was sorted out, and now they’re no problem. I’m going to look at version 2-ish on my iMac G5, and version 1.19-ish, I think, under Windows 7.

This AVI file is from my Bootleg Sampler CD, which came with my Saturn console. This was no trouble to play. It uses a Duck TrueMotion codec for the video with a “MS” audio codec. It also plays fine on the earlier version of VLC I have in Windows.	• The basic preferences. By showing advanced settings, there are a whole heap of things you can adjust. This shows the output module choices for video on Mac OS X Leopard.
• The advanced settings on the Windows rendition. This is probably the best video output module to choose if you experience tearing in videos. (Where there’s no synchronisation to the refresh rate of your monitor.)	SRT subtitle files are supported here, and you can adjust how big they are, what font they are, and also their colour. This is just an example from Legend Of The Phoenix for illustrative purposes, so don’t kill me anyone! I’m not giving out the whole TV show here. You can watch this TV series for free anyhow, on YouTube and Viki.

I don’t use it much, but VLC also has a playlist, so you can play a bunch of videos or audio files one after the other. Good if you want to watch a TV series all day long, or better for your favourite songs. Personally, I prefer Winamp and XMPlay for music.
One of the weak points of VLC — at least the versions I have — is that it tends to cut the end off files before they’ve finished playing. This is what prompted me to try out Light Alloy, which doesn’t seem to have this issue. Light Alloy also has video synchronisation options as well, to help prevent tearing.
You can get pretty decent versions of VLC that will work on Windows XP, and even Windows 2000. Even on Macs with PowerPC processors, you can run at least version 2-ish. In fact, on my iMac G5, I have 3 versions installed. This was because I was trying to see which was best for videos with subtitles. In the end I switched to MPlayer OS X Extended though, because it was less jerky.
Playing CDs is no trouble with VLC, and there are also visualisations for audio. You’ll want a powerful CPU though. On my 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon, some of the effects could really use a lot of oomph & weren’t overly smooth. On my new 3.7 GHz Intel Core i3 CPU, it isn’t so bad.
De-interlacing can also be done as you play videos, and the best option is YADIF 2 ×. It just means Yet Another De Interlace Filter. The 2 × bit means it will play back at twice the frame rate, because it’s separating the 2 fields back into 2 whole frames again. This does require more effort from your CPU of course, and my AMD Athlon CPU would struggle a bit. That said, if the video was already converted to 50 f.p.s., it could manage that better.

QuickTime of course, comes with Mac OS X, (and other versions,) and is also used to display graphics & audio by certain programs, as well as videos. Some Windows programs also rely on it, such as a few that I wrote. Usually when you think of MOV files, you think of QuickTime, but it also supports MIDI files, MP4, Ogg, with a plug-in, MP3, WAV, AIFF & 3GP. On Windows, QuickTime is more sluggish at loading compared with VLC, especially on slower CPUs like my old AMD Athlon 64. Naturally, MOV files are its specialty, and this is about the only player which can open QuickTime VR files properly. There are also other interactive video types by Apple which only work with this too.
Under Windows XP & Windows 7 you may need to disable the “Use high quality video setting when available” option when it comes to DV files. If you don’t, you may only get ¼ of the picture showing. The downside though is they look like cr@p without the high quality setting. So you’re better off using VLC. On Macs I haven’t run into this problem.
QuickTime, VLC & Light Alloy all have minor glitches in their file information boxes, from incorrect bit depths, mispellings and even negative file sizes! When using any player, you may need to use your noodle to realise such errors, and double check if any of the statistics are necessary to you for some reason.
Because Macs present CD tracks as AIFF files, you can use QuickTime to play them. This won’t work in Windows though, because you get those placeholder CDA files. Another advantage of the Mac version is being able to play Quartz Composer files (QTZ), but as these are pretty much limited to Mac use anyway, it’s understandable that they don’t work in the Windows version. You sometimes get screen savers as QTZ files, and when you open them, they can be played with QuickTime.

Here’s a QuickTime VR file I made myself from one of my Morrowind plug-ins. You can spin the view ’round 360° & zoom in and out. If you spin too fast on the Windows version of QuickTime, the program will crash.	Pressing Ctrl + K in Windows / Apple + K on your Mac, you can get this controls box, which I used quite frequently for bass adjustments.

QuickTime can be updated to a pro version as well, for a fee. This lets you save changes and do some simple editing. I’ve never paid for it though. Until Mac OS X Leopard on Macs, I think you even had to pay for the full screen mode. Although it is possible for 3rd party programs to make use of pro features, so you could get players to extend QuickTime features, or you could write such programs yourself, if you’re skilled enough.
QuickTime will also display a host of pictures, including JPEG, PNG, QTIF and PICT. There is also support for “closed captioning,” which is like what you get on American DVDs. How this is implemented in QuickTime, I don’t know, because it does not support SRT files. I have a feeling any subtitles have to be embedded in MOV files for it to work.
I’m pretty certain I have an Ogg plug-in for QuickTime on Macs as well. (For Mac OS X Tiger). At least for the Vorbis type compression.
Another strength QuickTime has over VLC & Light Alloy, is its support for MIDI files. It actually has its own instrument sounds, so if you’ve played them with Windows Media Player, you’ll hear a difference. If I recall, I think it can sometimes blast out the volume on the 1st notes in the Windows version, so be aware!
One downside on the Windows version, is that it isn’t too great with videos much bigger than 640 × 480 pixels. It can easily crash with an error message when you try to skip to a certain time. Plus, while the Mac version will work with DivX, if you have it installed, it isn’t true in the Windows version. I don’t think it actually recognises what codecs you have installed.
Another issue with QuickTime for Windows, is that if you try to load a file that it fails on, it still stays loaded in RAM, even though it closes the window.

I think I used something like version 7 of Windows Media Player in Windows ME, but I always preferred the little version 6.4 one. And I continued with this in Windows XP, especially since I didn't think much of version 9, and basically deleted it. To run this version you can just type “mplayer2” into your Run box. Forget it in Windows 7 — it no longer exists. I tried to get it to work, but I feel I might stuff something up, because some of the files it needs to run are now newer versions. Anyway, it may not play a lot of stuff compared with just about any of the other players, but it was my absolute favourite for DivX encoded videos in AVI files. It was snappy and played them right through, unlike VLC chopping the last few seconds off. All I could ask for. I didn’t need a play list or anything. This was perfect for me. I’m sad it’s not in Windows 7 now. With Windows XP running in Virtual Box, DivX compressed videos come out weird, with distorted vertical lines, even with no hardware acceleration, and various options changed for the DivX decorder. My MJPEG videos play fine with that Pegasus codec though. It’s still good however, for quickly playing WAV, MP3, MID, animated GIF and even AIFF files.

This is the general look of it. This compact mode is the best for me.	There are a few file formats it works with, and if I recall, it should play MPEG 2 files de-interlaced as well. At least on my 2006 PC, it did. It may need a DVD player program installed for that.	What appears to be the original Windows Media Player. This is actually version 3.1, probably to match Windows 3.1. This is running under Windows XP, and it will play stuff with the codecs you have installed.

In the past, I had a real painful problem with this not letting me play AVI files. Windows kept asking me all the time what I wanted to play them with, instead of opening them. I had to make a copy of the mplayer2.exe file, call it mplayer3.exe and associate the files with that. I think this time with Windows XP, it’s actually worked without having to do that. Fig knows why. So my comparison of this player may look quite weak to the other offerings below, but it was made a while back, and like QuickTime, it focusses mainly on popular formats, rather than anything obscure. As for WMV files, it will play early versions, but not some of the later ones. I think “MPLAYER 1” might have been that even more basic version that was available for Windows 3.1, which had a little movie reel icon. (Yeah, see up to the right in the pictures.)
Now, what about Ogg Vorbis music files? Well, yes! There is a codec which I got back in 2007, which works for this. You can just drag your Ogg files right on there, and you’re in business. For all I know there may be ones for other codecs too, like FLAC, and for playing MP4 files.

MPlayer’s another of those programs that plays obscure formats. I had it installed for Windows, but didn’t use it much. I think it could play certain Saturn game videos better than VLC, at least at the time, and it also supports SRT files for subtitles, but it was a bit weird. There were Mac versions of it as well, which sucked. Then later, I found MPlayer OS X Extended, which is actually pretty decent. It also has subtitle support, so it was good for shows in other languages that I couldn’t understand, and it also ran pretty well on my iMac G5. Plus my MacBook, since it’s a universal binary. Some of the file types / formats, I forgot to check with it, so I may update these in the lower table(s) at a later date. I would like to think it can handle the same stuff as QuickTime, but it really depends on how it’s written.

Videos from my Saturn Bootleg Sampler CD played fine.	Uh… did they just forget to finish this, or what? There’s nothing there!	This was just a sample of Babylon Berlin, so you can see the subtitles feature. Don’t shoot me for just using this as an example! It was just a free preview of the show.

As you can see, the open dialogue box is broken. But you can add files to the play list or drag them on to the window to play. Doing the 2nd method will actually not disturb the play list, which can be useful. Play lists will stay there after you close the program, but I saw no way to save them. Unless I missed that somewhere. Using M3U files doesn’t seem to be something it recognises either.
Unlike VLC, this doesn’t know modules from a bar of soap, as in MOD files, Scream Tracker, Impulse Tracker or eXtended Modules. Ogg Vorbis, Monkey’s Audio & FLAC do all play fine though, which is good. Again, CDs should work, because the program will see them as AIF files. I didn’t try getting it to play a DVD, because I forgot.
So on the whole, this might be worth having, especially for smooth playback of videos with subtitle files. On my Power Mac G5, before it died, I found VLC to be as good, but on the iMac, MPlayer OS X E. seemed more efficient.

Seeing as VLC chops the end off stuff that it plays, and Windows Media Player 6.4 doesn’t work (that I know of) in Windows 7, I wanted another media player to throw my AVI files at with DivX encoded video. I decided to get Light Alloy, which I’d never heard of. But it looked good, and so far it does the job. This has different skins, including separate ones for the video and audio. Let me say straight up: I tried this with CDs, and don’t even try getting it to open CDA files! It killed half of Windows 7 and I had to reboot to recover. It seems it’s aimed at playing CDs, but how, I dunno. I didn’t see any alternative way to do it. Stick with VLC or Winamp, I say!

Here’s a little sample of playing a video with subtitles. This is from I Will Never Let You Go. Just as an example mind you! Check this show out at Viki too. It might also be on YouTube now.	The audio playing section is more bleak looking, and only has 2 skins. This was the better of the 2, and it’s not too great either. It reminds me of that ugly Windows 8! Perhaps you can get more skins for it.

Like VLC, there are a truck load of options you can tweak, but instead of using a standard menu bar, you need to right click on your mouse to access a little menu of stuff, which is a bit weird. Format support is pretty good, and loads of stuff plays with it. It says it supports MIDI files, but I heard nothing, even though it shows the song length. So maybe this depends on something else installed in Windows. The player also manages SFD files from Dreamcast games, even though it doesn’t mention them. I tried one from Sonic Shuffle and it played fine. Raw DV files do not play in this, so you should stick with VLC, or QuickTime if you can get the high quality setting to work. Module support is also good. I tried normal MOD files, S3M, IT & XM, and they all played. Animated GIF files also work fine, and will continue running if they’re set to go forever.
DVD support is limited to unencrypted ones only. Otherwise you just get a weird image with lots of green in it. So unless you only intend to play your own DVDs or the very few commercial ones which don’t have encryption, this isn’t the best choice. As for other files, this is probably worth a burl.

So there you have it. I may update this page later, and add more stuff. In terms of the files I tried, it was surprising to see which players could actually play some unexpected formats. Pretty much none of them supported ADX files from my Dreamcast games, but then that is probably considered an uncommon format. There is a plug-in by El Barto, for Winamp, which will play these files though. You can get it from my Downloads Page.
With additional software, all the players can handle Ogg audio files, and it was good to see that FLAC & Monkey’s Audio was also supported in VLC, Light Alloy and MPlayer OS X Extended. All the players handled AVI files, but you will need to install DivX if you have any with that compression, in Mac OS X.

A quick view table of supported files:
= Good. = Not so good / doesn’t work. = Untested. = Maybe with extra software installed.
(See below for more detail.)

	VLC	QuickTime (mostly on Macs)	Windows Media Player 6	Light Alloy	MPlayer OS X Extended
AVI
MOV
BIK
DCT
SFD
CPK
FLV
MP3
MP4
WAV
AIF
ADX
DV				DV streams in AVI files will play
S3M
IT
MOD
XM
OGG
FLAC
APE
3GP
MID
M4A
GIF		I think it does these.
CDs
DVDs

VLC File Support:

File Tested:	Results:
AVI (Audio Video Interleave)	AVI files are a container, like MOV files, meaning they have no specific audio or video compression. But the likes of DivX encoded videos with a MP3 audio stream work perfectly. Other less common codecs, such as from my Saturn games on that Bootleg Sampler also played fine, with both the audio and video.
MOV (QuickTime Movie)	Most QuickTime movies will play, but again, it depends on the compression used for the video and audio. QuickTime VR files on the other hand, and other interactive ones that Apple used, do not play as expected, or at all.
BIK (Bink Video)	These videos are usually used by games, such as Morrowind, Oblivion, Diablo, I think, and some other RPG I can’t remember. Neither version of VLC played these.
DCT (Electronic Arts video)	I tried one of these from Need For Speed 2: S.E., and it only played the video. The audio just went: Blup! And that was it.
SFD (MPEG SofDec, or whatever, from Dreamcast games.)	The video played, but not the audio.
CPK (Cinepak)	NiGHTS into dreams… uses these, but with a separate ADP file for audio. The CPK file will play, but the audio is not recognised even on its own. (FFMPEG seems to partially recognise ADP files, but it seems to fail on any conversions.)
FLV (Macromedia / Adobe Flash Video)	I haven’t got many new ones of these, but on newer versions of VLC, these play fine. On older versions, the player could unexpectedly quit when you tried to skip through the video.
MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3)	These are as common as muck. VLC obviously plays these.
MP4 (MPEG 4)	Another common as muck file. Especially with YouTube using them. There have been some revisions to the format, I think, but VLC handles them pretty well on the newer versions. Version 0.86 had some issues with more recent video files, and just showing a grey image.
WAV (Wave)	You’d be hard pressed finding something that couldn’t play these files.
AIFF (Apple Interchange File Format, or something like that.)	Again, these will play in all the programs I looked at.
ADX	None of the players recognised these. They’re a lossy compressed type of audio, used in a lot of Dreamcast games, such as Daytona USA 2001, and Crazy Taxi. However this stored them in AFS archive files.
DV (Digital Video)	These files are usually produced by video cameras, and sent to computers through a FireWire port. They have a low compression level, which allows slower computers to play them easily, and it also gives them excellent quality for master copies, yet a huge file size as a result. VLC can play them well now, but it got confused with the field order on earlier versions, when it came to the interlacing.
S3M (Scream Tracker Module)	These played well, but I didn’t pay much attention as to how accurate they were, or any other modules. Some players, like Winamp, handle modules a bit differently. I would recommend XMPlay for these personally, because composers have said it’s more accurate. VLC will also handle UMX files from Unreal, because they’re a type of module as well.
IT (Impulse Tracker)
MOD (Generic Module)
XM (eXtended Module)
Ogg	Ogg files are a container for other audio, usually compressed in the Vorbis fashion. But there is also Speex, Theora, and you can even do FLAC. I only have files compressed in the Vorbis method, and these play fine.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)	This format has become one of the most popular for lossless compressed audio files, and I have a bunch myself from CDs, and stuff I’ve recorded myself. VLC manages these without any woe.
APE (Monkey’s Audio)	These have been around since about 2000, so they’re not as new as some people may think. Monkey’s Audio is a good alternative to FLAC, and they’re also supported by Cowon portable media players, such as the S9 & X9. The Plenue may also support them, but I’m not sure. VLC does these just fine too.
3GP (3rd Generation ’Phone)	These play well, and because they usually have a low resolution, they don’t need much grunt from your CPU either.
MID (Musical Instrument Digital Interface file)	VLC does not normally play these. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some kind of add on that catered for them.
M4A (MPEG 4 Audio)	All good.
Animated GIF (CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format)	No go. Newer versions might be different though.
CDs	CDs of course aren’t a file, but if they were, the tracks would be like wave files, I suppose. Besides all that malarkey, VLC can play these when you open them from the Open Disc menu option. It will also work mostly with enchanced CDs. When I was playing my BWitched CD, it couldn’t play the last track, and instead tried to play the data track, and gave me some nice loud noise. If you choose to open “track 0,” it will just add all the audio tracks to the play list. On Mac OS X, the operating system divides enchanced CDs into 2 icons; 1 for the data track(s) and 1 for the audio tracks. Because it creates virtual AIFF files, you have the choice of just dragging these onto VLC.
DVDs	DVDs do have files, on a UDF file system, but normally you don’t point your player to the file you want. It works that out itself. VLC uses a different method of reading the data from the disc, so region codes have no relevance. This is a big thing in its favour. People like to watch foreign shows, and sometimes DVDs just aren’t available in your own country. VLC is a great answer to this hurdle. There were some issues on my MacBook, if I recall, trying to play foreign DVDs with VLC, and it might still have something to do with the drive’s firmware, but I’m not sure. It pays to have a few computers then.

QuickTime File Support:

File Tested:	Results:
AVI (Audio Video Interleave)	Depending on what codecs you have installed, some of these won’t play. On Mac OS X, videos with DivX compression are no problem, but in Windows, it won’t handle them, even if you have the codec installed for the OS.
MOV (QuickTime Movie)	Obviously this is QuickTime’s strong point, and most of these should play with varying types of video and audio compression. QuickTime is about the only player which can do QuickTime VR files, and other interactive type MOV files, such as ones where you can rotate around a pre-rendered object, and get extra information from various “hot spots”.
BIK (Bink Video)	No chance.
DCT (Electronic Arts video)	It would really surprise me if QuickTime suddenly played these.
SFD (MPEG SofDec, or whatever, from Dreamcast games.)	No go.
CPK (Cinepak)	No sir.
FLV (Macromedia / Adobe Flash Video)	With Proteus installed in Mac OS X, I think these may work. Without it, it won’t recognise them.
MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3)	QuickTime has no problems with these.
MP4 (MPEG 4)	Another type QuickTime does pretty well. Some that have more “intense” compression can chunk things up.
WAV (Wave)	Of course it can play these.
AIFF (Apple Interchange File Format, or something like that.)	Obviously it plays Apple’s own audio format.
ADX	No go.
DV (Digital Video)	On Mac OS X these play perfectly in QuickTime, especially since it’s a primary format for iMovie. On Windows, you may have mixed results, depending on whether you can use the high quality setting.
S3M (Scream Tracker Module)	There is no normal support for modules.
IT (Impulse Tracker)
MOD (Generic Module)
XM (eXtended Module)
Ogg	These should play if you have the codec installed, but not “out of the box”.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)	Again, these won’t normally play. I don’t know the status of an add on for these files on Macs. I usually use Cog to play these.
APE (Monkey’s Audio)	No go.
3GP (3rd Generation ’Phone)	These play perfectly well.
MID (Musical Instrument Digital Interface file)	QuickTime has a bit of an edge with these, and they actually sound pretty good too.
M4A (MPEG 4 Audio)	These are the audio stream of MP4 files, usually. They play fine, and I often use QuickTime to play some.
Animated GIF (CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format)	Animations set to run forever will only play once unless you manually turn looping on.
CDs	On Macs: Yes. On Windows: No.
DVDs	Nope.

Windows Media Player 6.4 File Support:

File Tested:	Results:
AVI (Audio Video Interleave)	Since these files seem to be a Microsoft thing, you’ll find that they usually play well. It does depend on what codecs you have installed thouugh.
MOV (QuickTime Movie)	These files don’t usually work properly. QuickTime VR files will just do a flick through of various angles, like VLC does. You may get audio playing from some videos though.
BIK (Bink Video)	No chance.
DCT (Electronic Arts video)	Nup.
SFD (MPEG SofDec, or whatever, from Dreamcast games.)	Nope.
CPK (Cinepak)	Nothing happening here.
FLV (Macromedia / Adobe Flash Video)	Nopey nope.
MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3)	Yes, sir!
MP4 (MPEG 4)	Not normally.
WAV (Wave)	Of course it can play these.
AIFF (Apple Interchange File Format, or something like that.)	These will play too.
ADX	Forget about it.
DV (Digital Video)	Not normally. You may get AVI files with a DV stream to play, but raw DV files don’t usually work.
S3M (Scream Tracker Module)	There is no normal support for modules.
IT (Impulse Tracker)
MOD (Generic Module)
XM (eXtended Module)
Ogg	These will play if you install the codec for them.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)	Unless there’s some codec for WMP, you’re out of luck.
APE (Monkey’s Audio)	No luck with these.
3GP (3rd Generation ’Phone)	Nuh.
MID (Musical Instrument Digital Interface file)	Windows Media Player has always supported MIDI files as far as I know, plus RMI ones, which is Roland MIDI.
M4A (MPEG 4 Audio)	Nope.
Animated GIF (CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format)	No trouble with these files.
CDs	No.
DVDs	Even less chance.

Light Alloy File Support:

File Tested:	Results:
AVI (Audio Video Interleave)	No worries for most of these. I don’t think it liked the Saturn game sampler ones though.
MOV (QuickTime Movie)	I didn’t see any major issues with these. As for QuickTime VR movies, they just flick through different views and stop, like Windows Media Player.
BIK (Bink Video)	These actually do play. At least the one I tried from Morrowind.
DCT (Electronic Arts video)	No go with these.
SFD (MPEG SofDec, or whatever, from Dreamcast games.)	This was the only player which could manage these with audio.
CPK (Cinepak)	Nope.
FLV (Macromedia / Adobe Flash Video)	These were fine.
MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3)	As you would expect, it can play these.
MP4 (MPEG 4)	Also good.
WAV (Wave)	No problem.
AIFF (Apple Interchange File Format, or something like that.)	Most certainly.
ADX	Not recognised.
DV (Digital Video)	No luck with raw DV files, but AVI files containing DV streams will work, and it seems to de-interlace into 50 Hz as well, from what I can tell. You can use FFMPEG to put DV files into an AVI container with no re-compression.
S3M (Scream Tracker Module)	All the modules I tried worked.
IT (Impulse Tracker)
MOD (Generic Module)
XM (eXtended Module)
Ogg	Yep.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)	Yep.
APE (Monkey’s Audio)	Yep.
3GP (3rd Generation ’Phone)	Yep.
MID (Musical Instrument Digital Interface file)	It’s supposed to, but you can’t hearing anything. The file appears to play, and the player switches to the audio section, but there’s no sound.
M4A (MPEG 4 Audio)	No trouble with these.
Animated GIF (CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format)	These work fine and will play forever if they’re set to do so.
CDs	In the options it mentions them, but I wouldn’t try it. It crashed the program, and I couldn’t even force it to quit. It also killed Explorer, and I had to restart my computer.
DVDs	Only unencrypted ones.

MPlayer OS X Extended File Support:

File Tested:	Results:
AVI (Audio Video Interleave)	The ones I tried worked, including the ones from my Saturn sampler CD.
MOV (QuickTime Movie)	As these are an Apple related video type, you would expect them to play. And they do! It would probably have issues with the QuickTime VR ones though, but I didn’t test it to see what would happen.
BIK (Bink Video)	Surprisingly these play as well.
DCT (Electronic Arts video)	It was even more surprising to see these working, and with their audio too.
SFD (MPEG SofDec, or whatever, from Dreamcast games.)	Only the video played from these.
CPK (Cinepak)	These worked. As the ones I tried were from NiGHTS, it was only the video. The ADP files didn’t play.
FLV (Macromedia / Adobe Flash Video)	I didn’t test these, but I think they might work.
MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3)	No trouble here.
MP4 (MPEG 4)	Yep.
WAV (Wave)	Yep.
AIFF (Apple Interchange File Format, or something like that.)	Yep.
ADX	I didn’t test any of these files, but I would be surprised if it could do them.
DV (Digital Video)	I didn’t test these either, but I would say that they should play.
S3M (Scream Tracker Module)	No module types worked.
IT (Impulse Tracker)	Nope
MOD (Generic Module)	Nein
XM (eXtended Module)	Iie (That’s Japanese for no.)
Ogg	Yep.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)	Yep.
APE (Monkey’s Audio)	Yep.
3GP (3rd Generation ’Phone)	I didn’t test these, but I would say they should work.
MID (Musical Instrument Digital Interface file)	Another type I didn’t test. If the player can use what QuickTime supports, these should work.
M4A (MPEG 4 Audio)	The one I tried did play, but the program became unresponsive as well.
Animated GIF (CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format)	I haven’t tested these, but they might work.
CDs	Because of how Mac OS X makes CD tracks look like AIF files, you can of course play them.
DVDs	I didn’t test this.

So yep. They were the results of these various media playing programs, and what each one could manage from the files I tried. I would say that VLC, Light Alloy and MPlayer OS X Extended could also play Matroska video files (MKV), but as I have none of them, it wasn’t possible to do a test. I rounded up what I thought was a good variety of file types and formats, including some obscure ones, and got surprising results. I would say that all the players could probably also handle MPG files, and probably M1V & MP2, but I didn’t get ’round to finding where I had many of them. VLC can also handle WMV (Windows Media Video), and I used it in Windows XP to handle the very few of those videos I have. This is not a type of video format that I ever liked, or used myself. They were also notoriously awkward to play in Linux and in Mac operating systems.
I may update this page in the future, and add more formats that I tried, or even another program.