CCCP w/ Media Player Classic Home Cinema (video player)

www.cccp-project.net

No, this isn’t some bolshevik plot, it’s the end all be all of video playback, Media Player Classic (MPC) with the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP). This one sleek little package includes everything you need to play (almost) any video file. I haven’t found one file in the last 3 years that MPC w/ CCCP can’t play. It has excellent support for just about every codec you’ll find, great support for subtitles, powerful rendering options and playback tweaks that can fix videos that got screwed up somewhere.

Second choice: VLC