We've all come across problems playing videos for one reason or another. Thankfully, the open source community came up with a solution in the form of VLC media player which plays just about anything.

Version 1.1.7 of VLC media player doesn't actually look that much different from previous versions of VLC but it does introduce many new features, formats and codecs to the VLC multimedia framework. It also fixes several major bugs that were in earlier versions.

Firstly, don't be fooled by appearances. VLC media player may look basic, but it's this simplicity and power to play anything that makes VLC media player so good. This includes downloading streams from the web. Indeed, we've often found that where other media players have failed, VLC media player has always allowed me to stream content quickly and reliably. This is because VLC media player is so lightweight and doesn't spend as much time processing images as some players do. If you want to stream your own audio or video across the net, there's also a useful streaming wizard to help get you going.

VLC media player isn't quite as intuitive as iTunes when it comes to media management - it's much more basic and stripped down in that respect - but it's a much more flexible player in terms of file formats. And if VLC media player doesn't recognize the file type it will often try playing it anyway and will display the scrambled video in its raw form.

If you don't have any media to play, then VLC media player also offers superb integration with video channel streaming services such as Channels.com giving you access to channels such as ESPN, Reuters and National Geographic. Just right-click or CMD-click on the playlist, select Services Discovery and Channels.com. Channels.com will then appear in your playlist. Click on it to reveal the the different categories of channels available on VLC media player. Click on the category you want and a drop down list of all available channels appears. Just click on the channel you want to watch and streaming should begin almost immediately.

As regards control, VLC media player offers superb hotkey support allowing you to define a key to do anything from taking video snapshots to skipping tracks. It also features subtitle support for all major subtitle formats and even allows you to switch languages in the click of a button.

Note that all versions of VLC media player compatible with Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.6 are available here. The main download link is for the 64 bit Intel version compatible with OS X 10.5 and above. However, you will be offered download links for older OS X versions when you click the free download link. Alternatively, you can download older versions at the foot of this page if you know which one is compatible with your OS. There is not, and there will never be, a version of VLC media player for Mac OS 9.

There's very little to fault with VLC media player. It's a superb lightweight media player that will successfully play the most stubborn files where other players fail.