Free multimedia playback software for mac

VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
VLC can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Main features:
- It is a free cross-platform media player.
- It supports a large number of multimedia formats, without the need for additional codecs.
- It can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video on demand, on the fly transcoding, ...).

System requirements:
-
- G4 processor/Intel for smooth MPEG-2 decoding.

Enhancements
Important notes:
- Alsa and OSS audio capture has been removed from the v4l and v4l2 accesses.
- Support for Mac OS X 10.4.x was dropped due to its technical limitations.
Playback:
- Instantaneous pausing.
- Frame-by-Frame playback.
- Finer speed control.
- On-the-fly recording for all medias.
- Timeshift for most medias.
- RTSP trickplay support.
- Subtitles core improvements and fixes.
Decoders:
- New AES3 (SMPTE 302M) decoder.
- New Dolby Digital Plus - E-AC-3 (A/52b) decoder.
- New True HD/MLP decoder and parser.
- New Blu-Ray Linear PCM decoder.
- New QCELP (Qualcomm PureVoice) decoder.
- Improved Real Video 3.0 & 4.0 decoder.
- New WMA v1/2 fixed point integer decoder.
- Close Caption under SCTE-20 standard are now correctly decoded.
- Improvement of WavPack decoder to support all integer modes and float mode.
- Corrections on 5.1 and 7.1 channel decoding and ordering.
Demuxers:
- Support for Dirac, MLP and RealVideo in Matroska files.
- Major improvements in RealMedia files opening (.rm and .rmvb).
- Improvements of the TS demuxer for M2TS files from Blu-Ray and AVCHD.
- Metadata for mod files are supported.
- GSM codecs in Wav files are supported.
- New raw audio demuxer supporting raw PCM streams.
- New dirac demuxer for raw dirac streams.
Encoders:
- Dirac encoding using libdirac (supported in Ogg and in TS).
- Shine mp3 fixed-point encoder.
Access:
- RTSP authentication with Darwin Streaming Server.
- On-the-fly gzip and bzip2 file decompression (except on Windows).
- Playback for video in uncompressed multi-RAR archives.
- New OSS and Alsa accesses. The v4l2 and v4l modules no longer support.
- OSS or Alsa audio input. Use --input-slave alsa:// or oss:// if needed.
- EXPERIMENTAL Blu-Ray Disc and AVCHD Folders support
- On-the-fly zip file decompression and browsing (MRL of the form zip://file.zip!/file.avi to specify the file - the development form of zip://file.zip|file.avi is not supported anymore).
- Opening of any file descriptor using fd://.
- MTP device access on Unix.
- CD-Text support on the cdda module (CD-Audio).
- :start-time and :stop-time can handle sub-second values.
Inputs:
- Mouse cursor support in x11 and win32 screen modules
Playlist:
- Export the playlist in HTML.
- Lua script for BBC radio playback.
- Better metadata handling and reading.
Interface:
- Controllable by the Media Keys on modern Apple keyboards (brushed Aluminium).
- Reveal-in-Finder functionality for locally stored items.
- Easy addition of Subtitles through the Video menu.
- Additional usability improvements.
Stream output:
- Restored the old mpeg2 transrating module.
- Multiple bridge-in instances are now possible.
- bridge-in can be used to configure a placeholder stream.
- Remote Audio Output Protocol (AirTunes) module.
- Fixed mosaic memleak. Mosaics are now usable again.
Maemo Port - New Maemo port with:
- An interface based on Hildon framework.
- Scaler based on the swscale_nokia770 library.
Mac OS X Port:
- Speed improvements by using llvm-gcc.
- New Document icons by Dominic Spitaler.
Audio output:
- Removed obsolete Esound and aRts plugins.
- Surround support for PulseAudio.
Video output:
- Effects (cube, torus, etc.) removed from OpenGL video output.
- Video is able to stay in original size and to zoom in fullscreen (hotkey o) while keeping black borders.
- Image video output has been rewritten into a video-filter named scene.
- The old image video output has been removed.
- Support for scaling and converting video chromas with FFMPEG imgresample was withdrawn due to bugs. Please use the newer FFMPEG swscale instead.
Miscellanous:
- Invmem, a fake codec to display images from external applications.

Requirements: G3, G4, or G5 processor (G5 required for HD playback), Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Windows Media Player (Classic) 7.1 (for Mac 8.1 and higher) is a professional and useful tool that opens up a whole new world to Mac users, enabling you to hear and see the thousands of hours of Windows Media-formatted content out on the Web. With full support for the latest Windows Media technologies, Windows Media Player delivers CD-quality audio at half the file size of MP3 and the sharpest video available. The Windows Media Player for Macintosh is based on DirectShow architecture and is designed to provide the most extendable, flexible, and convenient player for accessing multimedia content.

Windows Media Player 7.1 for Mac has all the functionality of the new OS X Player. Both have optimized playback of Windows Media format and enhanced reliability. Optimized specifically for the Macintosh, the new player provides intuitive design, reliable performance, and compatibility with most popular Macintosh models and system software.

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 or later.