5KPlayer

If you wish to play and enjoy 4K, 5K, and 1080p video files and DVDs on your computer with the best possible quality, 5KPlayer is a free choice worth trying.

You can also use it to listen to your favorite audio files, download videos from YouTube and other video sites, and connect to a DLNA server or to AirPlay and stream your media between devices.

The only HD videos that this program can’t play are those on a Blu-ray disc or BDMV folder – not that the program is unable to play back an M2TS file, it just seems not to have been designed to deal with a the structure of a Blu-ray movie. All other video files (from MPEG to MKV and from MP4 to FLV) and even full DVDs play fine, together with some of the most common audio formats.

The program comes with a neat library where you can manage all media files going through 5KPlayer. Apart from the obvious Movies and Music playlists, you can create and add as many custom lists to your library as you wish. You will also find an AirRecord list, and that’s because this media player supports AirPlay and can connect to a DLNA server to stream and share your music and video between devices.

Together with whatever video files you may have on your internal disks and whatever external storage devices, 5KPlayer lets you add to your library files you download from YouTube, Vimeo, and many other online media sites. Once downloaded, you can move them to your favorite playlist and even extract their audio stream, save it as an MP3 or AAC file, and add it to one of your lists of audio files.

5KPlayer opens in an elegant dark-colored interface and plays your HD video files beautifully in full-screen mode if so desired. It is a completely free tool – if only it could play Blu-ray discs, it could easily become my default and only player on my PC.