Joann asks us via our contact page for a recommendation on a media player that can play many different video formats as well as audio.

To answer your question Joann, we really like VLC from VideoLAN.

Not only is VLC free, but it can play many different media formats without the need for bulky third party codec packs. Codec packs can often cause more issues than they’re worth. The versatile VLC contains just about every codec you will need to play your favorite video and music files.

In addition to being a great multimedia player, VLC is also an encoder and streamer. VLC can play CDs, video CDs and DVDs as well. Its cross-platform supporting Windows, MAC OS X, GNU/Linux and many others.

If you don’t like the default VLC interface, there are plenty of other nice looking skins to choose from.

Unlike some free media players, VLC is spyware and ad free. VLC can be downloaded here.

Happy computing, Joann!

We’ve had a few people ask us how to download a video from YouTube and save it to their local hard drive.  There’s a really easy way to do this.  It’s called save2pc and best of all it’s freeware.  According to save2pc, you can save YouTube and Google videos in AVI, MPEG or FLV video format.  It’s also free of adware and spyware — plus, it’s portable.

You can download the portable version of save2pc here.

Have other suggestions? Leave us a comment!

I have made a thread on our forums listing our recommended security related freeware to keep your computer(s) running safe from those internet nasties.  You can see the list with links here !