It appears that the latest VLC player 0.8.6e no longer works on Windows 98. It complains about unicode support. Has anyone found a workaround, or can someone recommend another media player application that still supports Windows 98?

Probably you'll have to download unicows.dll. Put the dll in your system directory.

I just wanted to post this, but then I saw that you already mentioned it.



Nope, that won't make any difference. Besides that, the new VLC doesn't even work with KernelEx.

Well, that's it, 0.8.6d is the final VLC for Windows9X.

That was unpleasent surprise for me too because there's no problem with 0.8.6d version.
But I was even more surprised when I have installed (just for curiosity) latest nightly build (version 9.0) and it works under Win98SE!
Btw, Bleeder you can download latest release of Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=205650

That's interesting, I think I'll try that one out. But I guess it won't be long until the nightlies won't work as well.


For anyone that is already searching a "replacement" for VLC, I can warmly suggest the KMPlayer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KMPlayer

The Wikipedia Page only lists Win2K+ in the compatibility list, but that's just BS - the latest version works perfectly under '98 and there's not even a warning a la "this OS is not supported" like it could already be seen in the last VLC versions when you installed them on Win9X. Maybe there are a lot more VLC alternatives, but KMPlayer is already darn good, maybe even better than VLC.

Snob, I'm sure that you've seen that meassage on VLC page:



Maybe they broke something in this release because this is strange that stable build doesn't work and nightly works.

Thanks for the suggestion about KMPlayer - I'll check it.

Yup, I've read that message... it's actually quite old; I think they've posted it in mid-2006 or something: but as you know, all VLC until now worked on Win9X anyway. (it's the same with Java 1.6: when you install it, you always get a message that it's not officially supported on '98, but it works anyway)


I just tried out the latest nightly (svn-2008-02-28) as well and now I know why it works, but the new 0.8 version doesn't: The 0.9 branch uses QT for the interface (that's why it looks more modern than 0.8), but the 0.8 versions use wxWidgets - and the latest wxWidget libraries don't work under Win9X anymore, but the newest QT versions are still 100% compatible. So it seems like VLC isn't dead on Windows9X yet, it's just the 0.8-branch that can't be used anymore.

In the meantime I've tried KMPlayer but I've got message about runtime error (Microsoft Visual C++ library).

...so, what about XULPlayer ?

KMPlayer should definitely work because it's 100% Win9X compatible - I've got the latest version running on this machine and it works flawlessly without any warnings or error messages. I've not even had problems with earlier versions, but maybe you should try to reinstall it again or check if it's the latest version. It's definitely worth it (and no, the authors don't pay me for saying that )

Well, nice idea. But that one doesn't even work under Windows9X at all. And AFAIK it never did.

I've had KMPlayer installed on my machine for some time and I performed some tests. As soon as I uninstalled KernelEx, KMPlayer started crashing at startup. So apparently it works fine only as long as KernelEx is installed, which is not an acceptable alternative for all Win9x users.
Besides that, loading songs in a playlist is painfully slow with really many items (2-4 thousand).

I'm also looking for a decent Win9x media player but couldn't find one. The closest I got was GOMPlayer, but on this 400MHz CPU is just unusable for videos - the Gretech codecs or whatever else, are just too slow and choppy.

Haven't tried VLC 0.8.6e - I'm a bit reluctand to screwing up the previous version.

...and what about MPlayer ?

Personally I use Windows Media Player 6.0 with ffdshow (the July 2007 version, as the newest one's installer tries to use an API not available in Win95). I've tried VLC before, but WMP 6.0 was snappier.

- Subtitles support?
- Incomplete/damaged files support?
- Codecs/Filters exception list? (anyone else having crashes in GTCODEC.DLL installed/used by webcam?)
- User-friendly, rich-featured playlist?
- Low on resources on low-end machines?

Which of the above-mentioned players can do all these and still be free(ware)/open-source?

Gomplayer

Read post #11 above, please. Carefully.

Uhm... goom software tastes a bit like open source ripoffs...

(expecially the encoder: it's MediaCoder ?)

This fix seems to work

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44738

Drugwash, ffdshow supports most of those.

For some reason, ffdshow is extremely choppy on my system. I've tried a few of the latest releases from free-codecs.com - all MMX versions and they all exhibited strong video lags accompanied with choppy sound. I had to completely uninstall ffdshow.

Now I only have XVid 1.1.3 and DivX 5.2.1 which work pretty decently with BSPlayer Pro.

Sorry, I didn't. But in the latest version these filters can be disabled. Good thing because they are indeed slower.

I have no technical knowledge of VLC however 0.8.6d had broken unicode support. Actually wxWidgets from 0.8.6d had broken unicode support in one of it's libraries (resulting in missing text from menus and windows in some languages although translations were complete). They probably overdid it somehow. And from what i've heard is that 0.9 will completely scrap wxWidgets so that's why it probably works without problems.

Interesting discussion about problems with 0.8.6e version on the VideoLan forum:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44727
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44738

In fact this not that important because new 0.8.6f version fixed that problem!

Hmmm .....

Thanks for the heads up ... went for a search and found 'em ... It's not officially posted yet on videolan site, so get your copy of 0.8.6f here and let's see if they rocks ...

http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.8.6f/win32/

Rgds

MPlayer with its very powerful frontend SMPlayer. Unfortunately it wouldn't seek through videos, at least on my machine. Maybe you'll be a bit luckier.

Nope, sorry. Could be KernelEx interfering, but the above combination didn't work right and crashed on exit. Qt has issues in Win9x. I'll stick to BSPlayer 2.27 for now, which is working OK for my slow machine.

Well, after a nice run with 0.8.6f, VideoLAN has killed wxWidgets again in 9x...
I just tried 0.8.6h, and it fails with the classic 0.8.6e error:

wxWidgets Fatal Error
This program uses Unicode and requires Windows NT/2000/XP.
Program aborted.

So, I tried the libwxwidgets_plugin.dll fix by copying the file from the working 0.8.6f...

Now it starts, but when I try to play a video, it fails:

VLC has caused an invalid page fault in module liblinear_resampler_plugin.dll at 017f:6a5018aa

Guess I'm going back to 0.8.6f...

BTW, 0.8.6f can still be downloaded from:

http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.8.6f/win32/

UPDATE
0.8.6h works fine (with the 0.8.6f widgets plugin) with most files.
It just so happened that I tested it on a recently downloaded file.
The file was an Apple QuickTime trailer with 5.1 audio.
I used to be able to play these 5.1 trailers but with audio problems.
(See here: http://www.msfn.org/board/VLC-media-player...ve-t115798.html)
However, now it appears that they will not play for me at all...
I tried 0.8.6c, 0.8.6f, and 0.8.6h, all with the same page fault.
QuickTime Trailers with stereo work with no problem.
I tried all sorts to play without error... Removing new software, changing Windows settings, and so on.

Summary: 0.8.6h works with the wxWidgets file from 0.8.6f, however 5.1 audio playback in QuickTime 7 files may be problematic...

UPDATE - Problem Solved!
I had deselected the High quality audio resampling option to improve playback of HD QuickTime videos...
It appears now that the 'low quality' resampling fails on 9x with 5.1 audio...
With this re-enabled, all is fine!
And... since I can play 5.1 audio, I have also discovered that VLC player 0.8.6h has actually fixed my 5.1 audio problems.
See here: http://www.msfn.org/board/VLC-media-player...529#entry778529

My usual video player for Win9x is Crystal Player 1.85 (older version). It's lacking some features and has a few annoyances, but overall I find it the most comfortable (after changing the default skin :).

Some random points:

Pros:

* Better at handling maxed CPU (that's why I switched to using it from RadLight 3).
* On-the-fly switching of rendering mode (Overlay, VMR, etc.)
* Nice built-in subtitles rendering (*.sub has some issues though).
* Shift subtitles sync with hotkeys.
* Dropped frames stats.

Cons:

* Troublesome seeking.
* Doesn't support >2GB files.
* Audio shifting increments a bit too coarse (100ms).