Whether the film or video, of whatever format it is, can be seen and heard well, depends on the video and audio codecs that are installed in your pc and Windows Media Player, which is installed together with Windows and which is for many the only multimedia player present, does not have by default all the existing codecs.
The file formats are generally .avi, .mpg, .flv, .mpeg, .mp4, .mkv, but if you don't have all the codecs, you risk reading, for example, one .avi video yes and another no depending on the codec used to compress it.
First of all it is important to know that you shouldn't never download players and updates from streaming video sites because they are almost always viruses or deceptive advertisements that download junk.
To See all movies and videos, if you still want to use the old Windows Media Player as a program, the best video codec package that is KLite Video Codec, basic version (recommended), standard or full
Once this pack of codecs is installed, every time you start playing a video, Windows automatically recognizes which codec to use and starts playing.
Klite Codecs also work in Windows 10 and 8, they act at the system level, ie for all programs, and are the most complete for viewing any type of video on the PC with the new Microsoft operating system.
Alternatively, to watch standard films and videos with Avi, Mkv and Divx formats, you don't need to have all the codecs in the world and you can just install the Divx Codec Plus package.
With this software you will be able to see almost all the videos both streaming, both downloaded, and taken with mobile phones, iPhones or camcorders.
For Windows 10 you can add system-level support for OGG Container, Vorbis Decoder and Theora Decoder video codevs (mostly used for online content) by installing the app Web Media Extensions.
Once Klite is installed Windows Media Player will read any format Video and Audio is valid and there will be no need to use different players or to convert video files from one format to another between them.To watch videos saved on your PC without installing any codecs, you can use one of the media player programs listed in another article.
Among them is the popular VLC Player, universal reader free and opensource, indispensable, which can never be missing on your PC: light, capable of reading almost all formats, audio and video, fast and functional in receiving streaming broadcasts on the internet.VLC is the only player with which you can preview a video that is being downloaded, even before the download is completed.
It deserves particular mention Media Player Classic - Home Cinema, included in Klite, a highly customizable video player, simplified and relieved of all the superfluous able to read all kinds of videos and films on the computer.
If the video on your computer still does not show and there are codec problems and errors with corrupted Avi and Divx files, you can solve it by reading another guide on this blog.
For online streaming videos of websites, make sure you have the browser plugin installed on your computer Adobe Flash Player which is the only software needed for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Chrome already includes the Flash Player inside so it doesn't need anything else.
For Youtube, on the other hand, nothing is needed because its videos are in html5, natively supported by all modern browsers (see also how to try the HTML5 video plugin).
Any notice of updates or downloads of other programs is always and only misleading advertising.
Software and codecs to watch movies and videos of all kinds on Windows
