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Mediaplayers

DOS

You will ask: Mediaplayers for DOS??? Yes, there are some available, and at least 3 which are very good. The advantage of DOS is that it boots very fast. So if you want an audio player or video player, DOS could be a very good choice.

If you are not familiar with multimedia file formats, you might have a look here also: GraphMediaTech .

1.  Players under development or recommended

1.1  MPXPLAY (Audio player, open source, freeware) :-)

Project pages:

• mpxplay.sf.net - has major MPXPLAY versions and (old) AudioCV
• freewebtown.com/mpxplay - had latest test, alpha or beta versions, WAVPACK DOS port and some other stuff (no longer)
• sf.net/projects/mpxplay - has final, also older major releases
• Forum of Mpxplay: sf.net/…/forum/219198
• New: Fanpage at http://sites.google.com/site/mpxplay1 !

This player (obsolete version) is included into FreeDOS 1.0 distro !

By PDSoft, Attila Padar, mpxplay .

Main features:

• Support of pretty all audio file formats being around by now (see below for details)
• Can also play sound from some video files (see below)
• Support of many sound cards/chips, much better than any other DOS player (see below)
• LCD-display handling
• ID3-Editor
• LFN support (with DOSLFN or LFN support in DOS kernel)
• Cross-fade songs realtime
• Playlist and drive/directory scan
• All infos & settings on one screen - simple & convenient
• Control with keyboard, mouse, joystick and serial port (infra receiver)
• Download size only cca 600 KiB
• Works on CPU’s down to 80486 at cca 66 MHz (depends from codec / fileformat played)
• New feature: includes a FTP-client (since 1.57)
• There is also a version with plug-in support available, allowing to use this MPXPLAY version as encoder for some popular file formats
• etc.

It supports following codecs and file formats:

• Vorbis (inside OGG/OGA files, free lossy codec technically superior to MP3)
• FLAC (raw FLAC/FLA/FLC or inside OGG) & Wavpack (WV) (lossless codecs)
• OPUS (inside OGG and MKV/WeBM, using DLL, since 1.60)
• Audio MPEG Layer II/III: MP2, MP3 (separate “raw” audio-only files)
• WAV (uncompressed “PCM” audio)
• Advanced Audio Coding: AAC, MP4, M4A (audio-only files)
• Dolpy AC-3: AC3
• DTS Coherent Acoustics: DTS
• Monkey’s Audio: APE
• Musepack/MPEGPlus: MPC
• WMA (Originating from M$, used to be closed source, someone “opened” it)
• Using DLL plugin most of module music formats: MOD, S3M, XM, MED, IT
• Audio CD ripp’n’play
• Containers (file may have video, only audio played): OGG (with Vorbis or FLAC), ASF/WMV (with WMA), AVI (with MP3, maybe others (?)), 1.60 new: Matroska/WebM (with Vorbis or OPUS, maybe others (?)), MPEG-4 (with AAC, maybe others (?))
• Playlists: M3U, M3U8, PLS, FPL, CUE, MXU
• Not supported: TAK lossless audio (use TAK or FFMPEG to decode), AMR audio codec (can be found in some MPEG-4 files instead of AAC, use MPLAYER), MOD&XM (use JUDAS or OCP), MID (use OCP)

Sound cards / chips support:

• ISA SB 16 / SBpro and compatible cards and chips
• GUS
• Creative PCI cards SB Live/Live24, Audigy 1,2,4,LS - native support, no drivers required
• new in 1.57: (partial) ENS: ES1371/1373 - SB16PCI, SB64PCI, SB128PCI
• Intel ICH (2 to 7), Intel HDA (ICH8 to ICH10, partial), VIA 686/8233/8235, CMI 8338/8738
• Partial / problematic support: ENS (many submodels exist, some do work, some not), ESS, SB 512 PCI, Intel HDA ICH8 (fixing in progress)
• Unsupported: Covox, “PC” speaker

• GallMediaPlyrs
• Screenshot movie of Mpxplay at YouTube (requires IE or FF with JavaS*** and Adobe “Flash” player, “some” accessibility with Arachne)

Latest versions: 1.60 final 2015-Feb-08 , 1.59 final 2012-Aug-01

1.2  QV - QuickView (Video player, shareware, from 10$)

Note: If you register then author W. Hesseler will continue developing this great program of DOS!

Project page: http://www.multimediaware.com/qv/index.html

By Wolfgang Hesseler . It is still (2015) under development and inexpensive. So if you are interested in a video-player for DOS, please support the author’s work.

• Audio player, Video player, Image viewer
• Audio: MP1, MP2, MP3, [OGG] Vorbis, VOC, WAV
• Images: BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, TGA etc. (no PNG)
• Video: AVI (incl. DivX), MPG, MOV, DL, CEL, FLI, FLC, Animated GIF, VideoCD and CD-i
• Screen output: VGA, ModeX, VESA, and hardware video scaling/acceleration on many graphics cards!
• Built-in support of ISA SB cards/chips and “PC” speaker (hidden, see manual), some PCI soundcards (SB Live/Audigy) supported with “external” drivers (see manual/project page)
• Written (mostly ?) in assembly (closed source), uses some C code from FFMPEG project (?), uses DOS/32A extender
• Works on old PC’s also, video down to cca 80486 & 100 MHz, images and sound also 80386
• Both download size and EXE size only cca 640 KiB (version 2.58)
• Still maintained
• Not supported: ASF/WMV container (no problem), FLV, OGG Theora/Dirac video (not even included Vorbis sound can be played, a must fix, OGG files are recognized, but as pure OGG Vorbis audio files only), Matroska/WebM, FLAC, OPUS, TAK

Latest versions: 2.60 (2015), 2.58 (2007–03–01), 2.57 (2006–02–11)

There is also an abandoned QuickView 1.03b (Real Mode) version from 1998-Nov-13, running on 80286 also, but very limited in functionality.

1.3  MPLAYER (free, open source)

See separate page : Mplayer

1.4  APEG player + encoder (free, open source)

Based on APEG Allegro addon library, player (MPEG-1 and OGG Theora), encoder (OGG Theora).

Download mirror: APEG10B2.ZI7 (all-in-one package , 1.6 MiB)

About encoder and library, see: Video & DevelLibs , screenshots are here: GallMediaPlyrs .

1.5  DUGL-Player (freeware, mostly open source)

Project page & download: dugl.50webs.com

Arachne-compatible download mirrors:

• Latest : http://jafile.com/uploads/ffk/
• DPLAY050.zip 0.50
• DPLAY044.zip 0.44 for regression tests
• DPLAY043.zip 0.43 for regression tests

Plays OGG Theora and old MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 videos, without sound so far (sound is getting skipped from OGG, must be removed from MPEG, retest needed). It is a sample program from DUGL (graphic-library). It uses the 640×480×16bpp mode, and requires a CPU with MMX and at least VESA 2.0 graphics card. It has a very nice GUI, while the missing sound support is a severe flaw. The author reportedly works on sound drivers (ICH / HDA ???) and next version 0.6 should be able to play Vorbis sound using them.

1.6  JUDAS player and library (freeware, open source)

piotrkn22.republika.pl/judas/index.html

Judas can play XM, S3M, MOD, WAV and RAW audio files (but not MID) on most ISA (SB, SBPro, SB16, GUS) and some PCI (AC97 (Intel ICH & SIS), Intel HDA) sound hardware, or save a WAV file (broken in some versions).

1.7  “DISPLAY” (Abandoned, freeware, no source)

No project page !

• Image viewer and converter - almost XNVIEW quality !
• Supports old VGA (320×200×8bpp) and new (up to 1280×1024×24bpp VESA) graph modes
• Supports BMP, PNG, GIF, JPG and some other file types, also huge images (tested up to 5000 x 3000 pixels)
• PNG decoder slightly buggy - rejects some (very few, mostly very small) valid PNG’s (there are worse)
• Supports animated GIF (OTOH obviously no APNG)
• Video (MOV, AVI, MPG with old codecs - yes it works !) player
• Extract frames from videos
• Audio (WAV) player (not very useful, needs ISA SB16 or similar card or “emu” drivers)
• Includes a minimal file manager
• Dates from 1997 (using latest technology from that time !), but not obsolete
• Use CWSDPMI v5 or v7 or HDPMI32 instead of very obsolete included CWSDPMI v3
• Some source fragments (yeah … only …) included

2.  Other / older / historical players

2.1  Jukebox

Interesting music-program, it is “only” a jukebox ;-)

2.2  PacePlayer

This (http://old.ideaz.sk/index.php?sub=9&id=5) is an interesting player written in C using DJGPP. Source code is available if you want to continue! ;-)

2.3  Open Cubic Player (open source, GPL, abandoned)

Project page (still available 2012–02): cubic.org/player

Mirror (all-in-one): cubrick.zi7 (12 MiB)

DOS support is dead since cca 1999 to 2002 (no PCI sound hardware support).

Can “decode” MID into WAV, it is the only DOS solution for native MID support.

2.4  DAMP (open source, GPL)

2.5  JukeMP3

• Audio player, MP3 only, no [OGG] Vorbis, needs ISA SB16 card or “emulation” drivers.
• Dates from 2002

2.6  DOSAMP

Simple DOS audio player, plays MP3 files via ISA SB sound card. Latest DOS version is 0.7/0.8 (???) from 1997, then dropped in favor of WinAMP product. Historical relevance only, no project page. Download: rjamorim.com/rrw/dosamp.html from “Really Rare Wares”. See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosamp (no longer).

2.7  Ken Silverman’s players (closed/open source freeware)

Using ISA SB16 card or “PC” speaker, playing WAV and old MP3 files.

2.8  Digital Sound System (DSS)

An MP3 and WAV player and recorder written by Sergey Sapelin. It supports several old audio devices: ISA sound cards, PC speaker, Covox. In DSS.INI use “Device=1″ to select ISA Sound Blaster or “Device=8″ for internal PC speaker. Most of the development occurred from 1996 to 2000, dates inside the ZIP are from 2003. Project page and version history are available in English, most of the docs only Russian. Done originally in 16-bit Pascal, after an unsuccessful attempt to upgrade to 32-bit TMT Pascal it was converted into C language, WATCOM compiler and PMODE/W extender are used. No sources have been ever released, though, and file “register.txt” in Russian doesn’t reveal the exact license.

2.9  Misc

See SF forum thread: sf.net/forum…

3.  Players that could possibly work in DOS soon

(Not yet available by now, see also HX-DOS section for technical info about what is needed to get them working)

3.1  GNASH

Free and Open Source player for SWF movies/animations, format was originally invented by “Macromedia”, now officially owned by Adobe, since 2008–05–01 open (partially ?) again: adobe.com/devnet/swf . Project originates from Linux, since 0.7.1 there are some “unofficial” / experimental Win32 binaries, no DOS port yet. Gnash 0.7.1 Win32 did “work” partially in DOS using HX, but was unusably slow and buggy itself. Later, a Win32 binary was compiled from version 0.8.2 and released, works pretty well, but not (yet ?) in DOS, then even newer versions, a Win32 binary of version 0.8.9 is out (buggy, and now abandoned too).

3.2  SWFDEC

The other GPL’ed SWF player. So far only Linux sources are available.

4.  See also

• GallMediaPlyrs - Screenshots of some players
• GraphMediaTech - Media (audio and picture) file formats
• GraphPaintCAD - Painting programs
• Mediaplayers - you are here
• Mplayer - One video player
• SoundCardChip - Sound in DOS issues
• Video - Video fileformats, compression, encoding