ROX Player is a simple tool which can play local and audio and video files in all the main formats.

There's nothing special about that, of course, but the program does have a more interesting extra. It can also stream web files in various protocols, including HTTP, IPTV, and even BitTorrent.

We tried playing a torrent, and it proved very straightforward. Clicking File > Open .torrent gave us the option to specify a torrent file, URL or magnet link. Once you've done this, ROX Player downloads and buffers the first part of the torrent, so trying to ensure you'll have hassle-free playback. You're then able to watch or listen to the file, without having to download it in full, first. And playback can be very smooth, too, although of course it'll vary depending on the bitrate of your torrent, the number of seeds, your internet bandwidth, and so on.

ROX Player doesn't provide an option to save the downloaded media, unfortunately, which means it's not exactly the most efficient use of the protocol. But you can at least copy the file manually from the program's temporary folder (C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\ROX Player\torrent by default), although you need to remember to do this at the time: close and restart ROX Player and its last download session will be deleted.

The core player is also extremely basic, with very few features: there's subtitle support, a few video tweaks, and that's about it.

ROX Player can't begin to compete with tools like VLC Media Player, then, but its streaming abilities are useful, and we'll be interested to see how it develops in future.