PMPlayer is a versatile and feature-packed media player.

The program can open and play all the main media types and devices: video and audio files, CDs, DVDs, local capture devices, webcams, IP cameras, media streaming URLs and more.

This is all very easy to use - drag, drop, manage with a standard player bar - but there's plenty of extra functionality available. Right-clicking enables features like setting window transparency or making it "always on top"; applying video filters (rotate/ flip/ brightness/ contrast/ saturation/ hue); capture and save frames; set playback speed or volume; set a zoom factor or change aspect ratio; work with playlists; customise subtitles; set a program skin; adjust codecs, renderers and more.

Most of this just "works", and we saw benefits immediately. We opened a video, played it part way through, closed the file. Reopened it later, and were surprised (in a good way) to see it restart where we left off.

There's real depth to some of these features, too. PMPlayer doesn't just display subtitles, for instance-- it can have them automatically translated to other languages. Setting this up takes a little work (you must create a Yandex account and get a free API key), but well worth the effort, even if you only use it once or twice.

PMPlayer also extends the media playing basics with some surprising extras of its own: video calling and conferencing, motion detection, screen sharing, and more.