TCPMP

Watching movies and listening to music, not to mention photo browsing, are some of the most common activities of computer users worldwide. Since there are countless applications that can carry out all those tasks individually or all together, choosing the most appropriate ones can be a challenge.

Lightweight and easy to use

One of the tools that has been around for quite a while is TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player), a very light utility able to handle video, audio and image files.
Since the software doesn't need to be installed, you can simply unpack the archive and have the program up and running on the fly.
A very simple interface greets you as soon as you open TCPMP and you will immediately notice that all the commands are at hand so you can start using the utility in no time.

Create or load already existing playlists

The application doesn't have support for drag and drop operations so you will have to use the menus to open files. Fortunately, there is a major plus for this tool, namely its ability to support playlists. Thus, you can easily create lists of multimedia items to be played.
In case you are interested in some technical details for any of the loaded items, TCPMP provides a function that allows you to explore information regarding the item's location, format, size and codecs used for playing it.

Configure video and audio options

This program comes with quite a few options pertaining to the viewing options. You can adjust the playback speed, zoom level, pixel aspect ratio as well as the orientation.
Dedicated video settings include smooth zoom, output quality and video driver choice. The audio configurations will enable you to set the stereo and mono types, increase or decrease preamplification and also choose the audio driver.

To end with

All in all, outdated as it may seem, TCPMP can still put up a fight against some of its younger adversaries. It has some rather useful functions like the playlist support, but overall its performance can only be rated as average.