I must have a thing for freeware with a superlative in its name — I’ve already told you about UltraVNC and now I’m about to recommend K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.
It started out as a quest to find some Quicktime codecs for watching .mov files with my then-favourite video viewer, IrfanView, without having to install Quicktime. I became great friends with Quicktime Alternative and the included Media Player Classic but then after a few months I stumbled upon the great granddaddy of the Media Player Classic bundles: K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.
Oh baby! Is there a codec it doesn’t come with, or a video format it can’t play? Well, sure, maybe not Google Video (yet?) but it plays everything else I’ve ever thrown at it. It also plays Real Media (.rm) videos, DVDs and all sorts of audio files (mp3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis etc). No wonder they call it “mega.”
Since installing it on friends’ and family’s computers, I haven’t once been asked “Hey, how do I play an AVI file? Windows Media Player keeps saying something about downloading a codec but it doesn’t work. What do I do?”
Install it, watch video files, be mega.
Hey, maybe that should be a new theme for Only Tools and Horses: AWESOME freeware. Stay tuned for “Sublime Programmers Editor v7.0″, “Stupendous AntiVirus Personal Edition” and “Spectacular Firewall 2006″. 
