MView SE
One of my biggest gripes about Windows Media Player is their isn't a lightweight interface without all the extra tabs for ripping, burning and shopping for music. There's mini-mode, but even that is inelegant for many things. I want something that's little more than a playback window for video. MView SE accomplishes this nicely, with a very slim set of play controls and support for all the media types playable in Windows Media Player. In addition to the tiny footprint around your media, a set of single button keyboard controls makes play control reasonably easy with F for Fullscreen, M for Mute, O for Opening a new file, P for Play or Pause, and S for Stop. There are a ton of additional keyboard controls for fast forward and rewind. A built in sound record function captures audio from whatever is currently playing in MView. MView also supports multiple instances so you can watch more than one video at the same time. One key feature lacking from MView is support for either M3U or PLS playlist files. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]