VPlayer Video Player

Summary

Viewing videos on smartphones can be an extremely frustrating experience. Not all video formats are supported and converting your video files can be a real hassle.

It doesn’t really have to be this way, right? VPlayer (Free Trial) at least seems to think it can handle just about any video format out there. Let’s see if there’s any truth to that in today’s test.
 

At first glance VPlayer (Free Trial) looks like a regular file manager app with a barebones layout. The app just displays all videos that are on your SD card. Simply tap a video to start watching. From the looks of it, the app’s user interference is almost an exact copy of the default Android media player. You can start and pause the video and select a specific place to watch. In addition, the app also displays the time, date and battery level at the top. As is to be expected, all of these options disappear once the video has started playing.

Slide your finger vertically across the right edge of the screen to adjust the volume. Do the same motion on the left side to adjust the screen brightness.

And now the most important part of the test: video formats. As part of my test, I’ll try playing videos in all of the formats below:

Format | Codec | Resolution

• WMV | VC1 | 720p
• WMV | VC1 | 360p
• 3gp | H.264 | 360p
• FLV | FLV | 360p
• MKV | H.264 | 360p
• MP4 | MPEG 4 | 360p
• MPG | MPEG 2 | 360p
• SWF | Shockwave | 360p
• MKV | H.264 | 480p
• SWF | Shockwave | 480p
• WMV | VC1 | 480p
• MPG | MPEG 2 | 720p
• AVI | H.264 | 480p
• AVI | XVID | 360p

Generally speaking, the VPlayer handle all of these formats. On both the Nexus One and the LG Optimus Speed, all the 360p videos played splendidly without any lags or glitches. With the 480p videos there were only small problems with the SWF and FLV formats.
There were, however, serious issues on both devices with playback of the two 720p videos. Not only was the video extremely pixilated, but the image was very bouncy, laggy and extremely slow. On the Nexus One, the whole device just froze while the video kept on playing in the background as if with a mind of its own.
The reason behind these performance issues is that fact that the VPlayer always plays videos using only the phone’s processor. This is different from the regular Android video player which also uses the graphic card to allow playback of 720p high quality videos.

Aside from that, VPlayer remembers where you left off on a video even after you quit the app.
I also tested the subtitle function and it worked like a charm. On the Optimus Speed, I tried out the HDMI connection and VPlayer played well on my big screen TV.

The VPlayer also supports video streaming. Go to Menu -> Input URL to enter in an internet address. This worked every time without fail.
VPlayer also has a ton of very technical options and settings such as meta encoding, aspect ratio and more.

Bottom Line: For those of you unwilling to spend time converting videos to the right format, VPlayer is definitely worth a try. Watching anything over 480p, however, is virtually impossible with this video player.
A small piece of advice: Freemake Video Converter is a good free converter for Androids.

The settings are long and thorough. The layout of VPlayer (Free Trial) is very minimal, but that's too be expected from a video player. The main thing is that it works well enough. 

As I mentioned in the first section, VPlayer (Free Trial) has some serious performance issues with high quality videos. Aside from that, there aren't any other major problems. 

The VPlayer (Free Trial) is a seven day trial. After that trial period, you'll need to pay ~ $4.80 to purchase the full version from the Market. As I see it, the price is totally worth the end product. The VPlayer supports virtually every kind of video format, including video streaming as well as subtitles.