A friend of mine currently complained to me for twenty minutes about how much her brand new computer “sucks” because it couldn’t show the most recent episode of Gossip Girl that she had downloaded. (Apparently, being a tech nerd makes me single-handidly responsible in her mind for all technological faults.)

Many of you may be aware of VLC, a media-player for Mac OS X, Windows XP, Vista and various Linux Distributions, being known for it’s ability to play almost any media file in existence. The other day I downloaded an .mpc file (what ever that is), and sure enough, VLC played it. If you have a video or audio file that Windows Media Player or Quicktime can’t watch, invest in VLC.

Alternatively, if you don’t wish to broaden your horizons into VLC, I suggest Perian for Mac OS X, which allows for Quicktime to play a variety of other files. Another handy thing about Perian is that for Leopard, it allows you to preview DivX and other AVI files in QuickLook. Handy dandy huh?

Download VLC Here
Download Perian Here