Haihaisoft Universal Player

Having a media player that handles a world of different codecs and DRM protection right out of the box is critical when streaming websites simply won't cut it. If you need to distance yourself from Microsoft and Apple while keeping up an excellent set of playback features, Haihaisoft has you covered.

For me, using the Haihaisoft Universal Player was simple. I had some foreign indie films, mostly home-studio anime and a few live-action apartment shorts that I needed to stream, but I wanted to control the traffic flow. It's too easy to simply copy and spread the video on many of the public services such as YouTube and Dailymotion.

Don't get me wrong, reach is good. I simply wanted to make sure that most of the hits were coming from my sources before spreading it around too much. We want a bit of recognition and opinion, but past projects have been stolen and claimed by rogue YouTube accounts looking for some quick hipster cred.

The Block Capture feature did the trick. While I'm sure that someone will eventually circumvent any protection, as is the way with the Internet and human history in general, it's too much trouble for most people to go through. I'm keeping my hits, and when we're able to gauge unique reception, we'll be able to push our flow.

As a standalone player, it's surprisingly great. I thought that the days of finding new players were over in the '90s. As I mentioned in the list above, however, it handles every video format I throw at it, including downloads from torrent sites, US smartphone formats, Chinese, Japanese and Korean formats from my clients, pretty much any format that has been formally registered and a few that are completely random.

Pros:

• Get all of the services you need with one player

  With support for over 30 formats and codecs to expand even further, the Haihaisoft Universal Player is a powerhouse of playback for all of your media needs. Dump the old players with only a few support options and keep your system simple.

• Avoid banners and clicking mistakes with embedded Internet Explorer

  Are you tired of visiting the same adware dump website just because they have the fastest episode releases? Use the embedded browser to play your streaming content.

• Protect your intellectual property

  Are you a video content owner that needs video on the web without all the hassles of stolen content and annoying account management? Haihaisoft Universal Player can block screen-capturing attempts to keep your content exclusive for as long as possible.

• Integrated customer content

  If you have an account system, running username and password access through Haihaisoft Universal Player is easy. The Dynamic Watermark system works with DRM-X to accept customer logins and even add a unique watermark to their content.

Cons:

• Internet Explorer

  I don't like using IE as an embedded browser. While I can personally look for the IE hooks, getting the browser to run on Chrome is more than the average user can figure out.

I really don't have any complaints. For someone like me with content concerns who needs control of his work, Haihaisoft has nailed it.