QuickTime Editor's Review

Play all kinds of media, including iTunes DRM'ed media, with this must have, multi-platform tool.

I...am an iTunes junkie. I admit it freely. I have an iPhone and an iPad and I love them to death. Apple has integrated its media into most, if not all of its ecosystem and that's probably the biggest reason why I like its QuickTime application. It’s a multi-platform media player.

You can use QuickTime for all of your media.  You can use it to view video from your digital camera or mobile phone. You can use it to view a movie on your Mac or PC; or a media clip on a website.

It’s a sophisticated media player.
QuickTime Player has a clean, uncluttered interface that doesn't get in the way of what you’re watching. Quickly moving through lengthy video is as easy as moving a slider to the left or right in the program window.  You can also control the speed at which the media plays via a handy slider lets you set playback from 1/2x to 3x the normal speed. You can also search through individual movie frames quickly.

QuickTime supports H.264, an advanced video compression technology that delivers brilliant, crisp HD quality video using less bandwidth and requires less storage on your PC. QuickTime lets you convert your files to different formats and record and edit your work. It supports third-party plug-ins that extend its technology in many different directions; and you can also use QuickTime to stream your media across the Internet.

Pro’s: Free, works on Windows and Macs

Con’s: Advanced features require QuickTime Pro

Conclusion: On the Mac side of the world, QuickTime is integrated into nearly everything. While you can watch movies directly in iTunes, if you wish, you can navigate right to the intended video and open it in QuickTime, make the window float on top of everything, and then move it anywhere on your monitor. I do this to watch movies while I work, all the time.  On the Windows side, it’s a bit different as WMP usually handles most video tasks, though iTunes for Windows also requires QuickTime.

This is simply a must have multimedia component in my opinion, and since it's free including it in your multimedia tool box is clearly a no brainer.