There are plenty of programs out there that can download your favorite videos from YouTube and other video sites, but the average media player can't play the FLV format that such videos come in. FLV.com FLV Player is a basic program that lets you view FLV files, as well as several other video formats--in theory, anyway. If you want to watch FLV files, the program is fine, but with other supposedly supported formats we didn't have much luck.

The program's interface is pretty bare bones, with just a few buttons across the top for opening files and URLs and making the program full screen. We opened an FLV file and viewed the video with no problem; so far, so good. Things didn't go so well with other file types, though. We tried an MP4 file and the program couldn't load it, even though it played fine in a different media player. The F4V file was even worse; when we tried to browse to it from within FLV Player, we couldn't even see it, as the program displays only FLV and MP4 files in the Explorer window. The program has no Help file, so if we were somehow doing something wrong, we have no idea what it was. Overall, FLV Player works just fine for FLV files, but don't expect it to be able to handle other files types, even the ones it allegedly supports.