Watch and listen to all kinds of media with the K-Lite Codec Pack

With so many kinds of music and video on the internet it's not uncommon to find that you cannot play something that's been recommended to you. The K-Lite Codec Pack includes the software needed to play lots of different media files. These are called codecs, hence the name.

It works with Windows Media Player and Media Center as well as any other media player that uses the DirectShow technology. This includes Media Player Classic and ZoomPlayer.

There are three K-Lite codec packs to choose from. The one here is the Full version that adds Media Player Classic Homecinema, DVD playback to the standard file support for AVI, MKV, MP4, FLV, OGM, MPEG, MOV, HDMOV, TS, M2TS, XviD and OGG files. It also has support for several extra lossless formats and includes some useful tools such as GraphStudio. A full list of the supported formats can be found on the K-Lite website.

Installation is fairly easy. We used the Advanced install option to see the full list of possible. Even with this option there are eight different profiles to choose from, which are well described. There is a final step of options for the various programs but we left those as they were.

It is possible to change the file associations for Windows Media Player but this option is not selected by default.

Notes:
It can activate thumbnail generation in Windows Explorer for some formats that Windows cannot do otherwise.

Media Center is told to include the new formats in the library.