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GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) is a 32/64-bit media player for Microsoft Windows, distributed by the Gretech Corporation of South Korea.

It is the primary client player for South Korean GOM-TV, and is more popular in South Korea than any other media player. Key strengths inherited from libavcodec include wide ranging ability to play media files, including .flv - without needing to obtain an external codec, and the ability to play some broken media files. Both of those features are present in other projects using libavcodec like VLC and MPlayer, but are absent from some other media software, including Windows Media Player.

The word gom (곰) means "bear" in Korean, and as such GOM Player uses a bear's paw as its symbol.

Supported files and devices[link]

The latest version of GOM Player will playback the following types of media file.

• Incomplete or damaged AVI files (skipping the damaged frames)
• Broken AVI files (rebuilding the file's Index in real-time)
• ASF/OGG/MP3/AVI files on an HTTP Streaming connection
• Using DirectShow it will play these file formats: AVI, WMV, Matroska, QuickTime, MP4, 3GP, Google Video, Flash Video, VOB, Ogg, OGM, RMVB, MPEG-1, MPEG-2
• RealMedia files (requires Real Alternative installed)
• QuickTime files (requires QuickTime Alternative installed)

The latest version of GOM Player will playback the following types of disc -

• Audio CD (requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP)
• DVD (requires MPEG-2 codec installed)
• Video CDs/SVCDs/XCD s

Supported video/audio formats[link]

The latest version of GOM Player natively supports the following video and audio formats, without any external codecs:

Video formats

MPEG-1, MPEG-4 Part 2, MS MPEG4 V1/2/3, MJPEG, H.263(+), H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), FLV1, MSVIDC

Audio formats

WAV, MP3, Vorbis, AMR, QCELP, EVRC

GOM Player also supports peer-to-peer video streaming through an official add-on called GOMTV Streamer.^[1]

Subtitles[link]

The latest version of GOM Player supports the following subtitle formats -

• Unicode Text Subtitles
• SAMI (smi)
• SubRipText (srt), MicroDVD (sub), SMIL/RealText
• SubStation Alpha (ssa), Advanced SubStation Alpha (ass)
• VOBsub (sub/idx)
• Embedded subtitles of ASF, MKV, OGM

Codec finder[link]

Another significant feature of GOM Player is that where it can't play the audio or video of a media file natively, it will try to find an appropriate external codec which will play that file format, using the format's GUID, a unique identifier for the required codec. On finding a match, it will direct the user to a webpage where the appropriate codec can be downloaded and installed.

GOM TV[link]

GOM TV is a popular streaming service in South Korea, and is responsible for GOM Player's popularity in South Korea. The GOM TV service offers users various video contents ranging from National Geographic documentaries and television dramas to major motion pictures and adult videos.

The service mixes both ad-supported and pay-per-view content. Prices range from 500 won and up (approximately 50 cents U.S.), with most movies available for 2,000 won (approximately US$2).^[2]

While the functions are very similar in the English and Korean language versions of GOM Player, the option to watch GOM TV is absent in the English language version.

The GOM Player (up to v2.1.9) allowed users world wide to view the GOM TV StarLeague (a channel of South Korea's GOM TV), more commonly known as the GSL. Users can watch the latest matches in South Korea's leading StarCraft 2 leagues (GOMTV Global Starcraft II League and GOMTV Global Starcraft II Team League). Despite this, the GOM television service is still not included in the English language release (so that foreign viewers who wish to watch StarCraft matches must use GOMTV.net to connect to the streaming service).

Popularity in South Korea[link]

GOM Player is South Korea's most popular media player. As of July 2007, it had 8.4 million users, compared to 5.4 million users of Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

A survey of usage over a single week by Metrix, an internet survey company, found that 69.8% of users watched pornography, 43.2% watched cinematic movies, 29.6% watched television dramas, 21.8% watched variety shows, 11% watched cartoons, and 7% watched music videos.^[3] This is in line with South Korea being allegedly the greatest spender per capita on pornography, even though local production of pornography is illegal.^[4] Gretech disputes the credibility of this report.

Metrix obtained the survey data from 12,000 internet users who agreed to voluntarily install a monitoring tool. Only file names were used to categorize the media files included in the survey.

Gretech points out that media files played by GOM Player are not monitored,^[5] and that only the explicit installation of the Metrix survey software enabled that monitoring to be done.

See also[link]

• List of media players
• Comparison of media players
• List of multimedia (audio/video) codecs

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official GOM Player site
• Official GOM News & Announcements
• Official GomTV Site (Korean)
• Official Gom Software site
• Official GomTV Site (English)
• Software Review by Softpedia
• Software Review by Techtree