GOM Player

GOM Player (short for Gretech Online Movie Player) is a media player for Windows, developed by the GOM & Company of South Korea. Its main features include the ability to play some broken media files and find missing codecs using a codec finder service.[6]

GOM Player
GOM Player, using default skin
Developer(s)GOM & Company (Previously Gretech)
Initial releaseJanuary 7, 2003 (2003-01-07)
Stable release
Windows

2.3.58.5322 (October 20, 2020 (2020-10-20)[1])

iOS

1.5.1 (February 26, 2020 (2020-02-26)[2])

Android
1.5.5 (October 19, 2020 (2020-10-19)[3]) [±]
Preview releaseNone [±]
Operating system
Platformx86-64
Available inEnglish, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified)
TypeMedia player
LicenseFreemium [5]
Websitegomlab.com

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

Supported formats

GOM Player can play following multimedia formats:

The player can play incomplete, broken or damaged AVI files by skipping bad frames and rebuilding the file's index when necessary. GOM Player also supports peer-to-peer video streaming through an official add-on called GOMTV Streamer.[7]

Subtitles

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

Play 360 degrees VR video
  • Able to watch from up, down, left, and right, 360-degree video, by just using the keyboard or mouse
  • Supports preview with side views from front, back, left, and right as well as screen transition
  • Provides search and play functions for 360 YouTube videos

Customization

GOM Player's skinable interface and advanced filter controls make it customizatable, allowing users to personalize the software to their tastes. However, this feature is now limited, new skins or logos can no longer be downloaded from the website (only ones that are included with the GOM player) as the software is being managed by a new development team.

Codec finder

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 codec can be downloaded and installed.

Connect with GOM Remote

You can control GOM Player with GOM Remote. This includes all basic functions, such as moving forward/back, play, and pause. This also includes advanced functions, such as opening files, searching, and PC power control.

GOM Player for mobile

GOM Player is now available in Android and iOS versions. You can enjoy watching videos not just on your PC, but also on your mobile device. Enjoy watching videos easily with Mobile GOM Player any time, anywhere.

Popularity in South Korea

GOM Player is South Korea's most popular media player. As of July 2007, it had 21.3 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.[8] This is in line with South Korea being allegedly the greatest spender per capita on pornography, even though local production of pornography is illegal.[9] 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,[10] and that only the explicit installation of the Metrix survey software enabled that monitoring to be done.

Easter Eggs

A secret easter egg can be accessed by right clicking a video that's playing in GOM Player, after right clicking, the user needs to click "About", in the about tab, double-click, a window will open called "dodge".

Third-party malware controversy

Since January 2019, it is known to install third-party malware.[11] Users also reported the issue a year before in January 2018.[12]

See also

References
  1. "Windows Desktop". web site. 2019-04-16. Retrieved 2019-04-16.
  2. "Apple on the App Store". iTunes Store. 2019-03-05. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  3. "GOM Player". Google Play Store. 2019-03-14. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
  4. "GOM Player - Free download of global number one video player". GOM Lab.
  5. "GOM Player". Softpedia. SoftNews. 3 April 2013. Retrieved 28 June 2013.
  6. "Specifications". GOMlab. GOM&Company. Archived from the original on 19 December 2013. Retrieved 20 December 2013.
  7. What is GOMTV Streamer? Archived November 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Two in Three GOM Player Users Watch Porn". The Chosun Ilbo. 2007-07-20. Archived from the original on 2007-08-22. Retrieved 2007-07-20.
  9. Ropelato, Jerry (2007-07-20). "Internet Pornography Statistics". Internet Filter Software Review. Top Ten Reviews. Archived from the original on 2011-10-08. Retrieved 2010-05-02.
  10. 곰플레이어, 재생파일 모니터링 안한다! [GOM Player doesn't monitor played files!]. inews24.com (in Korean). 2007-07-22. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  11. "Opera Blacklists Tampermonkey Extension Being Installed by Malware". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2019-01-14.
  12. "Infected by updating Gom Player - Am I infected? What do I do?". BleepingComputer.com. Retrieved 2019-01-14.
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