Artisan DVD/DivX Player

This program has neither Hollywood glamour nor flash. With an awkward appearance and a lack of features, Artisan DVD/DivX Player takes all the magic out of movies and simply does its job passably.

While the program functions as a basic DVD player and can navigate chapters on a disc and manage subtitles and languages, it can't do much more. For example, the demo version can't bookmark video, and when we tried capturing a picture from video, we got an error message. Among other flaws, the clunky interface looks decidedly amateurish; the program doesn't include a help file, and the installer added a desktop shortcut to an unrelated Web site without asking permission.

Overall, if you're looking for a DVD player and you're short on cash, Artisan DVD/DivX Player may do the job. Even then, however, you might want to investigate other freeware options.