How to Play MOV Files in Windows (Windows 8 Included)

The .mov format is the video format used in Apple's QuickTime program, which is a media player similar to Windows Media Player. Before Windows 7, .mov files are not supported by Windows Media player, so Windows (Including Windows 8) users have to download Quicktime to play .mov files. Even in Windows 7, despite rumors around the internet saying Windows 7 will natively support .mov file, people still facing the problem that .mov files are not fully compatible with RTM Windows Media Player.

Then how to play MOV files in Windows? Here you'll find two simple ways to play mov files in Windows with ease.

1. Play MOV files by converting MOV to AVI, WMV, MP4, etc. in Windows

You can use a video converter to convert MOV to Windows friendly video formats like AVI, WMV, MP4, etc. and then play the converted videos with Windows Media Player. To get that done, Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate is highly recommended. It's an all-in-one app that enables you to convert video format among almost all popular video formats. Besides, it can rip DVD content to other video formats on PC, so you can play these DVD movies more conveniently. In addition, you can edit your .mov files by cropping the black boarders, trimming large video to small ones, adding text or image watermark, etc.

The main interface of the video converting software is as below, you can simply click Add Files to load your MOV videos, select an output format and then start the conversion. In just a few clicks, the MOV files can be well played with Windows Media Player.

Here is the video tutorial showing you how to convert MOV to Windows formats:

2. Play MOV files with RTM Windows Media Player in Windows

Another way to play MOV files in Windows is to download a QuickTime player or install the video codec pack so that Windows Media Player accepts MOV files. See the detailed information below.

QuickTime Alternative

QuickTime Alternative is a free tool developed for Windows users to play MOV videos with more media players. To use it, you need to first install the newest version of QuickTime. If you are having problems getting QuickTime Alternative to work, you can delete the QuickTime folder under SYSTEMROOTsystem32 (generally C:WindowsSystem32QuickTime) to see whether it works.

3ivx MPEG-4

The 3ivx decoder components are compatible with Windows Media Player and QuickTime. By installing them, you can play MP4, M4A, MOV, 3GP files smoothly without conversion. In this way, you can make your Windows Media Player play MOV videos.However, 3ivx encoder is not an open source.The price is relatively low, which costs $7.95.