Xine

Xine is a free and open-source multimedia player and framework designed for Unix-like systems, with ports to other platforms. It uses a modular plugin-based architecture consisting of demuxers, decoders, audio and video outputs, and a control interface. The core is the xine-lib library, which exposes a uniform API for frontends.

Origin and components: The project began in the late 1990s as part of the Xine project; the ecosystem includes the xine-lib library and several graphical frontends such as xine-ui, gxine, and others. The architecture permits adding formats through plugins; new formats are supported by installing corresponding demuxer/decoder plugins.

Formats and features: Xine supports a wide range of audio and video formats via modular plugins, DVD playback, streams over HTTP, RTSP and other protocols, subtitles, and playlists. Video output is supported through backends such as X11, and modern frontends can utilize OpenGL or SDL-based pipelines where available.

Reception and licensing: It is released as free software under licenses that allow broad redistribution and modification. The xine-lib and related components are distributed in many Linux distributions and BSDs. Over time other players have become more popular, but Xine remains used in some environments and on embedded systems.