BSplayer Alternative

WARNING: I had sound ISSUES that are possibly related to VideoLAN so I would recommend creating a restore point before installing it.

My favoritest media player in the whole wide world BSplayer has started requiring systems to contain spyware to be installed to use their software. Even if you install BSplayer with the spyware, once you remove it BSplayer stops working. The pro version which allows usage without spyware is £20 so I have found an alternative.

I need an alternative because Windows Media Player doesn't support external subtitle files.

The one I have been playing around with is VideoLAN which is an open source project. And because of that has lots of useless effects and features that just clog up the interface and make things difficult to find. i.e to get to the brightness and gamma control sliders you have to go: Settings -> Extended GUI
I am still getting used to it, but it seems ok.