Play movies straight from rar files

http://www.v12pwr.com/RARFileSource/

RARFileSource
-------------

Ever wished your favorite video player could play your downloads without you
having to unpack those pesky RAR archives first?

Enter RARFileSource, a DirectShow filter that let's most video players read RAR
files on the fly. The only restriction is that the video must be stored without
compression, this is fortunately the norm since WinRAR doesn't do a very good
job on video anyway.

If you don't already have it, start with installing the Microsoft Visual C++
2010 Redistributable Package, select either the 32-bit (x86) or the 64-bit (x64)
version depending on your OS.

Next grab and run the RARFileSource installer (there is no need to uninstall
old versions first).

Start your video player, load a RAR file and enjoy! If your player already has
a feature to automatically unpack RAR archives before playback remember to
disable it first. No more waiting!

If the archive contains multiple media files you'll get a simple file selector.

All files of a multi-part archive must reside in the same directory, you can
load any file in the set and the filter will automatically find and scan all
parts for media files.

To uninstall (why, oh why?) use the Add or Remove Programs control panel.

A note about ASF, WMV and WMA files. RARFileSource will correctly detect them
but Microsoft's DirectShow filter is not compatible because it's a combined
source and splitter. Download and install the WMV/WMA Parser filter instead.


News in version 0.9.3, released 2012-02-04
------------------------------------------
- Fixed problems loading archives containing a mix of media and non-media files.
- Workaround to allow loading archives with missing LONG_BLOCK flag.
- Workaround to allow loading any part in a multi-volume archive with
MHD_FIRSTVOLUME incorrectly set on all parts.
- A few minor bug fixes.
- Big thanks to John Peterson for reporting the above problems and contributing
patches to solve them.
- Fixed loading archives with unknown file header data.
- Be more lenient when loading multi-volume archives containing multiple files,
if parts are missing, allow complete files found so far to play.

News in version 0.9.2, released 2011-02-22
------------------------------------------
- Massively overdue release.
- Fixed loading of multi-volume RARs with missing EARC_NEXT_VOLUME flag.
- Fixed "Overlapped I/O operation is in progress" error when opening archives.
- Compiled using Visual Studio 2010.
- Included 64-bit (x64) build.
- Minor code cleanup and improvements.

News in version 0.9.1, released 2009-02-28
------------------------------------------
- Long overdue maintenance release.
- More thorough detection of the VC2008 runtime in the installer.
- Fixed loading of old multi-volume RARs without end-of-archive headers.
- Code cleanup and refactoring.
- A few minor bug fixes.

News in version 0.9, released 2008-12-14
----------------------------------------
- Added a file selector, patch from OV2.
- Added detection of media files using the same rules as the normal FileSource
filter, again by OV2.
- Fixed handling of archives and media files larger than 4 gigabytes, thanks to
OV2.
- Register all .r00 to .r99 extensions so that any part can be loaded.
- Created an installer.
- Numerous bug fixes.

News in version 0.8.1, released 2008-12-08
------------------------------------------
- Improved handling of Matroska media files, thanks to OV2.
- Fixed memory corruption when encountering RAR files with compression.
- Fixed handling of multi-volume archives with new numbering scheme, thanks to
OV2.
- Any file in a multi-volume set can now be opened and reading will start from
the first file. Caveat: Currently the filter does not automatically register
itself to handle the extensions .r00 to .r99 so your video player won't open
these file unless you manually associate the filter with them.

News in version 0.8, released 2008-11-22
----------------------------------------
- Inital public release.