So after searching around for a bit since quicktime doesn't seem to hardly work in windows anymore I needed a player that can both frame by frame, be light weight, and play MOV's etc. Everyone talks about VLC but it doesn't frame by frame very well at all and honestly I think it looks awful. Windows media player is clunky as heck and often won't even play mp4, or MOV files.
Enter smplayer. You can frame by frame with the < > keys , .
Under preferences you can go the interface tab and change it to mini GUI, so that the icons aren't so big and clunky. you can turn off the top tool bar.
You can tell it to allow multiple instances under Options>Preferences>interface> instances tab.
So overall it seems light and tight like quicktime was, I have my frame by frame functionality and it doesn't look like it came out of some geeks pocket protector (well mostly :) If you tune up the interface a little.
Enjoy!
smplayer
http://www.smplayer.info/en/info
UPDATE on QT codecs: also just FYI if you are having issues with quicktime you may also be having issues with the quicktime codecs. For instance in maya I couldn't get QT for playblasts since QT won't even install. I downloaded this quicktime alternative and it did the charm perfectly.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm