Or for folks like me: I just want to play my video files no fuss, no muss. Something other major media players seem to have more trouble with than they should. But not VLC! 100% of the time it works every time!
"Doesn't matter what filetype it is...it just runs them all, instantly, like magic."
Does it play DVD ISO files ?
Can you use the menus, etc. ?
Just curious ... XBMC back in 2004 could do this (navigate and use DVD menus in a DVD ISO) but then that feature actually went away in the following years, never to return ...
> Does it play DVD ISO files ? Can you use the menus, etc. ?
Those are semi-loaded questions. It can and does play .vob files, which is enough if you actually just want to watch the video, which is VLC's primary use case.
It is not a full media manager with additional functionality.
The question you should be asking is "can it find its way around DRM?"
When I play some bought DVDs with VLC the DRM stops the DVD getting to the menu stage (on Linux especially) and I need the menu to change the language for my children who don't always want English[1]. Skipping the menu doesn't let me change the language, and not using the skip-menu option means the DVD won't play. Disney are not alone in this, but are the guilty party that comes to mind.
1. Even better when the nordic regional edition of a film has something crazy like Finnish as the default language, and English isn't there at all, but my children want the voices in Norwegian. So skipping menus goes straight to the film in language that doesn't even make sense to Finns. Thanks DVD producers, there isn't enough frustration in my life but with your help and my money we're reaching levels close to 100%.
I was usually able to switch the language by right-clicking, there's a submenu that lets you select which audio stream (i.e. which language) you want to listen to.
Another mention for MPC, and I ended up switching to it for everything, after searching alternatives because VLC was stuttering with some h265. It displays everything I've ever thrown at it with no fuss and has some neat features like single keypress to search for subtitles for the current video.
I'd be pretty surprised if there was a major difference between them. Maybe some bugs in the rendering path, or one player isn't doing threads properly?
They should run the same in theory - but they don't in practice. It is typically more noticeable on older hardware, on my current rig I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Maybe that's changed in more recent versions, but I no longer have my older rig to do comparison tests.
Also what gcb0 said is true as well - but not everyone needs subtitles for their videos. My 'expertise' in media player selection is based on getting the absolute best quality playback for my anime.
My primary reasons for switching from VLC were not due to efficiency - but due to shadow being washed out and the NVidia color issues. Both "fixable" in that you can "improve them" but not quite "remove them entirely". (Both issues are easily Google-able as well)
There are many, many, many image comparisons between VLC and MPC-HC (and sometimes MPV for Linux). The one thing in common is that MPC and MPV both look very similar while VLC always has a washed out look and occasionally faulty colors (by default). Unfortunately, many people are terrible at screenshotting the exact same frame but even from similar frames one can pretty easily spot the differences between VLC and MPC-HC.
Some people prefer the washed-out look finding it more aesthetically pleasing. That's fine and I'm cool with that, long as I don't need to watch anything with them. Many people also "don't give a shit" because they'd never know the difference without seeing the side-by-side or comparison of the frame. That's fine too - but not something I personally agree with. :) I prefer better quality even if I have to looking for it.
This definitely falls under "bugs in the rendering path". In this case the question isn't which one looks better, but which one the media author intended.
Your two culprits are that someone's YUV->RGB math forgot that Y needs to be expanded from 16-235 to 0-255 - possible but really surprising! - or that one player implements gamma correction and the other doesn't.
Gamma correction might look nice, but it can't be called correct unless you've profiled your monitor, set the brightness level, not changed your ambient lighting levels, and turned off all the nonsense LCD options like "contrast".
BTW, the only rendering bug I ever expect to see is the difference between Rec.601 and Rec.709 colorspace, which just kind of makes green colors look different. So this is pretty extreme!
>In this case the question isn't which one looks better, but which one the media author intended.
That's typically my argument, but others simply "don't care" how the author intended, they want what looks better to them. Which is fine - as long as I'm not watching it with them. Because I actually do care how the author intended something to be seen.
