what's the best software player?

[deadrats]

here's a question for you guys, which software player would you say is the best player, not in terms of displayed output but in terms of most accurate playing of the decoded file.

for instance, all players that i know of have all sorts of filters built in to enhance video during playback and they most of them lets you choose which renderer you want to use but i know from numerous tests that they don't all have the same playback quality. i'm interested in which player will give me the most accurate decoded image sans any alteration so that i can do a proper comparison of encoder settings.

[johns0]

My preference is media player classic home cinema,other people will have other media players they like,maybe run a poll to see what people like for video quality output.

[redwudz]

I like Zoom player for MKV and AVI, VSO media player for Blu-ray and VLC for odd formats and DVDs.

[Seeker47]

Nowadays, I don't think you can really get by with just one browser, or just one media player. They have different strengths and weaknesses, and can serve as cross-checks on each other when you run into a problem web page or an apparently problematic video. Troubleshooting 101, really.

The emergence of good portable software versions of such apps also means you don't have to get seriously invested in one, and can have multiple ones available (different versions, too), without any Registry involvement or system-wide app conflicts.

I have VLC, MPC_BE and _HC, and Daum Potplayer. Sometimes I find subtitles not showing up in one of these, but if I see them in another, I can be confident they are actually present. VLC has a rep for playing some files that bomb out in the others, due to some defect or other problem. Because of that, it definitely deserves a place on your player roster.

[fritzi93]

MPC-BE is another player that's very forgiving, IME. It can also show a preview popup when you hover the cursor on the seek bar. If either of those are important...

I have some captures edited with tsSniper that MPCHC chokes on (at the edit), but MPC-BE plays them fine. (Mind you, MPCHC plays all the other several hundred captures I have that were edited with tsSniper.)