Best Quality Video Player, etc.

[flip4fzl]

I download torrents on this computer and have several .avi files. I've watched most of them, and usually I connect my computer to my big screen HDTV. I was wondering if there is a good video player (like Windows Media Player, etc.) which displays the top quality. If they all are the same, I'll just stick with the default.

I was also wondering if there is any way to improve the quality of an .avi itself; for example making the .avi movie into dvd quality...but on the computer? If there is a way please offer some suggestions on how to do so :]

Also, I use Windows Media Classic as my default video player. This is because there is a function that allows videos to be played in the "stretch to window" format so that the whole movie fits on the screen, as opposed to using Windows Media Player 11 where the "Full Screen" view is fixed to the maximum resolution the video is allowed.
I would like to keep that function of keeping videos in the "stretch to window" format.

Sorry if this is a lot, I'm patient :]
Thanks in advance!

[guns1inger]

Garbage in, garbage out - that is the basic rule of video. Are there better players than WMP - of course. VLC is better. KMPlayer is better. Will they improve the quality of the image - not likely - they are just better all-round players.

Can you make an over-compressed, resolution challenged Xvid/Divx avi file file into DVD quality - no.

If you want quality, don't download low quality file. Anything crushed into 700MB using Xvid/Divx is going to be much lower in resolution and overall quality than DVD. That is just the way it is.

[flip4fzl]

Exactly the answer I was looking for, thanks!
Just wanted to make sure I'm getting the most out of this...
So what makes those players better?
Thanks for the quick response

btw, you got it right on the ball gslinger, i dl these videos in the very-compressed 700MB format

[guns1inger]

VLC and KMPlayer have better features than WMP, and come with most of the codecs you need for playback so you don't need to hunt for codecs or god-forbid, install a codec pack. They also handle DVD playback much better than WMP and use less resources.