I downloaded Media Player Classic and tried to play a few hi-quality WMV video clips (1760kbps).
Compared picture quality with standard Windows Media Player 9.0 series, it looks that WMP 9.0 provide a little better picture quality, and clips looks better on WMP 9.0 I had also a sound interruption in one clip.
Probably, it make more sense use Media Player Classic mostly for playing AVI and other non-WMV formats that require special codecs, since Media Player Classic is standalone and does not require to download additional codecs. I use Win98.