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Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player

(mpv.io)
1113 points Bluestein | 1 comments | 17 Aug 24 18:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jwells89 ◴[17 Aug 24 19:58 UTC] No.41277461[source]▶
This has always worked well for me, handling anything that’s thrown at it with ease.

Things may have changed since then, but when I first encountered the project several years ago it seemed like the thing that made this project stand out compared to other player projects was a big emphasis on correctness and accurate playback. There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly.

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arp242 ◴[17 Aug 24 21:20 UTC] No.41278071[source]▶
> There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly.

This has long since been the case, even back in the MPlayer days in the early 2000s.

I'm not really sure why this is the case though, because I believe both largely rely on the same libraries for many codecs.

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1. jwells89 ◴[17 Aug 24 21:37 UTC] No.41278196[source]▶
The explanation I’ve read in the past is that the difference lies in how VLC was initially focused on playback of video streamed over a network (hence the name Video LAN Client), which was generally more rocky a couple decades ago when the quality and bandwidth of the average connection was lower and the only routes between the client and server could be highly indirect or routed through weak nodes.

In that environment, playing at all without constantly dropping out or buffering is the goal, which is more achievable when fudging accuracy/correctness (which wouldn’t have been possible anyway).

Not sure how true that is though, it’s not something I’ve ever verified.