I was bored and stumbled upon this thread again. Have a look at the picture in this post. It's unedited from the o.p. except for the red paint brush to highlight an area. To me, the WMP shows the sample with more block noise than VLC is. Check it.
Hi torrentg, I realise the quality of the video is sub-par, that certain aspects of the playback may actually appear better in VLC but what I am mostly referring to in my posts is that the OVERALL picture quality appears better, more watchable etc in WMP. The problem is that this difference has only come to the fore since I began using Windows 7 (previously XP SP3) - beforehand VLC would have just as good playback as you see in the screens of WMP.
You're not alone mate. I too watch a lot of compressed video files and WMP12 does offer a better picture quality overall than VLC.
No matter what combination of settings in VLC, WMP12 just looks better.
The VLC 1.0.3 Release Candidate fixes this known issue. Worked for me! Here's a direct link to the windows binary:
ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-1.0.3-rc/win32
VideoLAN, Free streaming and multimedia solutions for all OS!
The VLC developers are very glad to offer you the first release candidate of the third minor update of the popular "Goldeneye" version of VLC.
This version brings a few improvements and fixes, and especially fixes an important issue with Windows® 7 that worsened the video quality of the default output of VLC. As Windows® 7 will be available today, the windows maintainers of VLC wanted to sync with this release.
This release candidate provides also updated translations, new deinterlacer filters, fixes for the interface and the WMA Professional support on Windows. Please test this release candidate and report bugs.
I'm watching some .avi's now now and it looks much better on default than it did previously.
Glad I saw this thread with the above 1.0.3 RC as I discovered the exact same issue.
I found the following when trying to watch a video yesterday evening:
Winamp plays video like a slide show with out of sync sound
VLC 1.0.2 was really blocky
WMP12 played perfectly :)
Will test 1.0.3 tonight as I use VLC to play my hidef .mkv files and I don't want them to appear blocky.
Quick Fix: MPCHC (Media player Classic Home Cinema)
Simple, straight forward..no fuss..no muss...
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