New to WMP 12, why is picture quality so bad?

hn333 · 25 Mar 2011

It just looks plain awful, I can't understand why. I played the same xvid videos with Media Player Classic Home Cinema and it look way better. Is it the codec WMP 12 uses?

Maguscreed · 25 Mar 2011

WMP 12 tends to get picky.

I use VLC player myself it doesn't rely on codecs so everything comes out the same.

WMP 12 only supports hardware acceleration for wmv video files.
Unless you get one of the premium codec packs, that's not something I was ever interested in spending money on though.

hn333 · 25 Mar 2011

Maguscreed said:

WMP 12 tends to get picky.

I use VLC player myself it doesn't rely on codecs so everything comes out the same.

WMP 12 only supports hardware acceleration for wmv video files.
Unless you get one of the premium codec packs, that's not something I was ever interested in spending money on though.

I just installed Xvid Video Codec 1.3.1 and now the picture is much better. So I guess it's just the codec. On Vista I just used FFdshow and never had a problem. FFdshow doesn't seem to work with WMP 12.

Maguscreed · 25 Mar 2011

well if it's a codec issue, the best codec pack I've found is the cccp pack
CCCP - Combined Community Codec Pack

Sardonicus · 25 Mar 2011

I don't think that WMP 12 supports playback of all files. That's why people resort to the installation of codec packs.
One thing I do know...the codec that Microsoft uses for MPEG-2 is one of the best.
I've selected it as the codec of choice, when using SageTV or BeyondTV and the playback of
MPEG-2 is great.

But, no, WMP 12 is not the best for the playback of all files.

hn333 · 25 Mar 2011

Windows needs to update their xvid codec because the one they are using now is just horrible.