Media Player Classic - Home Cinema vs VLC 2.0

So VLC 2.0 was released yesterday and the feature/improvements list is very impressive and includes gems like:

• Rewritten linked segments and ordered chapter files support.
• Better subtitles rendering
• Support for 10bits codecs
• New resamplers for higher quality audio.

I am very pleased with those new features and they actually fixes the main reason why I started using MPC-HC to begin with. Proper support for ordered chapters and segment linking. However, that was just one of the reasons I switches, and one of the reasons I continued to use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema.

So let's just get on with the comparisons. I got two anime screenshots and two "live action" documentary screenshots. For MPC-HC (version 1.6.1.4075)  I use madVR for rendering, LAV filters for decoding and Haali for splitting the MKV. VLC 2.0 was left with everything on default (one of the main arguments why you should use VLC is "because it just works" so I think it's a fair comparison).

To Love-Ru Ending (880x496 upscaled to 1920x1080 by the video players)

The VLC one is quite a lot blurrier especially in the eyes and the white details in her hair. The karaoke works flawlessly in both players and I have to say I am very impressed by VLCs new font rendering since the difference between MPC-HC and VLC 1.X was this big.

Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking (upscaled from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 by the video players)

VLC is once again a lot blurrier in some areas like the cracks in the number 6. The difference isn't too big but you can spot a few areas where the video is blurrier in VLC if you look around for a bit.

Spice and Wolf (no upscaling since the file is 1920x1080)

This is a hard one because there is next to no difference. MPC HC does a better job at the shadow on the top of the door, but I think VLC does a better job with the edge of the big shadow in the top left corner. It's hard to tell if the VLC one looks better because of the blurriness smoothing out the noise which may or may not be present in the source, and if that's a good thing.

Top Gear India special (upscaled from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 by the video players)

And here is the last picture. The cans looks a lot sharper and cleaner in MPC-HC than they do in VLC. I shouldn't have to comment much more than that on this picture.

Summary and my thoughts

VLC 2.0 brought some long needed improvements to VLC and I am very pleased with the new version. Segments and chapters works perfectly, the new font rendering looks much sharper and better than before and it played the Hi10p videos I tried just fine. However, it seems like they didn't do any improvements to the upscaling algorithm and since almost everything I (and most people) watch will be upscaled by the video player I think this is one area where VLC need to improve. I should also mention that the old seeking bug which caused the video to get filled with artifacts or froze the picture seems to be gone.

VideoLAN did a great job with VLC 2.0 but in the end it's still not quite good enough for me to replace Media Player Classic - Home Cinema with it.