When comparing MPV vs Splash, the Slant community recommends MPV for most people. In the question“What are the best HEVC/H.265-capable media players?” MPV is ranked 1st while Splash is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose MPV is:
When used with youtube-dl.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Minimal interface
Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS etc) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files.
Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window.
This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library).
Pro Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
Pro Extremely responsive
Pro Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
Pro Fast
Pro Image Processing
Pro Audio bitstreaming support
Audio bitsteaming to external audio amplifiers is easy to set up and works for all major HD audio formats, such as Dolby, TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio.
Pro Motion / frame interpolation
This is a great feature that works out of the box. Videos are MUCH smoother because of this.
Pro Hardware support for decoding
Hardware decoding for AMD, Intel and NVidia GPUs including iGPUs (integrated GPUs).
Cons
Con Minimal theme support
Con Lack of a typical GUI can be jarring to some
The minimal interface comes at the cost of beginner-friendliness. You need to know keyboard shortcuts by heart, settings are set in text files, right-clicking won't bring up a menu, etc.