When comparing MPV vs MPC-BE, the Slant community recommends MPV for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for Windows?” MPV is ranked 8th while MPC-BE is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose MPV is:
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
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 Displays preview thumbnails
Seek Bar supports thumbnail preview (like Youtube) and chapters marker.
Pro Supports madVR external Video renderer
madVR is a high quality video renderer (GPU assisted).
Pro Supports most known audio and video formats
Plays various video and audio files, and also supports H.265 (with small file size installation). The player doesn't use a lot of computer resources.
Pro 32-bit & 64-bit support
Pro Built-in YouTube playback support
Can play YouTube videos out of the box. Just drag and drop the URL to the interface.
Pro Supports multimedia hotkeys
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.