Why bother with various media players when there is superior vlc?

[CaffeineAddict]

It would appear radio tunes have been offering free for in excess of 7 years, and have only just started to introduce a charge.

Here is one site for you, it let's you listen to radio stations all around the globe:

Explore live radio by rotating the globe

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

radio.garden

Last time I used it, it worked fine but now it shows "stations unreachable" error which ever I try, could be my system IDK.

edit:
Had to unblock some domains in noscript, it's working fine!

 

[Gloster]

vlc for live-streaming :
Download the respective m3u-file of your choice : https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv?tab=readme-ov-file#playlists
And open (or-doubleclick) with vlc, you will get TV over IP.
vlc for download respective video files of a DLNA server in your home network : refer to local netwotk-> universal plug+play.
Unfortunately I can not play av01/avc1 videos with vlc, black-screen, the audio will be played, vlc does recognize the respective codecs, I wonder why. All other media players can do (mpv, Celluloid).
But it is not very important for me, mainly I look videos via DLNA on my TV.

 

[AndrewP]

I personally do not like VLC for how it looks and works. For listening to local music or web radio I prefer audio players that are designed to listen to music or radio.

 

[909mjolnir]

i prefer audacious for jukebox style searching and listening, and MPV for videos because it looks better to my eyes and is easier to navigate for me. i especially like how the controls are hidden by default. MPV plays audio files too, so I use that for quick double-clicks sometimes.

i do have VLC installed for special cases.

 

[Deleted member 204243]

VLC is the only player that plays correctly files from my old camcorder. I was surprised that MPV failed to open them correctly. They were all black and white with colour stripes.

 

[spacebanana]

I've tested various music players mostly and one video player (dragon player)
Notably those here because I was looking for KDE based ones: https://apps.kde.org/categories/multimedia/

Well, they all either suck or lack something.
For instance Juk won't play *.waw files, amarok is dead, Elisa's UI is bad etc.

I was in denial of vlc for years but now I've installed it and figured out it's very simple yet powerful player that handles all kind of files, both audio and video, so I can play anything I want with it.

I use MPV for a few reasons:

• Very CLI-friendly and lets you do a lot with simple scripts or dotfiles
• Very lightweight and minimalist, it's more performant than VLC on heavy-encoded videos such as high resolution H.265 videos
• VLC has some weird behavior with audio pitch slightly changing during playback
• IIRC MPV uses FFmpeg for its decoding backend and so format support is extremely wide, just like VLC

 

[Fanboi]

MPV all the way. Sockets work nicely with MPV so it doubles as an audio player (add, skip, pause, etc. can be done via a script with some keybinds). I like the minimal UI when watching video, too. It's more configurable than most people realise. But most of all, just plain somple. I find VLC a tad cumbersome, but likely my laziness.

 

[dimko]

Because in KDE and shortly if not already in GNOME there is HDR support.
VLC does not support HDR on linux.
MPV does.

And because we can. Linux loves choices.

 

[The Duck]

Yep I use MPV and prefer MPV although I've no complaints with VLC.

 

[The Duck]

I can't shake the feeling that vlc, with its long list of dependencies, is a bit "heavy" when I'm using an ultra light distro - but I use it anyway and I use it all the time (for music). It's not like I don't load libreoffice and the gimp, too - and I almost never actually -use- those. All that shtuff doesn't seem to hurt system performance in the least.

And almost all of those dependencies are already loaded for other apps.

Have a look at MPV player when you get a chance.

Used it with Puppy Linux and Antix Linux and it's default media player in Easy OS.

It's never failed to play anything or any format.

 

[MikeRocor]

Have a look at MPV player when you get a chance.

Used it with Puppy Linux and Antix Linux and it's default media player in Easy OS.

It's never failed to play anything or any format.

Turns out I have all but a couple of its dependencies already loaded as well. I might take a look at it after I do an OS update (Tiny Core 16.1 came out the other day and, while I don't really need the bits that were updated since 16.0, it's on my to-do list to that before I play with new applications).

 

[MikeWalsh]

@MikeRocor :-

I like the drag'n'drop aspect of MPV.....though of course, you CAN set it as your default player, as with any other.

One of our senior Puppians has used it in a 'global news TV' app he's been developing for a few years. Apparently it's easier to connect to most online streams, even the more 'fussy' ones.....


T'other Mike.

 

[darry1966]

I use VLC plays anything you throw at it. DVD playback is great too.

 

[Trynna3]

Why eating soup when you can have ice cream?
Sometimes I just fancy soup.
Or fruit.
Like Clementine. I quite like it visually. It allows me to display the album artwork it the background, adjust opacity/transparency, easily alter metadata for easier navigation among over 60GB music.
VLC is a versatile and powerful tool, but for a visual experience I'll go with Clementine. Or Strawberry, but Clementine is my fav.

 

[dos2unix]

We tire of distro wars.. lets have media player wars?

Wasn't there a vlc vs strawberry, vs amarok, vs mpv, vs clementine, vs elisa, vs rhythmbox, a while back?

Funny enough, I think I have them all installed except clementine... (which is basically strawberry now).
Along with my python3 eyeD3 tagger.

For quick and easy. less desktop clutter, I use ffplay a lot.

 

[MikeRocor]

I just now took a look at a few of those you ( @dos2unix ) mentioned and, while I fully admit I didn't spend much time on any of them, I'll probably stick with vlc unless I decide to go ultra minimalist (which probably sounds odd, coming from me!)

 

[GatorsFan]

I use VLC exclusively - the other I would even consider is SMPlayer

 

[Harry123]

I keep VLC for videos and DVDs. I couldn't get SMPlayer (my previous preferred media player) to play DVDs.

next to vlc for the torrents Stremio , Torrhunt , Plex ,

 

[rado84]

Why bother with various media players when there is superior vlc?​

I have more than 10 TiB in movies and TV shows converted and burned by me on BD-R discs.

SMPlayer with mpv backend: double click on the movie/episode, it starts, I watch it till the end.
SMPlayer with mpv backend: I paste a YT URL, it starts, I watch it till the end.

"Superior" VLC: movie/episode right click, open with VLC, "VLC can't play this file" and returns a bunch of unknown errors.
"Superior" VLC: I paste a YT URL, "VLC can't play this file" and returns a bunch of unknown errors.

"Superior" VLC can't play even an online radio, that big of a joke VLC is!
"I-Heart Throwbacks" with this address:

https://stream.revma.ihrhls.com/zc7397

Audacious needs about 2 seconds to connect (bc I'm on the opposite side of the planet of where the radio's HQ is - somewhere around Washington, if I'm not mistaken) and then the music starts.
"Superior" VLC spits its favorite error that I mentioned above and that's it.

 

[beanburrito]

VLC/mpv for videos, Audacious & Picard for music.