AVI video player

[aers]

I've had relatively little trouble with subs from MKV and the like with VLC - in fact, one of the first things I used it for was to watch some episodes of Blood+ in the format because CCCP couldn't display the subs and VLC did...

vsfilter is the reference implementation for ASS, if it wasn't rendering the subtitles something is screwy in your settings.

[Isiolia]

...and yet it didn't. I agree, it -should- have worked. But, like anything else, CCCP isn't perfect. Everyone has their own experiences/luck, mine just happens to be some quirky behavior out of codec packs - which is a reason I avoid using them now.

[viperlasson]

Ugh VLC sucks for anime subs. If multiple people are talking at the same time, it will just plop both of the subtitles ontop of eachother. I've used smplayer since then, no codec packs needed. Also, when you seek in VLC, the video playback gets all blocky for a couple of seconds, very annoying. Smplayer is like VLC+1 imo :3

[Zosi]

Incidentally, the fact that it was a "codec pack" has nothing to do with your problems. Zoom Player installs pretty much the same thing as CCCP - DirectVobSub/VSFilter and FFDShow. It is NOT a stand-alone player and never has been.

What you should really be pissed at is the DirectShow subsystem of Windows, which is what all the players that use system codecs use. It's a mess of user-unfriendly bullshit that makes it very easy to cause the kind of problems you blame on "codec packs". VLC and similar stand-alone players bypass that, but at a huge cost - if VLC has problems, you can't just install a filter and fix it, you're stuck with the capabilities that VLC was compiled with. That's why I can't recommend VLC as any kind of "universal solution".

[Isiolia]

Never said Zoom was a stand alone player, just that it possesses the capability to go grab the support it needs for a particular filetype - it's effectively doing the same sort of thing as a codec pack, but on an as-needed basis. I had problems that either CCCP caused, or that it didn't fix, when using it with Zoom that were not present when I just used Zoom.

Again, personal experience. I'm not constantly testing CCCP or whatever else because for me, stand alone players have been generally working fine with anything I toss at them. Folks using CCCP or whatnot probably aren't finding a reason to go test each release of VLC either.

Like you mentioned though, you can always just have both. Obviously a stand-alone player will work just as well with CCCP installed as not =P
I'm just a bit leery of it because some of the issues I've had extended to things other than media player issues. IE, I had NOLF2, I think it was, have no voices in-game because the particular audio codec it was relying on got replaced by a codec pack.

I tend to see VLC as a "universal" thing to point at simply because it does tend to play most files, and is on all major desktop OSes. It's far from perfect, but in my experience it tends to work, and if it doesn't, well, you didn't screw anything else up by trying.

[Ejac]

My vote goes to VLC.

[Caiyuo]

If you want to avoid codec packs, whch is understandable, I never ran into any playback problems simply installing MPC-HC standalone and ffdshow-tryouts. Still a separate codec, but it's at least much easier to pin down if you're having problems with something.

[fishstix]

Ugh VLC sucks for anime subs. If multiple people are talking at the same time, it will just plop both of the subtitles ontop of eachother. I've used smplayer since then, no codec packs needed. Also, when you seek in VLC, the video playback gets all blocky for a couple of seconds, very annoying. Smplayer is like VLC+1 imo :3

oh yeah... I remember that happening to me back when I tried and gave up on VLC. You should try out KMPlayer too For subs, you can change the font size with macro'd key presses, can even adjust the timing forwards or backwards to sync it, if it wasn't already.

[aers]

VLC should have that problem fixed by now, but meh.

[Isiolia]

VLC should have that problem fixed by now, but meh.

Does AFAIK, I don't have issues with that.

Only files I can think of offhand that have the "blocky" issue on seek are certain HD encodes (Otaku Legends encode of Shangri-La for example). Most don't.

[carve]

I use zoom player also, it's the only one I found which allows you to alt tab without losing fullscreen (I alt tab a lot when watching stuff)