to resurrect this a bit, the problem i have with hardware players (any sort of those, be it dvd. br, or some hdd with playback capability) is they're not as flexible as pc with ffdshow as a tool to improve video quality.
none of them really has sharpenign methods ffdshow has, none has adding noise and other tweaks i can use on pc to improve quality.
also, pcs are quaite cheap by now, so i would always invest 200 or 300$ to build a pc, rather than buy a player.
but i do understand most people won't be so pedantic, but i really was sold the minute i saw what ffdshow can do, looong time ago. makes no sense for me to go to hardware players esp. for divx or xvid (or other) media from web that usually needs some improvement upon playback.
though i value content over quality, still i will always prefer pc hooked to tv (pc monitors are too small) because i just can get better quality that way.
also, pc software players can do things hardware players can't.
scrubbing thru timeline is faster, i can jump anywhere i want, i can jump in any step i prefer, i can zoom easilly, i can frame advance much easier (with mouse wheel and zoom player) etc.etc. just an "ol" pc hooked to tv and few programs to run it all.
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