Video Player Standoff

So video players are kind of just a trending thing maybe...at least until the next amazing video player gets released into the world. Currently there are an enormous number of video players available for both windows and linux (and I don't care about Mac so w/e), but for the anime lover that we all are, there are a couple requirements that must be satisfied in order to be a decent video player.

The staple of all anime lovers should be either MPC-HC or PotPlayer/DaumPlayer in windows and mpv or mplayer2 for linux. Everything else is stupid. And that includes VLC. Yes VLC can handle pretty much any format, but so do the stuff I just listed. Media centers are also an option, though there are some issues with dealing with anime stuff in particular, but stuff like XBMC or Plex are what I looked at.

KMPlayer used to be one of the "cool" video players, but as of late, it now has random bullshit like ads and bloaty stuff that nobody cares about and thus is now considered shit. On the other hand, PotPlayer is literally like the exact same program with some aesthetic changes of the icon and without the useless bullshit, so if you are going to pick one, pick PotPlayer.
MPC-HC is just kind of the defacto player. I don't really give a shit about it because it is like the one true back up that will forever be awesome and thus, there is nothing wrong with choosing it over other players.

mpv and mplayer2 are kind of up in the air in terms of choice. It's one of those situations where mplayer2 is a fork of mplayer and mpv is a fork of mplayer2 due to views of the developers not aligning. The mpv devs are more willing to add changes and merge stuff, thus there is more active development on mpv than mplayer2. Honestly both are more than usable for anime, though I personally use mpv because who doesn't want to use actively developed projects.

As for XBMC and Plex, adding anime into those libraries for all of the eye candy goodness is a bitch if you have accumulated a decent amount of anime prior. Being the mess that it is, dealing with XBMC is going to be in a completely different different post.