1) You are making the assumption that the MPEG container is easy to handle because it is an old format. That is totally untrue. MPEG is one of the most difficult formats to handle correctly. The reason for that is that there are hundreds of different implementations of encoders/decoders/muxers/splitters for MPEG. Some of which don't adhere completely to the MPEG standards. 2) KLCP 3.2.0 (default profile) plays your MPEG sample (with correct AR) in MPC, WMP6.4, ZoomPlayer and BSplayer. And with hardware acceleration. 3) ffdshow is open-source and decodes H.264 better than QuickTime does. 4) VCP illegally distributes parts of QuickTime. 5) ffdshow does not support PAFF interlaced H.264, CoreAVC does. 6) Saying that a decoder A is better than decoder B because B fails on file Y is not really an objective comparison. Certainly not if decoder A fails on file Z, while decoder B does not. 7) KLCP is also an 'out of the box' solution. Having lots of options doesn't change that fact. The majority of people install all their software at default settings. 8) Codec != DirectShow filter