I have been using MPC since 2003. I tried KMPlayer, ZoomPlayer, BSPlayer, VLC Player, etc and always went back to MPC/HC.

I use the CoreAVC codec for H264 files.

I just turn out the lights, launch my movie, enter full-screen mode and enjoy. Cheers.

I have been using MPC since 2003. I tried KMPlayer, ZoomPlayer, BSPlayer, VLC Player, etc and always went back to MPC/HC.

Right now I totally agree with the MPC/HC choice for movies. All the way. Back in 2003 though, most codec packs were too "experimental" and they broke playback in a number of ways (including things like the dreaded mmswitch.ax that often played video upside down). ZP and custom filter graphs were pretty much the ultimate cure to all of that. You could control exactly what type of content was played how, decoded and processed by exactly what you told it to. But that problem is mostly solved now and MPC HC has pretty good control over codecs too (built-in or otherwise). I was a big fan of CoreAVC back then too, because of its stellar performance on the CPUs we had back then, but nowadays even MPC HC's built-in H.264 decoding (with DXVA acceleration) really is good enough.

I just turn out the lights, launch my movie, enter full-screen mode and enjoy

I kind of wish Media Center could start use it like that... I actually just bought parts for a mini ITX system yesterday to use as a HTPC (E5700, 4GB DDR2, Radeon 5450, MCE remote, etc -- some was spare parts, some new. $200 total!) I'll soon see how well media center works on a dedicated PC, without a keyboard or mouse.