I think that OP should just compile VLC from ports, with every single knob turned on. I do that. And I discovered that if I do that, VLC is capable of playing anything, no need to research other players and features
It can even stream from the box to your phone or let you use your phone as a wifi-based remote!
For most users watching common media in English this is basically true. The issue with VLC (and most every other media player regardless of OS) is real time rendering of subtitles that offer features beyond simple text+timing (.srt).
The appropriately named ASS format (an evolution of the old SubStation Alpha (.ssa) format) is well...ass. While it does allow for some very advanced typesetting to do things like overlay signs in real-time on top of video and do advanced text effects (e.g. fonts, colors, weights, position) rendering is broken on a variety of players in common use (including VLC) or very slow (most Windows players). Without getting too far into the weeds here mpv is basically the only player that renders such subtitles correctly in this admittedly broken standard. But that's what everyone agreed on targeting years ago because it was all we had. So use continues today even by large publishers.
While mpv and libass have their problems at least they can both render the subtitles correctly and not bring a high-end system to its knees while doing it.
The situation is so dire the W3C along with the larger streaming companies got together and tried to come up with a new standard called TTML. But it already has two versions (see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timed_Text_Markup_Language) and almost no one is using it. Since almost no devices or software support it out of the box. So use of .ass continues.
So if you don't care about subtitles yes VLC will probably work fine for you 99% of the time. But if you're in that 1% (and a lot of people are now) it will cause issues and no one producing such content will listen to your pleas to have it fixed. They will simply direct you to use mpv or something based upon it. Don't ask me why things are like this. It has been like this since the 90s. I don't know why a certain segment of multimedia producers/providers feel the need to continue using this horrible standard.
The good news is Kodi and most popular set-top boxes have started to standardized around mpv or offer it as an option. Which mostly solves the problem when providing such content to the less technically inclined. I personally also offer the option of .srt as a fall-back in media I produce when possible. But there are very few people that do that. So your best bet is to just use mpv or something based upon it.
I do apologize for being verbose. VLC has its share of other problems related to codec support. I understand why people like it because it offers an all-in-one set-up with little configuration. If it works for you great. Just understand that no one "upstream" in content production is going to care if you send in reports of it rendering things incorrectly. That's been a long standing tradition going back decades now.
github.com
odysee.com
