[yerp]

very informative post. i'm glad it's a sticky.

you know, its funny.....before the TP first came out in the states, it was already a hot topic that i had been following in the leadup to the Sprint release. the europeans were b!tching about the poor TCPMP playback long before the device hit the states.....i almost skipped on the device because of what i was hearing....er, reading...

in the end, after playing with coworkers iPhones(read: having them rubbed in my face), i decided that the VGA for web browsing was reason enough to justify getting the phone. once i got my TP, i accidentally opened one of my MP4 movies(Fight Club, iirc) in WMP because it was the default player after a ROM flash, and instantly noticed the far superior quality. i chalked it up to the ROM, but when i set up TCPMP, it played a little smoother, but still like sh!t in comparison to WMP. in my excitement, i posted my discovery in one of the vid playback disscussion threads active at the time in the Raph forums on xda. my post drew countless flames by the anti-WMP pro-Core zealots in response. people refused to believe me! they were citing benchmarks and old performance write ups on TCPMP/Coreplayer, mocking me, and basically called me a liar.

since i have little to no knowledge about the inner workings of codecs, wrappers, and vid playback other then what they are, i didn't even reply and just kept it "my little secret". i did get a few PMs from people thanking me for pointing out that WMP no longer sucked, and a few months later, one guy even PMed me a link to a writeup he did on how to rip-dvds and encode them for optimal viewing on the TP.

thanks to your post i now know:
a) i'm not crazy after all!!! lol
b) why WMP works so much better on the TP....i had a feeling MS had some hooks into "hidden" HW/drivers, but wasn't sure, and i've wondered to this day

thanks for clearing the fog!