MPV is the MPlayer codeline however.

MPC-HC was basically the Windows Media Player from WinXP era, except maintained to a modern audience. That's partly why its so slim and efficient: its directly written in the Win32 GUI.

I do video editing with Vegas, which is DirectShow based as well. So an entire workflow working with DirectShow is important for codec reasons: Vegas, MPC-HC, and VirtualDub / AviSynth all are tools built on top of Microsoft's DirectShow platform.

Oh, I see, yes, I remember the program now (I haven't used Windows in years). It's the continuation of the original, light Windows Media Player from Windows 98, before it got all iTunesy. Yes, MPC is a fantastic piece of software.

For me it is mplayer for life, I like the command line switches

mpv is a fork of mplayer2, which itself is a fork of mplayer.