I'm not sure they are comparable. One force of VLC is that it litteraly runs everywhere.

MPC-HC only works on windows, so it's not comparable. mpv has also a lot of target platforms, but not as much as VLC. It's really nice though, and I think a bit of competition is good.

VLC runs everywhere, but do you really need something that runs everywhere literally? Is this like the old hat trick of running Doom on your fridge? I'm content using mpc-hc on Windows and mpv on Linux/Mac. What else is there?

No need to compare, they're all amazing for what's mostly volunteer work.

I feel like mpv is the vim of video players: minimalist keyboard-oriented interface. I prefer it over VLC, but wouldn't recommend it to non-techies.

I think it's fine to compare projects when going beyond "which one is the bestest".

I was pretty die hard against VLC (i've moved everything I do to mpv wrappers once MPC-HC became abandonware) but I'd give vlc another chance if you haven't looked at it in a while. It's come a long way if your opinions were founded nearly a decade ago like mine were.

Nope they're not, they used to for recent codecs it's not the case anymore.