Video players for Linux

Today at an IT breakfast meetup I was singing the praises of Video Player — a video player from GNOME, formerly known as Showtime. As far as I understand, at some point it became the default video player, including in the latest version of Ubuntu.

I like its minimalism, it plays the files I need, and I appreciate that when you pick an audio track it shows the name of the translation (the dubbing studio) — for some reason not every player does this.

Got home, decided to compare it with other players, opened a file with HDR and Dolby Vision — looks like I praised it a bit too soon. In the screenshot, from top to bottom: Video Player (Showtime), Cine, and VLC.

All three render the colors differently. I think I'll switch to Cine. Judging by its repo, it's a fairly young video player. Like Showtime, it's also based on MPV and written in Python. It just develops more actively, updates ship more often, and — most importantly — the colors come out right. Showtime, as far as I remember, has had issues with HDR for years now, and updates only come out every three to six months.

VLC is a legend, of course — it can play just about anything that's playable — but the interface, in my opinion, has aged quite a bit. Time to make room for the new generation.