I have used VLC for years now! Have rarely faced any issues on that.

i prefer MPC-HC - with madVR video renderer - video format: h264/AVC

MPC-HC is the best! Easy, simple and low resource demanding-

At the moment VLC

I'm a plex user.

Luckily for me I have a Sony Android TV so I just put my HD files on a USB flash drive and I use VLC to play them!

Originally Posted by marin

Which player and which codecs do you use for playing HD-movies?

Friend, the best player is Total Media Theater 6 (TMT6), I highly recommend it's the best player with an incredible video and sound enhancement. Also it reproduces BD50 (Full Bluray) with menu and their respective extras, not to mention it's 3D compatible and has sound amplifier, arguably the best I've ever tried.

The necessary codecs are in the next link, I recommend the standard package for normal use of the pc, since the other packages bring programs to work with videos and audio, such as muxear, encode, convert, etc., therefore they will be heavier and Useless If you don't use those programs. Just to watch movies, it's enough with the standard.

https://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

And this is for ac3 formats, it amplifies the ac3 formats, the modera and has it's own equalizer for better sound (although the DTS is better since this format is with loss), this audio format is found in most rips, mostly on mp4.

http://www.ac3filter.net

VLC on Mac, Windows and Linux.
re codecs, seems most above said it best.

never mind

VLC is probably the best software player. I just got the iPhone app and now I can send files wirelessly to my iPhone, even hi res FLAC audio!!