However, each new version of WMP becomes more bloated and feature rich thus demanding more system resources and cancelling out the improved performance provided by the Nvidia and Cineplayer decoders. Commercial mpeg-2 decoders like Nvidia have a much reduced CPU load with the Cineplayer DVD decoder 2.3.1 having the least CPU load. Free products like the DScaler mpeg-2 decoder and Media Player Classic give particularly poor results when playing DVDs.
This is particularly a problem with DVDs. I have a machine with a 1.2 GHz CPU which ought to be adequate for playing back videos using software decoders, but in practice I find that various media players that I have tried have a problem of excessive CPU load giving jerky playback.
