First, I would like to praise the creators of VLC. What does it say about the Windows Media Player and RealPlayer that VLC is a smaller download yet it plays files that Windows and RealPlayer fail to play? I think it says that Windows and RealPlayer suck!!!
I've used VLC for over a year now and I'm continually impressed with its abilities.
I would like to make a comment that several others have made. (This is not a criticism, just an observation.) I recently downloaded 8.5 and it wouldn't play flv files for me. 8.4a plays them just fine so I'm sticking with it.