I am interested in CPU usage. But yes, video quality is better in 2.0 I made some measurements as carefully as I could, with while sleep 2 ; do ps ux -p <pid>; done Hardware: Dual 1.8GHz G5. GeForce FX 5200 AGP 64 MB Stream: H264 1280x688 24fps VLC 2.0: paused, 12% CPU; scenes of little motion, or ...