Use VLC media player or K-Lite Codec Pack Media Player, they have the best performance on playing videos/movies in common/not common codec.
yea I mostly use MPC but for some reason I'm just too attached to WMP -lol. Oh and I reverted back to 10... at first I re-downloaded and didn't realize I can't install over 11... had to regedit it... =/
haahah..still using vlc and player 10 here....however..i rarely watch vids on my pc..since i stream em to my mobile...
i use a bit of streaming and just playing straight off one of my network drive...i do all this wirelessly..so it highly depends on ur wireless connection...but for wired streaming..believe it or not i've worked with media encoder and vlc...