I use it from that time when I bought my 1st laptop, it supports almost all video formats, from avi to wmv, it supports all.
When I dont know about that player I were used windows media player which is good also but it supports only hi-tech videos or hd videos.
If you see low quality videos on windows media centre it will be seems as worse video, but its not in vlc media player, it supports even low quality videos, it gives you good video experience even on low quality video format which can not be fulfilled by windows media centre.i only dislike in vlc media player is it dont have resume facility means if you watch a movie and you cancel it for any reason and again if you start it in later time, it never be starts from there where you ends it, except this I dont find any demerit in vlc media player till yet.