kodivlc-media-player
I have VLC on my pc which I used to use for watching shows, but I've recently switched to using XBMC so I can stream things/control my pc from my phone, but I've noticed that XBMC has a much lower quality of video playback compared to VLC (MKV's and MP4's). Can anyone thing why this could be?
Windows Media Player/XBMC
VLC
I'm not sure how well you can tell on the pictures but on WMP/XBMC, the edges are a lot blurrier and less near, and the colours look blockier.
XBMC Video output
MP4 is a container. The audio may be encoded with different codecs. Make sure you choose one that is supported. When you choose to stream with VLC, there are different profiles you can use. Try with different audio codecs and keep in mind that quality depends on codec type (lossy/lossless) and settings (bitrate etc.)
FFplay (part of FFmpeg), mpv and MPlayer will seek very fast over .ts, without any pre-processing required. Use the arrow keys and PGUP/PGDN to navigate, with FFplay you can also right-click on the playing video to seek to that position - video width represents % of the video. When navigating .ts you may observe slow-motion-like effect (FFplay) or slight offsync (MPlayer), but those will stabilize in a few seconds. Nothing of that kind was observed with mpv, it is very robust and always exact.
You can get them all for different platforms. Your question indicates Windows, so for FFplay you can try Windows builds by Zeranoe, mpv has everything on their page, and for MPlayer check the updated Windows builds. Best overall seems to be mpv, it has many advanced options and features, including D3D11 and Vulkan support.
Another great and free choice is SMPlayer, which is a GUI front-end for MPlayer and mpv. You can switch between one or another engine under preferences, both will offer fast seeking with .ts files, and much more.
Optional: When a more universal solution is required, .ts must be remuxed into some other format, like .mkv - it offers fast seeking and similar resilience on top of file size reduction. With FFmpeg it can be done without re-encoding, like this:
ffmpeg -i "video 01.ts" -c copy "video 01.mkv"
Best Answer
This is caused by video driver settings. You must disable "edge enhancement" feature in your video card preferences. I've attached below screenshots for NVIDIA and ATI video cards, taken from preferences window where you can disable this feature. Set your preferences as visible on pictures.
ATI video preferences:
NVIDIA video preferences: