So you downloaded 30 MB of client side code instead of 100kb. Don't see how that's a win. By "higher quality" you mean placebo (see foobar2000 faq) or some DSP filters?
> So you downloaded 30 MB of client side code instead of 100kb. Don't see how that's a win.
Depends how you're counting. Using that 100kb of code "as intended" essentially requires Firefox (95MB) or Chrome (153MB), or some proprietary alternative.
To use VLC instead, we can get by with something like dillo (1MB) and youtube-dl (1MB), which (added to your 30MB estimate for VLC) is much less client-side code.
Firefox and Chrome are application platforms, like your OS. It doesn't make sense to count them. They don't only run youtube, unlike VLC which is only a media player. Otherwise VLC counts as 20 GB (or whatever) for the OS as well.
From a performance perspective, it is a win. I've used the VLC trick to smoothly play videos on machines which are too old to play them at full frame rate in the browser.
