Mplayer vs VLC picture quality?

[speters]

I have some blu rays that I have backed on my computer and I was trying different settings in handbrake and wanted to see how they effected the picture. One of the files was 19gb and after using handbrake I got it down to 5.5gb. When I played the file back with VLC 1.0.5 there where times when I could see some macroblocking, which is what I expected. I was curios to see if maybe playing the file back in a different app would effect the image quality, so I opened it up with Mplayer rev.13 and I didn't seem to notice the macroblocking. So I did a screen grab and opened up the images in photoshop. When I did that I noticed that the image from VLC showed alot more noise. I have not changed the preferences for either application, is there a reason why Mplayer has less noise?

I have attached two screen grabs. The first is from VLC the second from Mplayer.

 

[Mr Dobey]

I could imagine there are a bunch of advanced settings that could be in play with your quality difference between the two. The VLC forums may lead you to a more specific answer than here.