The point of the initial question was to have a quick lean way to play YT videos haali and mpc-hd are about quality are more matters of video enthusiast who look for additional quality /and or features, which is a whole different argument (worth of a dedicated tread)
In Firefox ESR Vimeo gives an error message and Bitchute keeps loading the site indefinitely (script is busy). Rumble does load, but the videos stay black (no image). In Mypal Vimeo does load, but the videos do not. Bitchute loads, but the videos do not. Rumble has the same black screens as videos.
Aside that mine was more a suggestion to watch youtube videos on underpowered PCs, rather than vista specific instructions, i just tested it and while 2.0 indeed refuses to install, the slighter older MPC-HC.1.9.18.x86.exe installs and works as intended. Also 2.0 (and anything newer than 1.9.18) seems working correctly although the installer refuses to install it. )
Are you saying the install finishes, even after the error message and subsequent crash of the installation program? The error message is at the beginning of the install process, after which the installation immediately crashes with another error message screen (install has stopped, loading possible solutions online (or something like that)).
I'm saying that I just downloaded the .zip version and unpacked it. (there isn't anything to "install") Just a bit of initiative, don't wait always to be spooned with every smallest detail
Just use a sligtly older yt downloader, latest versions won't work on vista. No need to use patched versions Klite codecs are matter of the past, no need to bloat your OS with all the things they installs. Then just configure properly MPC-HC, overlay mixer output is usually (by far) the lightest/fastest option, but the default one is EDR (which is working well only on latest OS, and It's also more featured but slower.
Reading about youtube-dl errors gave me the impression that it was Youtube changing things around that made youtube-dl incompatible. But I will try older versions to see if they work. I will go and read more about configuring MPC-HC. I have no experience in the matter, but I will learn. Edit: when using yt-dlp (youtube-dl gave the error ‘could not open uploader id’), the default configuration of MPC-HC did work well on Windows 7, which isn’t the latest OS either.
But nothing stop you from using such configuration even on a 128core machine running win11. It's still 1000 times better way to enjoy videos than browser's integrated players. Zooming, stretching, custom crop, custom aspect ratio, saturation/contrast/hue control, custom filters, custom playing speed, customizable/keyboard shortcuts and so on are things unknown on browser's territory, even Vivaldi can't match MPC on videos.