Ugh. After my last crash wiped everything out, I thought that maybe I would test the suggestion I've seen some people make that XBMC/Kodi is what's corrupting the A3s. I figured I'd not reinstall it, but just use the Spark media player. Well, I was quickly reminded why I quit using the Spark media player in the first place -- it's really glitchy on HD videos. (h264 MKV, to be precise.)
So I thought, why not install VLC? VLC shouldn't trash the system, because it doesn't install anything other than a single executable file (at least on Windows.) Unfortunately, VLC was even glitchier than the default media player unless I selected full hardware acceleration. The problem was, with full hardware acceleration it wouldn't play videos full-screen -- no matter which of the format options I selected, it would always play them in a window in the middle of the screen; selecting different options would only change the size or aspect ratio of the window slightly. Also, full hardware acceleration tended to screw up the audio sync (huh?)
My next try was MX Player, which seemed to be the next most popular video player in the app store. Well, I have a big problem with MX Player: it won't let me just select files out of a directory tree, it insists on lumping every file in that tree into a single flat list. Nope nope nope nope nope.
So, anybody have a suggestion for another media player to try before I reinstall Kodi? Requirements: must play (at least) 720p MPEG4 flawlessly, must not try to create a "playlist" unless I tell it to.