I ditched VLC and finally got high-quality HDR playback without any lag

VLC is clearly the best media player out there, with tons of features and support for 100s of media formats. So when I got my 4K HDR monitor, I naturally tried to play the few 4K HDR movies in my collection, and it was, honestly, meh. The colors looked washed out, the HDR tone mapping was all over the place, and there were noticeable micro-stutters. I’d already dialed in the HDR settings on Windows 11, so I knew my display wasn’t the problem.