I like having the same player across systems and haven't ever had problem with HD in it; basically, no incentive to leave VLC. I've probably used it for about 10 years now, and it's always done the job. Why wouldn't it be worth using?

Only if you want something that "just works".

Out of interest, what are the other options (specifically in my case, for MacOS). For me, VLC has been the most stable and least wonky option for years now, but I'm not sure I'm aware of everything that is out there.

Try it - the release notes specifically mentioned HD playback improvements

Yes.

This is because, before, VLC did not activate hardware decoding by default.

I use in on windows because it has great windows support (official installer, all the things), but on unix, mpv is the way to go (especially if you prefer GTK apps, there's gnome-mpv).

Yeah I'm on linux so I'm just using vanilla mpv. When I was on Windows, I used MPC with MadVR. Have you tried that?

You might like mpc-qt.

Give it another try, who knows.