There are containers (AVI/MPG/MKV/MOV), v codecs (h264, qt, h265, shq3, ..), a codecs (mp3, pcm, ac3, .. ), bitrates, videoformats, audioformats, colorformats, pixelformats, metadata..
Some media is good for web, some for transport, some for streaming, some for graphics (with alpha!), some for broadcast, some for mobile, some for storage.
Some media is "seekable" (SHQ3) other is not (i.e. MP4ts). Some has good compression rates but low performance. Some can be decoded from GPUS. Some in only decoded in CPU.
This is just a very brief and coincise excursus of the media handling in this world. Not to mention other aspects i tend to forget :)
Media si widely supported in all ClassX applications (LiveBoard/MixBoard) in many different ways just to accomodate this exceptional variety of specs.
In MixBoard's case, we added 3 VIs : MediaPlayer, VLC, MediaPlaylist.
MediaPlayer is simple, no-playlist. It's there in order to support media that can be decoded using hardware. It's very light and it supports HW-decodable formats like MPG/MP4/H264. Other formats are not supported expecially if Microsoft codecs are not installed. Seeking can be done but we must be aware of the nature of "one-way-only" codecs. A good H264 file is normally well suited for that.
VLC, MediaPlaylist VIs use the same media engine. This engine supports almost any decodable media format in this world. Same limitations may apply when seeking media: not all codecs are seekable without experiencing glitches. So it's user decision to find the right codec to use in his production.
I hope this helps,
Mik