Is this not better for me though? If I'm gonna have ads forced on me, they might as well be relevant.

I'd pay them for location history and Earth if they asked for it

It's a bit more than $15 for RHEL

I always read there are better alternatives to VLC that give better playback features or a higher quality picture. I try them but always come back to it as there are always problems.

Potplayer, Mplayer, MPV.

Whether it's stupidly high CPU usage on some files, settings you need to manage through a config file, or unintuitive keyboard shortcuts. I forgo those features for the simplicity and easy configuration of VLC