I understand and can appreciate the decoding options available under the AVI umbrella, and if there were just a few choices, it wouldnt be a big issue. But honestly I don't have time or patience to spend hours, days or weeks going thru 30 different decoders trying to figure out the "sweet spot" for streaming the files thru MC. I downloaded and looked at the G-spot program, but it appeared to be so complicated I quickly gave up. Fact is, I hit "play" in Tversity, and they play. Every time. No problems, no issues. No decoder selection needed. What that indicates to me is that, given sufficient program development, the best decoder CAN be automatically selected (if given the option to do so), leaving the manual selection option for those who feel much more comfortable in dealing with such things. Why mess with something if I don't need to? Keeping in mind that AVI files inherently don't have the greatest video quality on earth to begin with, I really doubt if MC's various decoder options would appreciably improve the playback quality anyway.
MC's UPnP plugin for streaming audio is first rate, thoroughly excellent. However, the video streaming function needs a lot more development to be competitive, especially in the UI. There are much better choices available, with far fewer headaches.
This is still a BETA program, so this is just my 2 cents worth regarding this issue. I hope some further development can make it work a lot better.