Its an additional, not an either/or. Im unfamiliar with handbrake, it's a format conversion tool?I get why it would be useful, the problem is that adding media is never very "ad hoc" in my experience. None of the media I have would play properly on the wii in its current form. Everything I get we'd need to convert first using handbrake. My kids are obsessed with a recent film they've been watching, so before a trip the other day I quickly converted it to my "WiiMC" preset on handbrake, then brought in the USB stick from the back of the minivan to copy it over. Once I was waiting for that to finish, it wouldn't have taken me much more effort to also find a cover and throw it in the directory, now that @Hakaisha has explained how it could work. That's about as ad-hoc as it gets for this platform unfortunately. At least, in my opinion! I don't have any sources of content ready to play on the Wii as is- if I did, that would be a different story (transfer and go).
As far as Einstein's mod on github- I took a look at it, I like some of the stuff he's doing, but there isn't anything in particular over WiiFlow Lite that makes me want to switch everything over yet. It's taken me long enough to get my minivan setup *just so*, why throw a wrench into it if there isn't anything specifically I need from another fork?
...I'll admit, I do have a laundry list of things I'd like to see WiiFlow do if I had a chance to get into the inner workings, and if a fork were to start offering some of them I'd consider it. For now, I like my setup, all I'm looking to do is get a better video player setup for now.
To be clear, im not asking you to install it, Im asking for your input. How would you have an ideal install, what could be changed to include your needs without excluding others, wishlist features. And your thoughts on the comments so far. Im interested particularly because your needs cover a lot of angles.