How is the Incredisonic USB media player for looping GIFs, you ask.
Not great, but...
There are two ways you can play GIFs on this device:
1. You can screencapture the GIF looping for 2+ minutes and save the capture as an .mp4 with no loss of clarity.
But when the Incredisonic plays the .mp4, it wants to treat it as video, and adds anti-aliasing, making those sharp pixels in the GIF fuzz out. On a 1080p monitor this looks bad.
Also, it adds a black frame at the .mp4's 2 minute loop point. Also not good.
2. You can play the GIF directly as a "photo" file for durations ranging from 1 to 30 seconds. No black frame at the loop point. But it still anti-aliases so it looks bad on a HD monitor.
Also -- the player slows the GIF down to 50% of its browser speed! What the hell.
So this is basically a bust, except...
In addition to an HDMI out to a monitor, the player has a standard video (AV) out so it can be played with older TV models. A CRT television (above) is innately low-res and hides the worst effects of the antialiasing. In the case of the GIF above, the slower speed is kind of nice. Also, several versions of the GIF were loaded here, with variations in size, transparency, etc, and the player plays them one after another more or less seamlessly. So some interesting new content ideas came out of the process.
More -- including two players with no black frame at the video loop point.