It is important to note the following difference between the two techniques:
$Str="This is the<BR />source string<BR />ALL RIGHT"
$Str.Split("<BR />")
This
is
the
(multiple blank lines)
source
string
(multiple blank lines)
ALL
IGHT
$Str -Split("<BR />")
This is the
source string
ALL RIGHT
From this you can see that the string.split()method:
performs a case sensitive split (note that "ALL RIGHT" his split on the "R" but "broken" is not split on the "r")
treats the string as a list of possible characters to split on