Media Player Classic is a light-weight media player that can handle most audio and video files. As the name suggests, it was originally designed as an alternative to the classic version of Windows Media Player (version 6.4, to be exact) at a time when Microsoft kept throwing features and design changes at its default media player.

Initially released as a closed-source Windows application, Media Player Classic was open sourced more than a decade ago, and there are a few popular forks, including Media Player Classic Home Edition (MPC-HC).

But now it looks like development of MPC-HC may be ending.

While MPC-HC version 1.7.1 was released this week, the team behind the latest release say that the number of active developers has been dropping in recent years.

At this point there’s no one left to maintain the project. That means MPC-HC will likely continue to function for now. But you likely won’t see any new features, performance improvements, bug fixes, or security patches unless new developers come to the project.

While there are certainly other options for folks looking for an open source media player (VLC and Kodi come to mind), it’s still a bit sad to see this once-popular option ride off into the sunset… although there is still one alternative that’s closer to MPC-HC than any other.

Another fork of Media Player Classic called MPC-BE (Black Edition) is still under active development.

via slashdot

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5 replies on “Media Player Classic HC may have reached the end of the line”

  1. I could have sworn that the version packaged with the K-Lite Codec Pack was still getting occasional updates. At any rate, it still works fine, so I am in no big hurry to replace it.

    1. I have had good luck with VLC up to the last version for Windows 7 (I haven’t had the problem with my Windows 10 equipped computer). When I attempted to expand a 4:3 movie to a 16:9 screen the video portion would freeze while the audio continued unabated. Fortunately I kept zip files of the prior version, reinstalled it, set it to not update automatically (my usage for VLC doesn’t carry much of a malware risk) and went about my business. I somehow even have a zip file of an approximately eight year old version on my backup HDD so I guess if I get hold of a computer running XP that doesn’t use electricity like fire burns newspaper I can install it and play DVDs on it (assuming it has a DVD drive). Prior versions are available from VLC going back to (as far as I can tell) the beta days and compatibility with Windows 2000. I don’t happen to have a link handy but a simple Google search brought that page up.

  2. Thats really too bad. MPC-HC + LAV Filters was the best way to watch H265 encoded video, either with hardware decoding support, or software decoding.

    1. I really like MPC-HC, I can very easily use it to tell whether video decoding is being accelerated or not and if so how so, not sure you can do the same in VLC (it’s ctrl + J or something).

      What about projects like SVP, the 60fps video from any source video project, that relies on MPC-HC?

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