MPC-HC Is Officially Dead

Megalith

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Version 1.7.13 of MPC-HC (Media Player Classic Home Cinema) released today, but it comes with depressing news: the announcement reveals that the number of active developers has dried up, so the project is over and finished. MPC-HC, when coupled with madVR, has been my go-to player for high-quality video playback – hopefully, nothing comes up that forces me to seek an alternative (I’ve hated just about every other player out there).

For quite a few months now, or even years, the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero. This, unfortunately, means that the project is officially dead and this release would be the last one. Unless some people step up that is. So, if someone’s willing to really contribute and has C/C++ experience, let me know on IRC or via e-mail. Otherwise, all things come to an end and life goes on. It’s been a nice journey and I’m personally pretty overwhelmed having to write this post. Thanks to everyone who has contributed in any way all these years; Remember, MPC-HC is an 11-year old project.
 
MPC-HC I found better than VLC for practically anything under the sun, especially for older/outdated video file types and a number of DVD/Blu-Ray titles.

Guess I'll have to go back to VLC and Cyberlink in the near future, then.
 
I'm sure I can still rock MPC-HC for quite some time until something else gets introduced that it can't play, but I guess this also gives me some kind of excuse to give PotPlayer a try.
 
This really sucks.
Use it + MadVR everyday.
My hopes of having a large, ripped UHD BD collection on NAS is dwindling fast.
I hate dealing with discs.
 
MPC-HC is lightweight and fast, and it works exceptionally well with MadVR (in fact the two are bundled together in the K-Lite Codec Pack). However, there is an alternative I've been using for a while mostly due to the nicer darker interface: MPC-BE
 
That is unfortunate. It too was one of my go-to players, along with VLC. VLC is still the best "zero config" solution, but MPC-HC along with proper codec packs that include MadVR and AssFilterMod/XYSubFilter (to my knowledge, only LAV Megamix is anywhere close to up to date) offers better quality and features. For VLC, check out www.videolan.org

As for alternatives, it seems there are really only a couple of solutions. There is the Media Player Classic - Black Edition version which is the closest; a fork of MPC-HC. The question is how will it be developed if the main bulk of the work is no longer done by MPC-HC devs. I don't know if their dev team is capable of making major changes, or if they just basically edit a few things to their preference and build a BE fork off each version of MPC-HC. Still it is the best "drop in" replacement one can ask for and I hope it is continually developed and updated. Evil Timmy linked it above.

The other option is "mpv" - a very powerful, open source, but not particularly user friendly player. It has lots of great features, but pretty much everything related to configuration is done from the command line or editing config files. Some swear by it, though. If there is a powerful GUI added to MPV (for both config and playback) then it could easily be the new "enthusiast" player. https://mpv.io/

I'd also like to see the VLC experience enhanced and smoothed - its possible (I think) to use some of the same engines and whatnot that make playback on MPC-HC / BE / MPV so preferred by some, on VLC, but it just requires configuration. Regardless, MPC-HC was a great piece of software and will be missed; I hope others can fill the gap.
 
OMG no! It was light weight, simple, and amazing. This is a very sad day. I tried MPC-BE for a little while and wasn't a big fan. VLC is just unpleasant. Hopefully some people help him out!
 
Wow this is a sucker punch. I figured being such an awesome program it would have plenty of devs. :(
 
VLC is still the best "zero config" solution,

And that's all 99.999% of users need.

Hence why anything else is drying up. That and streaming. I cant remember the last time I played a native locally stored video file longer than 2 mins or a holiday clip on my PC.
 
This sucks. I've been using MPC-HC with madVR as an external player with Kodi for years. Nothing has come close to looking and working as good as MPC-HC. I've never tried the BE fork...
 
Bummer
I use it with Smooth Video Project (the older version 3.1.7) which has an automated MPC-HC and MAD installer if you select it.
Such a cool way to watch video. Be sure to set Artifact Masking in SVP to Strongest otherwise you can get shadows following peoples heads etc.
Fingers crossed his plea for help will be answered.
 
Unfortunately recently reverted back to MPC-HC due to MPC-BE constantly crashing on me. Hopefully it may be a valid option if they can resolve it's frequent crashes.
That has been my experience with the BE fork also. I am going to miss the ever loving hell out of HC. It just worked with madVR and xysubfilter too damn well.

I wish other programs just fucking worked like those three did together.

Truly starting this week off with some very bad news with this announcement.
 
So many people acting like MPC-HC is gonna just up and disappear like a fart in the wind or something, the software exists, it's available so grab it and stash it, the program will work for years to come but the active development has apparently come to a close. I mean really, how many actual updates need to be done to software that already works about as well as software can possibly work already? :D

As for the BE fork, I've heard of it but never bothered with it, looks like they last updated it in May so, might have to take a peek sometime but honestly MPC-HC is rock solid for me, it's never crashed in the multitude of years I've used it, never not played anything I've thrown at it, and it will continue to do so for years to come.
 
I use to use VLC. Then I moved to MPC, but with few exceptions, I've been using Kodi for years. I see people saying MPC is zero config, but IME for Surround, it doesn't always work without some work. Kodi just works for me. The only exception was when I last upgraded versions it somehow changed my speaker config (and switched it to basic mode from advanced, so I didn't find the setting I needed). No doubt, MPC uses less resources, but that's not relevant to me. Skylake can handle...hell my old i7-860 can easily handle it. That said, sucks that this is dying. It is an excellent stand along media player.
 
I hate to see MPC go away . it was a great media player . thankfully there is still a few others around .

Zoom Player is a great player and still has active development uses the same playback chain as MPC madvr Lav filters ffdshow etc. ( I personally use this and wholly recommend it)

Media Player DotNet aims to be a modern media player and does things a bit differently aiming to take full advantage of your gpu.

Splash 2.0
the alternative to above players if your looking for something different then this maybe a choice for you

Nero they routinely drop the price of this suite to around 30 bucks . not my first choice but the choices are getting quite limited especially with the absence of Arcsoft Total Media Theater.


The streaming market has really socked it to the the media player market not to mention the on going battle against content providers placing road block after road block driving companies like arc soft to throw in the towel .

Hopefully zoom and the others can continue to offer us quality playback tools . i dread the day when i have to use youtube or some other video site to playback media exclusively.
 
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Fuck! This is the worst news I've heard all week. Why aren't there more people wanting to get in on supporting MPC? Fuck! I need to learn to code for SO MANY reasons.Still, it will probably work for the foreseeable future. I, like others here, am still using WinAmp on a daily basis. Find me a better player and I'll use it.
 
Shame it's the best windows media player. Well I'll use it till it stops being able to playback files. There really is no need to go back to VLC until MPC-HC actually stops working.

the only big things that have been updated for a while is the LAV filter versions which you can download yourself and install so it's not going to outright kill mpc-hc anytime soon. but yeah it's sad to see development has stopped, been using mpc since 2005 and mpc-hc since v1 in 2006. it wouldn't surprise me if some one ends up picking it up and continuing it but we'll see.
 
What a damn day, Martin Landau, George Romero and now this?!?

RIP MPC-HC
 
HPC-BE has worked fine for me for years now, pretty sure HC has been effectively dead for like 2 years now.
 
Well gawd fucking damnit. Like others here, I am surprised that such an amazing and often-used program doesn't have developers lined up to work on it. Yeah like some of you stated, I'm gonna keep using it until videos no longer work on it. This is not the only video player I use, but it's the one I use and rely upon the most. Definitely saddened by the news, which was hella unexpected.
 
What the hell is this MadVR everyone is raving about? I've been using MPC-HC as a stand alone and didn't miss any features thus far.

But it will take a long time for MPC-HC to die, as on some computers that I've installed many years ago the 2-3 year old versions work just as well without update. So I expect this will work for the next 3-5 years even as is, unless some radical new encoding type or container comes around.
 
There are going to be tons of people that didnt even think of helping support it that can and would like to.
The word is out, I cant honestly see this sinking.
 
That sucks...I use it regularly as it seems to work better than VLC performance-wise on UHD content.
It not just works better, it's more stable, more reliable, has more features, is more lightweight. The UI is better, it's more customizable. And it can play virtually anything I throw at it from obscure transport streams to BD file structures.
 
Sad news indeed. I've been using it longer than I can remember at this point. It's been my go-to for just about everything except 3d playback. Things just made sense to me with this one.

Over the last 5-10 years I watched many switch to VLC but I've never really liked the settings interface. I guess its only a matter of time until I'll have to switch. Never really found another program that could truly deliver as well as MPC though.
 
Damn I'm super disappointed , this is the best program %100 percent for videos , Ill have to ride it till it dies
 
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