It is very difficult for a user to replace their favorite tools, and among media players, the most repeated name is VLC Player. However, it is necessary to remember that Media Player Classic Home Cinema has not gone anywhere. Its main updates focus on bug patches and codec updates, but if you feel that VLC is not working well on your machine or you want to explore other alternatives, MPC-HC should be the first on your list.
The story tells us that the original Media Player Classic from the developer known as Gabest began its adventure in May 2003, with the aim of offering users a media player inspired by Windows Media Player 6.4. The transition process at Microsoft was so erratic that Windows XP ended up with three different versions of Windows Media Player (5.x, 6.4 and 8.0 onwards), and Media Player Classic managed to bring some order to so much chaos.
The development of MPC was stopped in March 2006 with version 6.4.9.0, and that gave rise to a fork. The Doom9 forum user known as clsid (now clsid2 on GitHub) shared an update 6.4.9.1, and the Doom9 community itself continued the work under the name Media Player Classic Home Cinema. That same player reached version 1.7.13 in March 2020, and clsid returned to the charge with another fork, which is currently at build 2.1.2.
Download the latest version of Media Player Classic Home Cinema
The update has just arrived in our feed, and from what I have been able to see, it has been online for no more than two hours (at the time of writing this). As clsid explains on his GitHub profile, Media Player Classic Home Cinema is in maintenance mode, receiving hotfixes for important bugs and other minor details.
However, most users seem to ignore several details of MPC-HC, among which stand out HDR video playback, support for dark mode, playback speed adjustments (ideal when a video or tutorial is too dense), automatic actions when a video ends, rotation/flip/mirror/zoom/stretch commands, a large number of keyboard shortcuts, and of course, the possibility of playing YouTube videos using the auxiliary module yt-dlp.
In short, Media Player Classic Home Cinema is a mature and stable player, but it achieved something we don't see very often: Contain a large number of functions and stay lightweight at the same time. Link below!
Official site and downloads: Click here
