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Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update (mpc-hc.org)
Popular open-source media player for Windows, Media Player Classic Home Cinema -- or MPC-HC, has issued what it says could be the last update the app ever receives. The team writes: v1.7.13, the latest, and probably the last release of our project... 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.
Because that never happened with closed source...
With maybe the difference that in closed source, nobody can pick up the slack and continue if he feels the software is worth supporting. Closed source maker going under, software is dead in the water. Sucks to be you if you depended on it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is not unique to open source. This very thing happens to closed source, commercial products as well.
I don't think you're trolling, I just think you're ignorant.
sig: sauer
Good thing commercial vendors never cancel product lines or go out of business.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm guessing VLC killed it? I used to use it all the time but now I just use VLC.
That's probably why "the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero".
People who know C and C++ well are becoming rarer and rarer. The ones who are good are too busy making big bucks in industry, even if they're working on open source software like the Linux kernel (which is heavily corporate-developed these days).
If this project really wants to attract the next generation of developers to work on their project, they'll need to rewrite it in a fad language like Ruby, Go, or especially Rust.
I can't believe I'm typing this, but... There is literally no alternative. I have never found ANY other media player that supports what should be the most basic possible feature: BOOKMARKS! How is this possible? I have no idea, but VLC certainly does NOT support it. They have some sort of "fake" bookmarks which disappear once you close it, which makes them completely pointless.
Since MPC-HC is the only program that does the most basic imaginable feature, I will have to keep running it even if they kill it. On the other hand, even "MPC-HC" is a "resurrection" from the original "MPC"...
As opposed to what? Relying on Microsoft and Apple? Even if you're willing to pay, both companies have taken a general direction of not listening to their users.
#DeleteFacebook
I have to admit I've used MPC-HC for many many years now, in fact I'm using an old out of date version. I wonder if basically it's "good enough" that it doesn't need further development? There's products like "PuTTY" which essentially don't update for ages because the open source product fulfills it's function. Unless the product needs more fancy features which often risks breaking things. Time will tell I suppose.
I started with Media Player, and then I moved to Apple's AppleTV for a while. The last iteration of AppleTV was a bust for me, as it seemed to prefer Apple's store over my own media, and the touch remote was pretty useless. So I wound up with JRiver Media Center. I have it running on Debian Liunx. So far, JRiver Media Center is looking very good.
The developer can decide to just end up not supporting it, with no option to pay for support. Open source is notorious for screwing over loyal users in this manner.
Because that never happened with closed source...
Yeah. I've been screwed over much worse with projects done using commercial software where my old project files are now unusable because the software either stopped being supported, or the vendor decided to "upgrade" in a way that was not back-compatable with old files.
With maybe the difference that in closed source, nobody can pick up the slack and continue if he feels the software is worth supporting. Closed source maker going under, software is dead in the water. Sucks to be you if you depended on it.
Yep.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There hasn't been much in the way of software that just does what you want it to, in a small clean package. Much thanks to the developers that kept this going as an alternative to Microsoft's pointless stupidity.
Well, consider the time we're living in. It's more and more common that software gets altered in ways you do not like. A former for-license model getting changed to a subscription pay-by-month model, or some additional "enhancements" that make the software unusable or send your lifetime history to its maker to sell. And that's just what I come up with in the minute this took to write.
In commercial software, your choice is to grin and bear it. For reference, see Windows in its latest incarnations.
In OSS, you can at least remove the shitty bits that are detrimental to your interests. Or wait, you don't have to, because they don't get baked into the package because the maker of the software KNOWS you'd immediately remove that bullshit, so why bother waste resources on creating it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You mean like Windows Vista?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The real question now is how this affects the offshoot MPC-BE.
Why keep working on something that works as intended?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The people who created and updated this software deserve a huge "Thank You" from people who used it for years, including me. I mostly use VideoLAN now, but still have MPC on my computers, where it has lived happily since Day 1 (and will continue). It has always done exactly what it promised without gobbling a lot of resources and without trying to make itself the star of the show. The best thing about it is that the developers never fell into the "bloatware" trap.
So whatever happens, thank you Kacper Michajlow, XhmikosR, Goran Dzaferi and JellyFrog (still listed as "Active People"), and many now listed as inactive who contributed in the past.
People forget that when Media Player Classic came along, it was at a time when Microsoft seemed determined to force non-tech users to use Media Player, which was becoming more bloated, invasive and greedy with every update. MPC was a breath of fresh air.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I think MPC came about way back in the day in response to windows media player becoming a bloated POS compared to the old Windows media player. It was designed at the time to mimic and look much like the old windows media player..
This was back during the late Win98/WinME/Win2k era.
Back when windows media player went from this
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player#/media/File:MediaPlayer601Info.png
to this
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/66soci/windows_media_player_skins/
http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/decoders_wmp7b.html
You definitely have an option to pay for support, Throw the code at a dev and pay them to do whatever you need.
No sir I dont like it.
Screwing how? When an open source project dies it typically continues working. When a closed source project dies the company folds, the license servers get taken offline and you no longer have a working product.
I just checked. I am running version 1.5.0 of MPC-HC. A quick look on project history shows that was released in November 2014. Still works 100% fine.
I wish I could always feel this screwed.
Because that never happened with closed source...
With maybe the difference that in closed source, nobody can pick up the slack and continue if he feels the software is worth supporting. Closed source maker going under, software is dead in the water. Sucks to be you if you depended on it.
Yep. As an example. a few years ago ArcSoft abandoned their media playing products, including the excellent Total Media Theater which I bought. I didn't use a warez copy, I paid for it. Still have it on my PC. Still use it at times. It was great because if you ripped a BluRay, it would play the rip without any questions. The only realistic commercial alternatives to TMT are WinDVD and PowerDVD and both refuse to pay rips. In fact, both are determined to do everything that the MPAA wants to make sure that their products are as barely useful as possible. I used MPC-HC some years ago but the only real advantage it had was for me over VLC was that it could "play" AviSynth scripts and you could see the output you would get from the script kind of in slow motion without having to run the script on the whole video (which could take hours depending on what you were doing) and then check the output. AviSynth is a scripting tool that lets you do rather complex operations on video and audio, mostly video, like if you need to re-encode something to different resolution.
MPC-HC has been incredibly feature complete for a long time. I mean the list of fixes, changes, and features look impressive with each release but frankly I'm running a 3 year out of date version on my desktop and compared to my laptop running something very recent ... errr.... the buttons look a bit different...?
For the longest time it has truly excelled at it's core feature: The ability to play videos via a small footprint media player.
Oh behalf of the many users: Thanks for your hard efforts over the years, and thanks for not turning it into a steaming turd as much of the rest of the world seems to embrace change for changes sake. I see the abandoning of this project after its long stability in design and core purpose as part of its success story.
Is someone forcing you to use systemd? Is it part of your license agreement? A paid contract? A gun held to your head?
Free software is free-as-in-freedom. Runit, SysV init, Upstart, and GNU Shepherd all have their own virtues. Support one.
", or the vendor decided to "upgrade" in a way that was not back-compatable with old files."
Why does Intuit pop into my head at this reference?
Do you realize the AC was trolling & you got caught in the trap?
Why would you think this? It's so blistering obvious that serious responses seem ridiculous.
If you are using linux as your desktop (versus server), chances are systemd is more than good enough and probably better than what logs you get with windows home edition.
Compatibility, security patches, new technologies comes to mind.
Sure, lots of us used MPC-HC for years and it was always, IMO, one of the best options for a Windows based media server but times have changed. Most folks have moved onto all-in-one packages like Plex or simple streaming devices like Apple TVs and Rokus. These days I use Plex and Rokus. I don't miss the days of having a full-blown Windows PC under my TV, fiddling with CODECs, etc.
Closed-source software companies go defunct, and file formats go unsupported. One of the many examples would be the Wingz spreadsheet. I used this in college in the 90s, and had quite a few .wkz files from my physics classes. But, Informix (the maker of Wingz) went out of business, and there's no way to open these files in a modern OS (with the exception of installing an older OS and Wingz in a VM).
sig: sauer
I think the GP's "Why would you think this?" question was really in response to your "I don't think you're trolling, I just think you're ignorant." GP thinks the OP was clearly trolling; I don't think the OP was ignorant at all, I think he was trolling either to be an ass, or to throw in FUD.
Ah yes, the "bad old days" of skins. "Hey, let's not make a good UI for our media player, we'll throw something trashy out there, I'm sure someone will make a great skin!"
Ehh... you're probably right -- he was trolling. I must be feeling less cynical than normal today.
sig: sauer
Maybe it has reached its design goals, and is largely bug-free and tested.
What's the fuss? Enjoy it!
Because everything else around it evolves. I understand your point, that there's no need to rewrite the whole thing, etcetc.
But software products DO need some type of maintenance. Your 10-year-old media isn't much use if it can only play 10-year-old files. Even if the OS changes, the application that ran just fine under the old OS might not start or just crash if it makes false assumptions about the newer OS.
If it doesn't understand or handles in a poor way new file formats, new video card output tricks, larger formats like 4k, new methods of file storage (IE, cloud storage if you're going that way, or web playback), you'll find that media player to not be a lot of use.
I use both MPC-HC and VLC, and MPC-HC is pretty feature complete. In fact, I often times skip updates for it because it just works well as is.
I think I encountered a few times where MPC-HC worked better because it was lighter, and I like the simpler interface I guess.
So there you are, thanks for all the development, I hope it can keep going with this final release for a long time.
Good luck with that, considering more and more userspace applications have systemd as a hard dependency.
Free-as-in-freedom is not the same as written-the-way-I-want. There is nothing stopping the open source community from making forks of existing projects or brand new projects to escape systemd.
The hatred in the free software world for Canonical is pretty understandable - Mark Shuttleworth and others have occasionally issued inflammatory or dishonest statements (for example, the false claims about design flaws in Wayland) or included adware in their software releases (the Amazon shopping lens).
The hatred for systemd baffles me - you're mad because volunteers are building something you don't want? Isn't that a ridiculous display of arrogance and entitlement? "This thing you're making and giving away has features I don't like, so you shouldn't create it!"
In all seriousness I wish the developers and supporters of Devuan, Gentoo (which can run with or without systemd), Void Linux, GuixSD, and the other systemd-free Linux distributions all the success in the world. But frankly I don't care enough to contribute. For the people that do care, if they put 1% of the energy that went into the flame wars into contributing, Devuan would have conquered the world by now.
Got me a +4 insightful, why should I complain?
I see it more as a symbiotic relationship.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I actually can't imagine downloading a two-hour lecture and needing data from it. It sounds like a poor way to transmit data. And frankly I don't know who is even making two hour lectures these days; if it won't fit into the YouTube attention span, why bother? And in no case would you be required to watch the entire two hours.
I think you should let someone who actually does use this feature explain why rather than trying to invent something out of whole cloth.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You should check out AVIDemux if you haven't already - it can do various transforms on video. I don't know how complex your AviSynth scripts were, but something like changing resolution (or aspect ratio, or rotating, etc.) are simple enough that it can show you the output in real time before re-encoding the whole video.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
You implied there is a choice and I pointed out in many cases there simply isn't one. Yet you still insist there's a choice when there isn't.
I use systemd on a couple computers. Out of five computers, it only truly works properly on one, half works on another, and doesn't work at all on three.
Maybe the hatred has something to do with it being a piece of utter shite? Every other month there's news (not good news) about systemd, the last one being systemd-resolved - another halfass attempt at assimilating another system function that led to very serious vulnerabilities.
Back in the days of hey lets make our software look like an appliance. DVD playback software was notorious for this. Lets make an interface that looks like an actual set top DVD player. Also apps that Creative used to bundle with their sound cards.
Thank god that era is behind us, they shipped crappy "skins" and the stuff that the 3rd party community made was usually even worse.
It was also the age of "hey, this skin will look really awesome in a screenshot! That'll make people want to use it. Of course, no one actually stares at their media player while playing music or watching a movie, but let's make something that's more flashy than coherent or usable."
There is still choice. You can put FREEDOS on the computers. You can turn them into pieces of modern art. You can take them to the firing range.
You can't demand other people write the software you want.
I have systemd running on three machines at my house and fifty servers at work without problems.
See subject: For Media Player Classic to do as good a job as VLC you need to install codec packs (3rd party) - VLC has them built-in already & iirc (correct me IF I am off/wrong - feel free on this note) they are installed LOCAL to the folder/subfolder structure VLC has (not in a public folder like %WinDir%\system32 for example - which IS iirc, what codecpacks do).
* You "bloat" MPC's installation right there by adding more libs/dlls for it to work as well as VLC does (has libs in its distro already).
APK
P.S.=> Lastly - I like them both - both decent programs (coming from another freeware dev in myself no less) BUT this is WHY I prefer VLC (no need to install 3rd party codec packs)... apk
You're wrong. MPC (Media player Classic) relies on installed codec packs. MPC-HC (Home Cinema) takes the same player, can link to the codecs in the Windows Framework, but also include most required codecs to make it work "Out of the box".
Is my post being truncated? Is the summary being truncated? We're talking about MPC-HC, which comes with codecs built in, but aren't installed into the Windows framework. No additional steps required. As an option it can tap into the Windows' codecs.
Here's their website:
https://mpc-hc.org/
Now take an MKV file on a clean Windows 7 machine (no aftermarket codecs). Install MPC-HC. Try to play it with Windows Media Player, watch it fail.
Take the video and play it in MPC-HC, watch it work with the built-in codecs.
Try a FLAC file, watch it fail in media player, but work in MPC-HC.
In MPC-HC go View-Options-Internal Filters. These are the internal codecs availible.
Go start-run-msinfo32
Components-multimedia-video codecs. Notice Windows still only has the built in codecs.