Media Player Classic will never be updated again... Probably

Media Player Classic -- the codec-packed, open source media player much loved by video downloaders and encoders around the world -- has reached the end of the line. The latest release -- Media Player Classic Home Cinema v1.7.13, to give it its full title -- is likely to be the last one ever.

The developers say that the number of people working on the project has gradually reduced over the years, and the situation is becoming untenable. The words "the project is officially dead" are not any that users will want to hear, but they have been uttered.

Take a look at the release log for the software, and you can see that updates have been few and far between in recent years. It seems that other commitments -- life in general -- got in the way for developers, and interest in alternatives such as VLC has increased. But if sufficient interest can be drummed up, all may not yet be lost.

A post from the developers on the Media Player Classic website breaks the news:

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.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed in any way all these years; Remember, MPC-HC is an 11-year old project.

As with the demise of any popular software, there is the risk that fake versions of the program will rush to fill the void. This is something that the developers are only too aware of, and issue the following warning:

Don’t forget, that our official builds, both the stable and the beta builds, are digitally signed. Be aware of scams and only get the files from our site!

Media Player Classic. It was good while it lasted.

If anyone is interested in helping keep the project alive, you can get in touch with MPC-HC via its Trac.