{"slug": "mpc-hc", "name": "MPC-HC", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 7, "commenters": 9, "warners": 0, "score": 5.816, "rising": -2.29, "first": "2025-11-07", "latest": "2026-06-20", "why": "I'm still using the Media Player Classic Home Cinema to this day.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I'm still using the Media Player Classic Home Cinema to this day.", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc", "official_url": "https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["MPC-HC"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 777789696, "item_id": 48611856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611856", "by": "tredre3", "date": "2026-06-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's nice to see that someone revived MPC-HC (again).", "excerpt": "It's nice to see that someone revived MPC-HC (again). For a while MPC-BE[1] was the alternative. I don't know how they compare today, but the latter is still great. [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}, {"id": 777762016, "item_id": 48610126, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48610126", "by": "magicalhippo", "date": "2026-06-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPC-HC is still being maintained", "excerpt": "Well there's an old kid in town, MPC-HC is still being maintained[1] to the great joy for us who dislike the VLC UX. [1]: https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/", "context": "", "use_case": "Windows video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}, {"id": 773492357, "item_id": 48343272, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343272", "by": "fithisux", "date": "2026-05-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPClassic or VLC worked fine", "excerpt": "There are many open source alternatives/upgrades to M$$$ products. No reason to keep using them. Literally none. I have been a happy exclusive only user of OO/LibeOffice since 2004. Some times I needed to use MSOffice for a paper. It was always problematic. I haven't use VS since 2007. I migrated to gcc. Never had a problem. SQLServer? Only for demo and at work just to pull or save data. Postgres always saved the day", "context": "", "use_case": "media player", "switched_from": "Windows Media Player", "story": "Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products"}, {"id": 743492754, "item_id": 46468297, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468297", "by": "Drybones", "date": "2026-01-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "ditched VLC in favor of MPV and MPC-HC.", "excerpt": "Nearly this entire HN comment section is upset about VLC being mentioned once and not recommended. If you can not understand why this very minor (but loud?) note was made, then you probably do not do any serious video encoding or you would know why it sucks today and is well past its prime. VLC is glorified because it was a video player that used to be amazing back in the day, but hasn't been for several years now. I", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File"}, {"id": 743458977, "item_id": 46466186, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466186", "by": "perching_aix", "date": "2026-01-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "so I switched to mpc-hc and never looked back.", "excerpt": "Kinda the problem with anecdotes isn't it? :) My own anecdotal experience with VLC was that while every update fixed something, they also broke something in return - and these updates were common. This got annoying enough at some point for me to hop ships, and so I switched to mpc-hc and never looked back. I've since also tried (and keep trying) the to-me still newfangled mpv, but I'm not a fan of the GUI or the keyb", "context": "", "use_case": "Video playback", "switched_from": "VLC", "story": "What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["video playback", "windows video playback", "media player", "video playback on windows"], "compared": [{"slug": "vlc-media-player", "name": "VLC media player", "co": 7, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "mpv", "name": "mpv", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46404321", "title": "What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48609343", "title": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45898407", "title": "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45850751", "title": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48341578", "title": "Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 777789696, "item_id": 48611856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611856", "by": "tredre3", "date": "2026-06-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's nice to see that someone revived MPC-HC (again).", "excerpt": "It's nice to see that someone revived MPC-HC (again). For a while MPC-BE[1] was the alternative. I don't know how they compare today, but the latter is still great. [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}, {"id": 777762016, "item_id": 48610126, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48610126", "by": "magicalhippo", "date": "2026-06-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPC-HC is still being maintained", "excerpt": "Well there's an old kid in town, MPC-HC is still being maintained[1] to the great joy for us who dislike the VLC UX. [1]: https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/", "context": "", "use_case": "Windows video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}, {"id": 773492357, "item_id": 48343272, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343272", "by": "fithisux", "date": "2026-05-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPClassic or VLC worked fine", "excerpt": "There are many open source alternatives/upgrades to M$$$ products. No reason to keep using them. Literally none. I have been a happy exclusive only user of OO/LibeOffice since 2004. Some times I needed to use MSOffice for a paper. It was always problematic. I haven't use VS since 2007. I migrated to gcc. Never had a problem. SQLServer? Only for demo and at work just to pull or save data. Postgres always saved the day", "context": "", "use_case": "media player", "switched_from": "Windows Media Player", "story": "Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products"}, {"id": 743517920, "item_id": 46469870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46469870", "by": "perching_aix", "date": "2026-01-02", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Yes: https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc", "excerpt": "Yes: https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File"}, {"id": 743492754, "item_id": 46468297, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468297", "by": "Drybones", "date": "2026-01-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "ditched VLC in favor of MPV and MPC-HC.", "excerpt": "Nearly this entire HN comment section is upset about VLC being mentioned once and not recommended. If you can not understand why this very minor (but loud?) note was made, then you probably do not do any serious video encoding or you would know why it sucks today and is well past its prime. VLC is glorified because it was a video player that used to be amazing back in the day, but hasn't been for several years now. I", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File"}, {"id": 743458977, "item_id": 46466186, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466186", "by": "perching_aix", "date": "2026-01-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "so I switched to mpc-hc and never looked back.", "excerpt": "Kinda the problem with anecdotes isn't it? :) My own anecdotal experience with VLC was that while every update fixed something, they also broke something in return - and these updates were common. This got annoying enough at some point for me to hop ships, and so I switched to mpc-hc and never looked back. I've since also tried (and keep trying) the to-me still newfangled mpv, but I'm not a fan of the GUI or the keyb", "context": "", "use_case": "Video playback", "switched_from": "VLC", "story": "What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File"}, {"id": 734463585, "item_id": 45903974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903974", "by": "embedding-shape", "date": "2025-11-12", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "maybe it's time to give MPC a try again", "excerpt": "I did drop MPC in favor of VLC, but with the new UI of VLC, maybe it's time to give MPC a try again. Didn't realize there was forks of it, time to do some rabbit hole diving!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support"}, {"id": 734461664, "item_id": 45903854, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903854", "by": "JBiserkov", "date": "2025-11-12", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm still using the Media Player Classic Home Cinema to this day.", "excerpt": "I'm still using the Media Player Classic Home Cinema to this day. https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc Never liked VLC, but that's just me.", "context": "", "use_case": "Video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support"}, {"id": 733784944, "item_id": 45861559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45861559", "by": "haiguise", "date": "2025-11-08", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc", "excerpt": "https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025"}, {"id": 733658545, "item_id": 45853659, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853659", "by": "Springtime", "date": "2025-11-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "These days I use the currently maintained fork of MPC-HC", "excerpt": "On Windows at least VLC has had better alternatives for the past 20 years, both feature and UI wise. I had frame-stepping hotkeys back in the mid-00s with Korean video players. These days I use the currently maintained fork of MPC-HC which similarly has this. On Mac it wasn't until the mid-10s that I found a decent player.", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback on Windows", "switched_from": "", "story": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025"}]}