Media Player Classic - Home Cinema 2.3.8

★ Winner of Best Video Player in 2017 and 2014.

Overview

Media Player Classic is a compact and light-weight video player for Windows, which was initially developed as closed-source software but was later relicensed as a freeware. Although its UI resembles the old Windows Media Player’s look but this software provides support for all common audio and video formats that are offered by other present-day media players. This mod of MPC-HC was actually designed for home cinema usage and offers many useful features such as additional video recorders (H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2), option to remove tearing, support for playlists using UTF-8 encoding without BOM, built-in MPEG2/SVCD/DVD codec, and more.

Installation

Installation of this software involves quite basic steps without showing any signs of spyware or other annoying adware, but the steps could have been minimized. For instance, it asks for desktop and Start menu shortcuts in separate steps, which could have been asked in the same step. Anyhow, first of all you need to choose the installer language, later select the location for program folder, choose whether to create a Start Menu folder or not, and to add additional icons like desktop icon. Installer also shows option to add components like Icon library and Translations, which you can choose according to your wish. It is compatible with: Windows XP/Vista/7/8 (32-bit and 64-bit for all).

Interface

It has a very intuitive, clean and simple look and like mentioned earlier, the graphical interface of this software apes the look of old-days Window Media Player, so one gets quickly familiar with its working.  For watching a video, you can simply drag and drop it to the player or choose to open from the File menu option as well. File option has “Open File” and “Quick Open File” options; the former shows the recently viewed videos in a dropdown, whereas with latter option you can directly browse for a new video. The main toolbars have options to view, edit, play, and navigate files and at the bottom controls are shown for playing, pausing or stopping files.

Pros

• This software supports large variety of file formats that are limited in some other media players. These formats are: WMA, WAV, OGG, MP3, AU, SND, AIF, AIFF, AIFC, MPEG, MIDI, MP2, MPG, AC3, VOB, ASX, DTS, PLS, WAX, M3U, WM, WMV, AVI, CDA, JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, MP4, D2V, MOV, FLV, QT, and SWF.
• You can set the action you want the software to perform after playback is completed and these actions are Exit, stand by, hibernate, shutdown, and more
• Its built-in DVD player lets you view files from DVDs with real-time zoom
• It also supports AVI subtitles and if that’s not all, it even lets you search and upload subtitles for the videos that are without them
• The software allows you to create and manage playlists, plus add your most preferred media files under Favorite option that eventually helps in saving your time and effort
• Unlike other software, it actually lets you enjoy the full screen mode without the distraction of menu option
• It can be used as DVB player, provides tearing removal, and can even record and play shows or movies from Television (only if TV tunner is installed)

Cons

No cons found here.

Alternatives

VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player, and Winamp are some well established names in the media player categories. The usability of MPC-HC is more as compared to VLC media player since it has a better interface. On the other hand, Winamp is a free multimedia player that supports various audio and video formats, plus allows ripping and burning of music CDs. Windows Media Player has been an all-time favorite for everyone since it offers very powerful features of managing audio and video files.

Conclusion

There are already numerous well-known media players available in the market but if you are looking for a pleasant change then MPC-HC might surprise you with its easy-to-use interface and some handy features. Moreover, its free, so you can definitely go ahead and use it.