Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update (mpc-hc.org) 139
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.
VLC Killed it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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VLC has been half broken on Windows for a decade. And I say this as someone who uses it every day.
I use both MPC-HC and VLC. They both excel at different areas.
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I can't believe I actually went back to mplayer over VLC. mplayer is just so much faster, and doesn't try to crap all over your GUI if it doesn't understand a media file format or thinks the contents are busted.
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Yeah, I broke down when I needed to grab actual timecodes to set breakpoints in a video. The amount of time VLC takes to seek inside a video (especially a large one) is terrible, and that half-second delay really adds up when you're seeking back and forth frequently to find the right spot and/or have to set a number of them. VLC still also has no way of printing out sub-second timestamps or timestamps that use frames instead of seconds, which is unconscionable given how many people have asked for it. mplay
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Killed it how? It said nothing about users and everything about developers. Whether you use VLC or MPC-HC is irrelevant to the developers working on the project.
It is a feature complete media player which by all accounts has changed very little in the last 4 years. Maybe the fact that it works well killed it.
Side note: Some parts of VLC infuriate me so I still use MPC-HC though I have both installed. I think maybe once ever 3-5 months I come across and old poorly encoded WMV that plays in VLC but not in MPC
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I used to develop a little-known software project, and then another project really took off and I switched to using that, because it just made sense.
MPC-HC did a good job of continuing to use the Windows Media framework as best it could, fixing the breakage of the progress of windows media player. However, it was still based on a pretty crappy framework not of their choosing. At the time to be fair the alternatives weren't sufficiently feature capable, and in certain cases still has benefit (iirc, smooth
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ffdshow is (or used to be) the only "codec pack" you really need. Maybe WMV9 codec if you ran Windows 98.
ffdshow was ffmpeg on ffdshow i.e. what's behind vlc and mplayer, but made available to most Windows applications just by being installed.
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Whether you use VLC or MPC-HC is irrelevant to the developers working on the project.
Users need developers, and developers need users, and that's true even if one of those two groups doesn't acknowledge the importance of the other.
Without developers, other projects will suck away the users as those projects improve.
Without developers, developers have little reason to stick around. "I want to scratch this itch I have" only works for the most minor and trivial of projects. Major projects don't come around because one guy makes this big thing that no one else cares about.
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Is should have been more clear: The userbase itself is quite healthy. There's been 33000 downloads this month to date. While the general trend is declining, so are the rates of Windows 10 adoptions and OS installs. It doesn't seem like a jump the sinking ship kind of response.
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For me, VLC is my backup player for the occasional rare file type and also a handy media converter under Media > Convert / Save.
For everything else, it's the last version of Winamp for audio and MPC-HC for video which I like because it looks and works like the last good version of WMP that came with Windows 98 with a subtle difference on the surface: an extra button for frame advance!
C/C++ experience needed to contribute? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Reading your comment, for a moment I was unsure whether Love and Hate were new languages I hadn't heard of yet!
Seems like every month or two we hear of a new language. Love and Hate wouldn't be entirely inappropriate or unexpected as new language names, given Erlang, Rust, Go, Swift, Ruby on Rails?? (What is that, a train-loving escort during the 19th century??).
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There is literally no alternative. (Score:5, Interesting)
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"...
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https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_... [videolan.org] ?
I was really seeing if it had support for "plugins" though.
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I have no idea what your point is. I'm not gonna perform a number of bizarre steps to do this.
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At least you tried which is more than he deserved.
To be fair the AC comment wasn't from me (who posted the link about bookmarks, it was from someone else who stepped in and spoke his/her mind.) ;D
But I get your point!
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How is this possible?
Because the vast majority of users have little to no use case for such an incredibly niche concept?
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Since more and more things are recorded as video only, with no transcripts or the like, bookmarks for a video can become more and more necessary.
Imagine you download a two hour lecture on some topic of interest to you. You watch it, take some notes, then stash it in a corner of your hard drive. Four months later you need some info, but your notes have gone missing. Do you watch the entire two hours again to find those ten seconds you need without complaint, or do you swear and curse over the tendency for in
Lectures? (Score:2)
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.
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Alright, let me use an example I run into all the time.
Games.
Usually when stuck in a game back in the late 90s and all of the 2000s, I would look up the game on GameFAQs, search a walkthrough for a keyword of where I am or what I'm having trouble with, and usually get a solution.
Now, walkthroughs are recorded as gameplay videos. If the uploader doesn't think the way you do and put very specific keywords in the video title or summary, you're screwed. You can watch hours of gameplay footage trying to find a s
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What?
There's mpc-be [sourceforge.net].
Re:There is literally no alternative. (Score:4, Informative)
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"...
PotPlayer supports bookmarks and plays pretty much everything I throw at it.
Maybe it's good enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I (total layman) have been under the impression that much of the development of the past several years surround integration of hardware acceleration APIs and fine-tuning the performance of newer codecs.
So while it's "good enough" for *my* current uses, I imagine there may come a day where I have a good codec yet bad performance on playback.
And I am *not* a fan of the UX of VLC.
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Pretty much, just update your codecs periodically. MPC in all of it flavours (MPC, MPC-HC, MPC-BE, etc) have been rock stable for over a decade of releases.
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Much the same as WinAMP, really. There comes a point in the development of a software product where you are either DONE, or you get into feature bloat territory. MPC and its incarnations have all been about being lightweight, so feature bloat would be brand destruction.
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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 certainly don't disagree. There's a lot of projects, some 5, 10, even 15 years since their last update that still do what they are supposed to, and do it well. You know the UNIX philosophy. While I get annoyed every time an Android app wants to update so it can change the icon, or replace menu key with a hamburger icon, or replace hamburger icon with three dots, or replace color icons with dark grey on light grey icons, or replace local access with required Facebook linked account, others get annoyed or c
I've moved on... (Score:2)
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...Are you as shocked as I am?...
Initially, I was, then I took a step back and realized I was inside Apple's Walled Garden. But from a pure usability standpoint, if I search for an artist's song to play, and I have most, if not all, of that artist's songs in the database that AppleTV/iTunes manages, then why doesn't it show me the songs I already own, instead of ignoring them?
.
But yup, the infamous, notorious Apple Walled garden, where you are encouraged to buy songs you already own. Gotta keep that revenue flowing in.
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Great program much thanks to the devs (Score:2)
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.
MPC-BE (Score:2)
Re:MPC-BE (Score:5, Informative)
MPC-BE is still under active development, you can see some minor updates from 15 hours ago (new version of libpng)
https://sourceforge.net/p/mpcb... [sourceforge.net]
The Doom9 support thread is still active
https://forum.doom9.org/showth... [doom9.org]
V0lt is still active on the MPC-BE support forum (need google translate unless you can read Russian):
http://mpc-be.org/forum/index.... [mpc-be.org]
If it works (Score:4, Insightful)
Why keep working on something that works as intended?
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Because the software still has shortcomings and bugs. Crashes aren't all that uncommon.
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At some point you reach the final evolution of something. Software people can't understand that. The design for a hammer hasn't changed in centuries.
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Considering that most of the updates include crash fixes in the changelog, it's safe to say that just because you aren't experiencing crashes doesn't mean there aren't such issues.
Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I second every single word of that. If ever there was an app that hits the nail right on the head, it's MPC.
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Compatibility, security patches, new technologies comes to mind.
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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, la
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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".
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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/ [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 codec
I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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...?
Same here, there's not a single feature that I miss. The only thing that concerns me is if there should be some kind of security-related parsing/codec bug, even though they're extremely rare these days. I was hoping it would stay supported-ish until Win7 is EOL'd in 2020, after that I'm actually not sure what the plan is. Probably Linux and a Wintendo for games, don't care if Microsoft spies on my Steam install.
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It's lightweight and simple on first-glance, with a whole field of gears and levers under the hood, so while slim it's capable.
I like quick yet swissarmyknife. Irfanview opens instantly, hotkeys easily, but has a pile of functionality if I want it. They're not always wieldly, but they were added by request of a geek user or outright authored by one. Same for old winamp. Same for... old firefox? Palemoon I guess. And same for MPC.
Just yesterday, yesterday, I was playing a show episode with audio that was ~60
Those in the media server space simply moved on (Score:1)
Huge thanks... (Score:2)
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.
Re:This is why not to use open source (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is why not to use open source (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
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Free software is free-as-in-freedom. Runit, SysV init, Upstart, and GNU Shepherd all have their own virtues. Support one.
Re:This is why not to use open source (Score:5, Informative)
Good luck with that, considering more and more userspace applications have systemd as a hard dependency.
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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 h
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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 go
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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.
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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.
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", 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?
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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
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You should check out AVIDemux [sourceforge.net] 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.
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Do you realize the AC was trolling & you got caught in the trap?
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Got me a +4 insightful, why should I complain?
I see it more as a symbiotic relationship.
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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.
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Why would you think this? It's so blistering obvious that serious responses seem ridiculous.
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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).
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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.
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Ehh... you're probably right -- he was trolling. I must be feeling less cynical than normal today.
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Good thing commercial vendors never cancel product lines or go out of business.
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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.
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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://mp3decod
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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!"
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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."
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You definitely have an option to pay for support, Throw the code at a dev and pay them to do whatever you need.
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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.