Media Player Classic was created and maintained by a programmer named “Gabest” who also created PCSX2 graphics plugin GSDX. It was developed as a closed-source application, but later relicensed as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MPC is hosted under the guliverkli project at SourceForge.net. The project itself is something of an umbrella organization for works by Gabest.

Media Player Classic development stalled in May 2006. Gabest, the main developer of the original version, stated in March 2007 that development of Media Player Classic is not dead but that he was unable to work on it. The community at the Doom9 forum has since continued the project in two main veins. The version known as Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 was meant for fixing bugs and updating outdated libraries; its branch’s development is inactive. The other version, called Media Player Classic – Home Cinema, is meant for adding new features, as well as fixing bugs and updating libraries.

MPC-HC updates the original player and adds many useful functionalities including the option to remove tearing, additional video decoders (in particular H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 with DirectX Video Acceleration support), Enhanced Video Renderer support, and multiple bug fixes. There is also a 64 bit-version of Media Player Classic – Home Cinema for the various Windows x64 platforms. MPC-HC requires at least Windows XP Service Pack 3.

As of version 1.4.2499.0, MPC-HC implemented color management support, an uncommon feature in video players at the time. Windows 8 support was introduced in version 1.6.5. Beginning with version 1.6.6 the stable releases are signed.

Apart from stable releases as published, nightly builds are also publicly available. MPC-HC is also distributed in the PortableApps format. MPC-HC 1.7.8 released in 2015 was built with the MediaInfoLib 0.7.71.

You can download the 6.4.9.1 version of Media Player Classic (MPC) here.