For a long time, I have been a fan of Media Player Classic due to its ease of use, simple installation, and powerful features. Unfortunately, development on this particular project has stopped, but there is a great replacement: MPC-HC, which stands for "Media Player Classic - Home Cinema".
Like its predecessor, it is an incredibly small program but has a vast feature set. Available only for Windows, MPC-HC looks like the old Windows Media Player v6.4, but that's where the similarity ends.
Under the hood, this program packs a lot of features, including codecs for viewing DVD discs, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG 4 and x.264 movie files, MP3 and Ogg files. It can also use the QuickTime and the RealPlayer architectures (if installed on the computer) to play their native files.
To further extend its functionality while avoiding the installation of RealPlayer, WinAmp and Quicktime, you will have to download some codec packs. (We recommend ffdshow, Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative and WinAmp Alternative packages). They will make sure there will be almost nothing you won't be able to play.
MPC-HC has many additional functions above and beyond the original MPC including: The option to remove Tearing, better support for Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10 (including a release for 64 bit platforms), support for E/aVR (Enhanced Video Renderer) and playback and recording of television if a supported TV tuner is installed.
MPC-HC was reviewed by Gizmos Freeware on 2017-02-13 based on version 1.7.5.