The media player takes a minimalistic approach and doesn't try to impress users with an over-the-top appearance.

On the other hand, the settings are saved in a different part of the hard drive, so any customization options are lost when running the portable utility on another computer from an external drive. There are no software dependencies involved since all the necessary libraries and codecs are bundled with the no-installer package. The portable edition of Media Player Classic - Black Edition can be stored on a USB flash drive and directly launched on any PC without setup.

A modern twist to Media Player Classic in portable format MPC-BE isn't exactly a media playing revolution, then, but the video preview feature alone is enough to justify its existence, and we'll be interested to see where the project goes next.Based on the original Media Player Classic project and Media Player Clasic Home Cinema, Media Player Classic - Black Edition is a free and open-source tool that offers the same familiar interface, adds a modern twist, and enriches the user experience with additional features and bug fixes. There are lots of smaller changes, fixes and extra configuration options, and it's all wrapped up in a mildly revamped interface. A lengthy list of new decoders ensures it should play more audio and video files, as well as now opening image files. The player also provides more subtitles options and controls, along with a new Sub button to help you access them. (As long as you've enabled the feature, anyway - click View > Options > Interface and check 'Use the preview in the search', first.)

Instead, just hover your mouse cursor over the bar, and MPC-HC will show you a frame from that point in the movie, even while it's playing some other section - a real time-saver.

If you want to move to some other point in a video, there's no need to keep repeatedly clicking the seek bar, and wait to see where you are. MPC-BE understandably looks much like MPC-HC, but the YouTube-style video previewing works well. (How configurable? The Options dialog allows you to set up custom hotkeys for more than 180 program actions, allowing you to make it work exactly as you'd like.) You can open audio files or videos of just about any type, as well as playlists and DVDs, then play them back in a very familiar and configurable interface. The program looks and feels quite similar to VLC Media Player. MPC-BE is an open source offshoot of the excellent MPC-HC media player, essentially very similar though with some interesting new touches.

Download the new for ios MPC-BE 1.6.8