The mpv project has announced the release of mpv 0.42, the latest version of its free and open-source, cross-platform media player.
One notable addition is DVD and Blu-ray menu navigation. The player supports DVD-Video menus, Blu-ray HDMV menus, and BD-J navigation, allowing users to interact with disc menus directly. DVD-Audio playback has also been added, along with automatic detection and direct playback of ISO images containing DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, or Blu-ray content.
Network playback has been upgraded with a new libcurl-based backend supporting HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and connection reuse. MPEG transport stream programs and HLS streaming variants are now exposed as editions, making it easier to switch between streams.
Linux users benefit from several Wayland-related improvements. Version 0.42 introduces Wayland session management and implements color management through the Wayland protocol instead of relying on the Vulkan API.
The release also adds Dolby Vision Profile 7 enhancement layer support to the gpu-next renderer, along with scRGB output through the new --target-trc=scrgb option. The player supports additional HDR metadata and improves how subtitles and on-screen elements follow the system’s reference white setting.
On the UI side, mpv 0.42 introduces a configurable context menu, accessible by right-clicking during playback. Its entries are defined in the new menu.conf configuration file. A new floating on-screen controller layout with Fluent icons is available through --script-opts=osc-layout=floating.
Audio playback has been improved with DSD-over-PCM passthrough support, enabled using --audio-spdif=dsd. The display-sync audio drift compensation system has been rewritten, and subtitle support now includes SRV3, a format used by YouTube, through the subrandr library.
Other additions include an AMD Frame Rate Conversion video filter, a D3D11 rendering backend for libmpv, and reworked terminal video outputs supporting Sixel, Kitty, and TCT graphics protocols.
Regarding security, TLS certificate verification is now enabled by default. The update fixes several issues, including potential PipeWire initialization deadlocks, playback freezes with ALSA, Wayland crashes, and subtitle timing problems.
Finally, users and distribution maintainers should note that mpv 0.42.0 requires FFmpeg 6.1 or newer and libplacebo 7.387.0 or newer. The minimum supported versions of several Wayland-related dependencies have also increased.
For more information, see the changelog.
