MPV 0.42 Media Player Brings Wayland Improvements, Improved HDR

The open-source, cross-platform media player MPV has released version 0.42, bringing significant improvements to Wayland support and enhanced HDR capabilities. This update comes nearly a year after version 0.41 and introduces several feature enhancements and fixes.

Wayland Enhancements

MPV 0.42 adds Wayland session management support and direct Wayland color management, replacing the previous reliance on the Vulkan API. The release also includes BT.2100 mapping and scRGB support, along with other Wayland-related fixes that improve performance and compatibility.

New Playback Features

The update introduces a libcurl-based network backend for handling HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocols. Users can now navigate menus for DVD-Video, Blu-ray HDMV, and BD-J content, with DVD-Audio playback being a new addition. Direct playback of ISO images for DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, and Blu-ray media is also enabled.

Additional improvements include better Dolby Vision Profile 7 support, SRV3 YouTube subtitle compatibility, enhanced HDR colorspace signaling on Linux with DRM code, and a new AMD Frame Rate Conversion Filter.