Amazon is said to be in talks to acquire MX Player, according to TechCrunch. MX Player was originally nothing more than a video player app, much like VLC, and is still widely used as such to this day on Fire TV devices and other platforms. It was acquired in 2018 for $140 million by the India-based company Times Internet, which then used the video player to launch the ad-supported streaming service, MX Player TV, initially in India before expanding to other countries. Now Amazon is said to be one of three companies that have expressed interest in acquiring the app.
It is likely the streaming service, MX Player TV, that most interests Amazon in buying the app. Should such a buyout go through, it puts the fate of the original video player app into question. MX Player, the video player app, is widely used by Fire TV customers for its robust feature set and stability. While some certainly use it as a standalone video player for local media files, it is more commonly used as the video player for other apps that provide a streaming video source but no video player component. The app, for example, is widely used by piracy apps as the default video player for a pirated video stream. MX Player is also often used as the default video player for many IPTV services, both legal and illegal.
Even if Amazon’s interests to acquire MX Player are for its popular streaming service alone, it is likely that the stand-alone video player would be part of the deal as well. Due to the apps association with piracy sources, it wouldn’t surprise me if Amazon just took down the original video player app so as to not interfere with the streaming service business that it’s more interested in.
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I believe apps like emby, plex & channels DVR use mx player for server PC streaming to Fire TV devices.
Hope Amazon get screwed on this. I smell this is another abusive tactic to eliminate non-Amazon streaming apps.
I use MX Player to play downloaded YT vids. I noticed that the ads that the player displayed whenever one paused a vid stopped appearing a few weeks ago. They had always appeared for years prior. I wonder if that has anything to do with the sale.
The workaround to stop the ads was to put the device in airplane mode.
If Amazon buys MX Player, would installed versions and the apk of older versions still work? APKMirror has always had recent MX Player apks.
I’ll miss MX Player. It’s what I use to watch my downloaded YouTube videos.
here we go again… little guy getting gobbled up by big guy. look at what happened to youtube…
That’s not good
This is unfortunate.
I don’t often play downloaded movies on my phone. The last occasion occurred when I was preparing for a trip in which there was a lengthy layover and my SO had a movie I knew she wanted to see. But when I do, MX Player is my app of choice. Updating the sound codecs between infrequent uses could be a bit off a bother.
Looks like I’m in the market for another player.
if Amazon buys MX Player – make it the INTERNAL video player for all Fire TVs !
I personally use exclusively MX player,
because only he has everything together:
1. Custom scaling [i.e. any]
2. HW+ (Plus) decoder
3. Variable playback speed
4. Equalizer
5. SMB client. [lack of DLNA support]
tell Amazon: let them make it a built-in player !
I have no idea why people are so upset. You don’t need to constantly update MX Player, provided it has the codecs and it isn’t buggy on your current device, it can carry on through the years just fine without additional configuration, or even being updated. Amazon can’t force an update to an apk that doesn’t check the internet for a connection, or doesn’t have advertisements. If you update the Fire Stick, the worst that could happen is Amazon might disable, or force update your version of MX Player. And yes, there are modded versions of MX Player with these functions. Small story short, don’t update your Fire Stick or MX Player and this doesn’t effect you whatsoever.
” is widely used by piracy apps as the default video player for a pirated video stream.”
Is this really still the case though?
I have noticed those app are now using different media players
even before a lot of them would offer different choices, usually about 3 different players.
It seems like those apps have been moving away from MX for awhile now.
This is still not good but at least the dependency on MX has significantly waned recently.