Zoom Player MAX & Zoom Player STREAM v22.2 beta 1 have been released
Published January 28th, 2026
Download Zoom Player MAX
Zoom Player MAX version 22.2 beta 1
Download Zoom Player STREAM
Zoom Player STREAM version 22.2 beta 1
What's new, changed and fixed in this beta:
Legend : "*" = New "+" = Changed "-" = FixedNew :
* Introducing Home Theater Video Streaming search! I implemented a new "Search" section to the Video Streaming Home Theater interface that allows you to search for Live Streams, Live Programs, VOD Movies and VOD TV Shows. The global "Programs" search is still not implemented in this beta version, I hope to have it ready by the next beta in a week or two. * I've added support for YouTube DirectShow/libVLC streaming based on the yt-dlp open source project: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp yt-dlp is a command line tool that can be used to scan YouTube video URLs and provide the direct Video/Audio streams. In Zoom Player, you can now configure YouTube playback to use either the official YouTube IFRAME Javascript player. DirectShow media engine using yt-dlp or DirectShow directly (in case you want to use a DirectShow component such as "3DYD Youtube Source"). You can pick the YouTube media engine under "Adv. Options / Playback" and in the case of yt-dlp, you can specify the exact command line Zoom Player uses with yt-dlp to list the stream URLs. Verify that the path to where you have yt-dlp installed is correct and you have any yt-dlp prerequisites installed. For context, the official IFRAME Javascript player is the fastest and most responsive, but since it's embedded in a Web Browser (Microsoft's WebView2) and doesn't use the DirectShow media engine, it lacks support for higher quality video scalers (MadVR/MPC-VR) and custom audio output device. * Beyond YouTube, yt-dlp supports finding streams on many other website such as Instagram, TikTok, SoundCloud, Twitter/X and many many more : https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md In the "Advanced Options / Playback" section, you can now specify website URLs Zoom Player should pass through yt-dlp before trying to play the stream. Take into account that playback from such sources may not be perfect. * Since I've already added support for YouTube, I took the next obvious step of yt-dlp based stream URL parsing for major websites such as "Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, etc." under "Adv. Options / Playback". yt-dlp is compatible with many other websites, here is the full list of websites supported by yt-dlp: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md * New "/UseLibVLC" command line parameter that instructs Zoom Player to try using libVLC as the media engine for the next media played. * New "Mouse Hover" color effect for the control overlay's timeline. You can fully customize the colors in the advanced options dialog under "Interface / Control Overlay". * New "Use fuzzy logic when indexing the Episode Guide" Video Streaming setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video Streaming). Disabled by default. In previous versions Zoom Player always used a fuzzy name matching logic when trying to match the stream index of a Stream Playlist with the Electronic Program Guide (EPG). However, using fuzzy matching logic is a lot slower than a direct match, causing the global program search feature to become impractically slow when dealing with a massive amount of streams which is the reason I disabled fuzzy matching by default and created a new setting which you manually enabled. For comparison, on the same playlist and program guide, using fuzzy matching logic took over 2 minutes while a direct match took 4 seconds. The results were identical since the provider's Playlist and EPG databases were not too messy. For greater context, regardless of using either a fuzzy or direct match, the results are cached so fuzzy-matching's long processing time is only triggered once per provider and repeated global program searches should usually take 1-2 seconds on even large databases. * I wrote new code to load the Playlist -> EPG indexing code to run in a background thread as soon as you open either the Windowed or Home Theater versions of the Video Streaming interface. This means that performing a global program search should return results a lot faster in most usage cases. * New "2800" TCP/IP API command to force the next media to load with libVLC instead of DirectShow. May not apply if DirectShow isn't used to load the media.Changed :
+ Filtering streams (searching) in the Video Streaming Windowed interface should be significantly faster, to the point you may want to disable the "Filter streams when pressing enter (otherwise filter on each key stroke)" setting. + The "Filter streams/programs when pressing enter" Video Streaming setting has been changed to "Filter streams when pressing enter" and now only applied to streams and no longer to program searches which now always require pressing enter to search. + Scrolling through the Video Streaming Home Theater interface should be a bit smoother. + Optimized EPG indexing by removing EPG channel entries that did not contain any program entries. + When creating Windows Shortcuts to streams from the Video Streaming windowed dialog's right click menu, if libVLC is set as the playback engine for Video Streaming, the new "/UseLibVLC" command line parameter will be included in the new shortcut to ensure Zoom Player uses the correct media engine when the shortcut is launched.Fixed :
- Fixed multiple bugs in the Video Streaming Episode Guide to Playlist indexing cache which could inflate the cache file with duplicate entries, slowing down future indexing and global program searches. - Enabling the "Pre-load navigation gfx" setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Home Theater / Settings) could have triggered a crash under some conditions, causing the home theater fullscreen interfaces to glitch. - Fixed a crash when trying to use an external audio track with Zoom Player's DSP filter disabled. - Fixed a crash when trying to open the Video Streaming window and then closing Zoom Player before the Video Streaming window had a chance to appear.