Redstone Update

The Redstone Update is a major update labelled as 1.5. Among the main changes are a number of new redstone-related blocks, including the Comparator, Hopper, Dropper, Daylight Sensor, Trapped Chest, Weighted Pressure Plates and Block of Redstone. A new decorative block - Block of Quartz, crafted from Nether Quartz, was also added. Also included is a Scoreboard system, a new Texture Pack format and a Lighting engine optimization.

The Redstone Update was announced at the Future Updates with the Minecraft PC Team and The Future of Mod API talks at MineCon 2012.

You can watch the Future Updates Minecon 2012 panel here:

Development began shortly after the announcement, with 13w01a. Sixteen development snapshots were released, from to, with a few snapshots being quickly re-released straight after to fix bugs without changing the client version number. Nearer the end of the snapshot cycle for the 1.5 update, Mojang focused primarily on fixing bugs, rather than adding new features. Mojang originally planned a pre-release of The Redstone Update on February 28, 2013 and the official update in the first week of March. However, the pre-release got delayed as Mojang were trying to fix more bugs before a stable release. With the pre-release on the 7th of March, it was announced that the Redstone Update would be released at Wednesday, March 13th 2013, and it was.

Promotional videos
(shown alongside the update)

First, the Minecraft 1.5 Song by YourMCAdmin

If that’s a bit too short for you, this one by nativisions is a little bit more in depth (5:38)

And if you want an even longer, here’s one by icecreamstatus (15:06)