- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98
- Date added: July 27, 2007
- Total Downloads: 15,859,755
- Downloads last week: 129,504
- See full specifications
A newer version of VLC Media Player is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 1866 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
When it comes to video files, nothing is ever as easy as it should be. Thankfully, VLC Media Player offers a one-stop solution for the file-format problem. The program supports playback of OGG, MP2, MP3, MP4, DivX, DVD, and a whole slew of other file types. In addition, it also can function as a streaming media server. Because of its open-source foundation, VLC Media Player evolves quickly, with new features and fixes released frequently.
Though the interface varies from platform to platform, the sparseness of the Windows version leaves plenty to be desired. The skinned mode perks things up slightly, but the program seems to suffer from unpredictable behavior when skinned. Also, the basic task of opening a file is far more confusing than it should be; the program gives you several options, including the head-scratching Quick Open File. Overall, though, VLC Media Player is a must-have application for its ability to open just about any type of video file you throw at it.
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Publisher's description
From VideoLAN Project :VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, and OGG, as well as for DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It also can be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
The most prominent additions to version 0.8.6 are probably Windows Media Video 9 and Flash Video. Other important changes are improved H.264 decoding, better Windows Unicode support, and a full-screen controller
Version 0.8.6c includes cropping in Direct3D and a variety of bug fixes.
What's new in this version:
Version 0.8.6c includes cropping in Direct3D and a variety of bug fixes.
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User reviews of VLC Media Player 0.8.6c
- Average user rating: 4.2 stars out of 1866 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 222 user reviewsSee all 222 user reviews
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6 out of 7 people found this review helpful
Version: VLC Media Player 0.8.6c
Pros: VLC media player does everything. It plays almost any media file you could imagine, and can read and broadcast streams as well as read from capture devices such as TV tuners and webcams. VLC is free and open sourced, and is also skinnable. VLC also has the ability to convert audio and video files somewhat. You can also get a portable version of VLC to put on a flash drive or similar. Definitely better than a codec pack for WMP.
Cons: VLC doesn't have the most user friendly interface, it doesn't recognize commands from many PC remote controls, and it does a very bad job at converting files. Other than those, the only complaint I can think of is that it doesn't have good looking icons for media files that it opens.
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2 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: VLC Media Player 0.8.6c
Pros: Guaranteed to work with every audio/video format! Simple, very easy on resources.
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1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: VLC Media Player 0.8.6c
Pros: It plays all formats including old divx codecs.
Cons: The program crashes every time I try to past-foward flv files and some mkv files. I hope they fix this in the next release.
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1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: VLC Media Player 0.8.6c
"For an old (late 90s) application very good"
Pros: It's free and fairly simple to use.
Cons: Image quality could be better.
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0 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: VLC Media Player 0.8.6c
Pros: very good
Cons: none
- See all 222 user reviews Write review
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