VideoLAN is perhaps the most popular software to play media files on computers, and today the team behind the project is announcing a big update for the app on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone, and VLC also brings compatibility to Windows 10, making the media player a true Universal app.
According to the head of development for the Windows platform, Thomas Nigro, the new updated app combines all the necessary programing code that makes a Windows app universal, which provides end-users with the same experience on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
Sharing the same code base across platforms allows the team push updates and bug fixes to the app quicker and at the same time on all devices.
New features
- Creating a playlist, editing a playlist (early support though)
- Your videos are displayed in three categories: videos, camera rolls and shows. We automatically detect if a video is an episode of a show.
- You can see the upcoming shows of an artist
- Social sharing (« #NowPlaying Shake It Off – Taylor Swift »)
Also this new release includes hundreds of bug fixes and you should now be able to open a video, or a music file from the Windows Explorer, and everything should work smoothly. Thomas also mentions that DLNA support and manually changing the album cover are a few features that the team dropped in this release, but they will comeback soon.
While the Windows Phone version of VideoLAN doesn’t bring much improvements and bug fixes, Thomas explains that today’s release is just on preparation to a bigger update coming in a few months, with Direct3D rendering and hardware decoding.
- Download VLC for Windows Phone
- Download VLC for Windows 8.1
The VideoLAN team is also updating the app in all platforms. Here are the download links:
- VLC media player 2.2.0: videolan.org/vlc
- VLC 2.4.1 for iOS: Apple’s App Store
- VLC 1.1.0 for Android: Google Play
- VLC 1.1.0 beta for Android TV: Google Play
Source Thomas Nigro
