VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

[fierarul]

I cherish the VLC.app for iPad that was pulled from the AppStore! It's just great to copy a movie in the app folder and know it will play in VLC without any conversion, etc.

It's actually the reason we stopped taking the laptop while away for the weekend. I just put a movie on the iPad for VLC and we are good to go.

Edit: But the new VLC on OSX is horrible. Had to revert to the older version, mostly due to the way on-screen-display changed.

[reitzensteinm]

The new VLC really has regressed. It crashes for me now (I don't remember the last time it did before the latest update). Also, the audio delay for volume changes is multiple seconds instead of instant, and for some reason, the "repeat this video" is always on whenever I start it up. Plus, the interface is ugly.

Even with all that though, VLC has regressed from being an amazingly solid piece of software to being merely above average.

[withad]

I've lost count of the number of times I've gone to click play on the new OSX version of VLC and accidentally clicked forward or backward, completely losing my place in the video I was watching as it skips to another. Horrible UI.

[xyzzyb]

Try hosting your video files on a Plex media server paired with the Plex iOS app.

No need to copy files to the iPad, Plex streaming works great even over 3G. You can register your server with myPlex then sign on Plex clients to make getting to your video collection super easy.

Custom video categories are fantastic for keeping track of programming screencasts. I just setup my Plex with Peepcode, Destroy All Software, and Railscasts categories and am very pleased with the setup. If I start watching a video on the Roku box on my TV, I can pick up where I left off on the iPad or my iPhone whether I'm at home or not.

[itg]

Try MPlayerX for OSX, I prefer it over the new VLC.

[efnx]

VLC is open source right? It would be nice if they put up the source for the iPad app so at least developers could make a build for themselves.

[Terretta]

Not to mention VLC 2.0 it breaking the helper libs needed for DVD backup. The fix should have been automatic:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1165549/fix_handbrake_dvd_ri...

[ralfd]

There are only two programs I reversed a version update:

- Skype back to 2.8

- VLC back to 1.1.12

[taligent]

You mean that giant pill shaped toolbar ?

If so I hate it too. Raised a bug report for it being too large and one of the developers told me to buy a Retina Mac and that my 17inch MacBook Pro has too small a resolution.

[ElliotH]

There's a lesson in how to make a product in VLC's success. It has a horribly unfriendly interface, and is certainly not pretty, but it doesn't matter - Whatever media file you point it at, you can feel confident that VLC will play it, without hassle.

[why-el]

The interface might not be the prettiest, but I don't think it's "horribly unfriendly". Can you contrast it with another player? I have been using vlc for a long time now and although I just switched to Mac OS, I can't say that I find other players on the platform particularly appealing. But again I think it depends on what you do it. In my case its usually either in minimized mode or playing a movie on full screen mode, making my contact with its UI very limited.

[Anderkent]

Except when it doesn't. I don't know if they fixed .mkv support yet, but last time I tried (a year ago?) the artifacts were terrible.

Still my fallback if mpc-hc doesn't play something though. But that's rare.

[hkmurakami]

"It just works."

Strangely reminiscent of the success of Apple products.

[praptak]

If you value all the the time you saved by skipping "unskippable" DVD crap in VLC, please consider donating to this amazing project.

[lmm]

Doesn't it just use mplayer's libraries for playing DVDs? Seems like they would be a better target for donation (particularly since most efforts to support new formats e.g. bluray seem to happen there)

[NathanKP]

Every time I see the VLC website I have to laugh, because I coded it a few years ago back when I was still doing general consulting. It has changed a little bit but it is still nice to be able to look into the code and still see some of my old stuff in there. And yes.... I know some of the markup is terrible. :P

[mparlane]

Were you paid? Or part of a "help a free project" endeavor ?

[laconian]

VLC's success is truly a testament to how awful the first-party media player solutions are. People know that sparkly, zoomy UIs on DRM-ridden underpinnings are just lipstick on a pig. VLC isn't pretty but it works.

[rachelbythebay]

At least one of the Santa Clara county DAs uses it to play back 911 calls in court. That orange cone on his laptop was unmistakable.

Conclusion: VLC is everywhere.

[afterburner]

I've always been impressed at what VLC accomplished under the hood, but the usability and configurability of Media Player Classic always pulls me back.

[cema]

VLC is a great product. Has consistently been among the top media players for the big platforms for quite a while. (Despite occasional slips like the recent changes on OS X, still one of the best.)

I have, as others mentioned too, noticed a certain reluctance among the non-techies to download and install VLC. Even so (or maybe especially so), I promote it whenever I can.

[vasco]

No Linux stats. That's too bad! I would really love to see how they would compare to mac and windows download counts.

[gaving]

I used to love VLC, pity they ruined the OSX version.

MPlayerX all the way now and I don't look back.

[CrLf]

I wish they had left the OSX interface alone... The old one was mostly a player, now it's supposed to be a media center... The new UI really is horrible.

Well, now it's on the same league as the Windows version, whose UI has always been pretty bad.

[gulbrandr]

Why is MPlayerX better than VLC on OSX? (Sell it to me)

[Tyr42]

Am I the only one who liked the new OSX version?

[danso]

This is an incredible number...I didn't believe it at first but it makes sense given the cumulative version downloads.

But except for other techies (fellow students in comsci/comp. eng), I ran into very few people who ever used VLC. They just put up with WMP/VLC/iTunes.

Now with Netflix/Amazon/iTunes, I've found myself rarely ever needing another video player. Not that these commercial entities are "better" than what VLC offers, they're just easy enough and provide enough content that I no longer feel the "need" to go to VLC...but that's also because I'm older and have less time to watch things overall.

[Erunno]

I'll just add another data point. After the release of VLC 2.0 I was slightly dissatisfied with the new interface on OS X and used the opportunity to try out a couple of alternative players. In the end I stuck with MPlayerX because of short startup time and the minimalistic interface. But it was only a short love affair. The keyboard controls are pretty much non-existent, it can't open DVD menus, it only shows half the available duration of some of my music DVD rips (dual-layer?!?) and I have some occasional weird timing issues with regard to subtitles (image and subtitles suddenly not in sync). In the end I returned to VLC and all of my issues disappeared.

So kudos to the VLC team for producing such a great product (despite some questionable interface decisions). I'll take a player which "just works" over the pretty and shiny competitors every day.

[Knoopi]

These guys killed the MediaPlayer market for the bad.

It is one of the apps making knock my head on the table. It is so terribly poor in UX.

While the appearance is IMHO seems to be heavily "inspired" from existing players (e.g. Quicktimes controls overlay) without any charming twist, it is implemented ridiculously poor.

Boys, a cursor that hides when you try to click the playhead!? Ridiculous. The playhead is so idiotically tiny that this crap product turns into a Aim & Click game.

Yea, it's free but this is for no good as it kills any efforts to make something better. This is such a pity.

[diminish]

I am using VLC on linux from time to time, together with others. it is good to know it plays almost everything with a simple UI.

Congratulations to the team. for 1 billion downloads. you rock.

[Gravityloss]

You don't need to hunt any plugins or codecs. You install a monolithic package and everything just works. If something doesn't you probably only need to upgrade.

Saves a lot of time.

[SeanDav]

VLC used to be a nice simple program that just did what it said on the tin. Now much more bloated with really slow start up. I use GOM player mainly (Windows)

[program]

I know that it's a fallacious statistic but here is the VLC all time OS market share (rounded):

Windows: 89.38%

OS X: 10.27%

Other: 0.35%

[corkercsuite]

I've downloaded it at least 10 times over the years ...

[tuxguy]

VLC is awesome, but SMPlayer is awesome *2 :)

[hackermom]

If you want something smaller, faster and tons more efficient for OS X, I highly recommend MPlayerX instead. It's everything VLC is, and more, with none of VLC's bloat.