VLC Media Player – The Understated Hero

When asked the question “what is your favorite media player?”, undoubtedly there will be a lot of people talking about VLC Media Player. After all, VLC has been around for a long time and those who use it, already know that it is one of the most versatile programs for video streaming and playback.

VLC Media Player shot to popularity early in the 2000’s when Microsoft Windows users realised that the standard Windows Media Player was missing key codecs and couldn’t play a huge amount of their media files. VLC quickly became a favourite alternative due to its versatility and simplicity. This open source of cross-platform multimedia players was designed by VideoLAN and has been an understated, superior product when it comes to playing files, recording with webcams and streaming videos.

What is So Great About VLC?
VLC can operate on a variety of operating systems including OS X, Windows, Linux, and even Android. Since VLC offers a packet-based media capability, it can play damaged, incomplete and even unfinished videos. If a user is still downloading from a Peer-to-Peer site, they can still watch what has already downloaded using a VLC – Windows Media Player cannot offer that.

All video and audio formats are supported by VLC as well. That means VLC’s can playback just about any file extension that a user downloads or uploads to their computer. Since it can play high-definition records, including duplications of D-VHS’s, it is the perfect way for users to watch dubbed videos without worrying about poor video quality.

VLC can be directly installed to a computer’s hard drive or run of an external drive.

Users who download the VLC player to their computer can take advantage of a variety of extensions and skins created by VideoLAN Organization. Skins, unfortunately, do not work on Mac OS X at this time, but they are capable of operating on Windows and Linux-based operating systems. Skins can be created by users as well and uploaded to the site to share with other users. Users who want to modify skins can use the VLC Skin Editor located on the site to customize a pre-made skin to their own personal tastes.

VLC is the ultimate media player and streaming tool that has not received the recognition it deserves. Not only is it superior to other video players and streaming devices, but it is free!

[Image via videolan]