VLC launches on Windows 8, no Windows RT support just yet

[Scorpus]

After months of delays and anticipation, the VideoLAN team has finally launched a VLC app in the Windows Store, bringing the extremely popular video player to the 'Modern' interface of Windows. At this stage the app only supports Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, but the team hopes to add support for the ARM-based Windows RT in the future.

The Windows 8 VLC app supports all of the same formats as the desktop version of the application, including often-unsupported containers such as MKV and codecs including FLAC and H.265. The team notes that the application is currently a beta and so might not be as stable as it should be, but it's complete for the most part.

VLC for Windows 8 features an interface that aligns with Microsoft's 'Metro' design language, with separate categories for your latest files, videos, audio, external storage devices and media servers. There's also Live Tile support, and a video playback interface that's simple but functional.

The development of a VLC app for Windows 8 and Windows RT was funded through Kickstarter, where users pledged the grand total £47,056 (~US$78,000) back in December 2012. More than a year later, the application is finally available for the public, and can be downloaded through this link here.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/55978-vlc-launches-on-windows-8-no-windows-rt-support-just-yet.html

 

[GeforcerFX]

That's good news, there is a fake VLC app on the store being sold for like $12 and it looks by the ratings that some people bought it.

 

[Kibaruk]

Great for a sort of xbmc build

 

[cliffordcooley]

From a business stand point, I would say they are at least a year too slow.

From a personal stand point I can certainly understand their procrastination. (if that's why they're 1.5 years late to the game)

 

[treeski]

From a business stand point, I would say they are at least a year too slow.

From a personal stand point I can certainly understand their procrastination. (if that's why they're 1.5 years late to the game)

I don't think it was a procrastination issue (if you've kept up with VLC Win8 news). It sounds more like the amount of work required to port all of the back-end stuff to new APIs was significantly more than expected.

 

[Kneep]

Cool app, but two thing's I can't do that I think most would agree should be there, there's no option to skip forward or back a track/song and when I select multiple songs to play, only the first song plays, after the first song, there's nothing! Yet the little "time" indicator on the lower right shows the amount of time to play these songs I've selected. Someone please try this and you'll see what I mean. eg. I go to a folder that, say, has 20 songs, but I only want to play a select few songs, I hold Ctrl and click the four or so songs I want to play, hit play, and all it does is play the first track....

 

[Guest]

Would not call bathroom tiles a Modern interface.

 

[fraggerron]

Still cost 3.48$

 

[Railman]

But I thought that VLC has been available for some time a a stand alone Windows program so why do we need the Metro App version?

 

[GhostRyder]

I really never liked VLC media player because of its support on the obscure formats along with issues in 1080p+ videos. I watch alot of shows on the format .mkv which is supported but has issues in loading or textures blurring among other things which caused me to switch to Media Player Classic.

If yall want a really good media player that just works for everything at least ive come across no if's and's or but's about it, try Media Player Classic.

 

[Guest]

I really never liked VLC media player because of its support on the obscure formats along with issues in 1080p+ videos. I watch alot of shows on the format .mkv which is supported but has issues in loading or textures blurring among other things which caused me to switch to Media Player Classic.

If yall want a really good media player that just works for everything at least ive come across no if's and's or but's about it, try Media Player Classic.

Or try Potplayer which is way better than Media Player Classic and VLC. PotPlayer can even play broken videos whereas the other two cannot.

 

[RH00D]

I really never liked VLC media player because of its support on the obscure formats along with issues in 1080p+ videos. I watch alot of shows on the format .mkv which is supported but has issues in loading or textures blurring among other things which caused me to switch to Media Player Classic.

If yall want a really good media player that just works for everything at least ive come across no if's and's or but's about it, try Media Player Classic.

Or try Potplayer which is way better than Media Player Classic and VLC. PotPlayer can even play broken videos whereas the other two cannot.

VLC an play broken/incomplete videos, I do it quite often.

 

[LNCPapa]

I really never liked VLC media player because of its support on the obscure formats along with issues in 1080p+ videos. I watch alot of shows on the format .mkv which is supported but has issues in loading or textures blurring among other things which caused me to switch to Media Player Classic.

There are a ton of good media players out there and several great ones but I don't think I've experienced any of the issues you have with VLC Ghost. I'm also a huge fan of the matroska container and have no issues playing them with all sorts of video and audio codecs included. In fact, I often use VLC as a quick "swiss army knife" for checking videos even though I don't normally watch full length presentations with it.

 

[captaincranky]

Nevermind...

The linked page says it will play, "every kind", of video. Does that include Blu-Ray?

Because up until recently VLC required an add in codec to do so.

Now I see why VLC is in the Windows 8 app, "store".

They try to sell you Windows 8 to run it, while you're there....

 

[Kibaruk]

I recommend you GOMPlayer, it's an amazing player that supports everything I've thrown at it, I liked it better than VLC just for the reason that the shortcuts were "friendlier". Back then I used VLC until I needed something that used less resources on my old old notebook that had problems playing MP4, I found a solution on GOM.

 

[VitalyT]

I have a number of x265 videos already, and what player would play them well, if not VLC?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Any player will play videos with the correct codec. VLC is simply a one stop player because it is bundled with all codecs. And for this reason it is also considered bloated.

 

[VitalyT]

Any player will play videos with the correct codec. VLC is simply a one stop player because it is bundled with all codecs. And for this reason it is also considered bloated.

Your average user doesn't know and doesn't want to know what a codec is, so "bloated" is a very relative term here, just call it a complete package, is what an average user wants from any video player anyway.

The only area it is not good is in providing Blu-Ray playback out of the box. It takes to tweak and load extra stuff to make that work, which I got working here, but it is a big enough reason for an average user to walk away from VLC.

 

[LNCPapa]

It takes to tweak and load extra stuff to make that work, which I got working here, but it is a big enough reason for an average user to walk away from VLC.

Except that most other players also don't support bluray out of the box.

 

[cliffordcooley]

just call it a complete package, is what an average user wants from any video player anyway.

Which is why I install K-lite Codec Pack. It is just as bloated. And I don't have to worry about which codec, I don't have. I only wish they would standardize the codecs and minimize the bloat for future uses. But we all know that will never happen.

Don't get me wrong! I promote VLC, just as much as I do K-lite. I use K-lite for MPC, which works for me. I love being able to use the number pad to stretch, shrink, or warp the video if needed. And the mouse scroll for changing the sound volume is a bonus for me, so simple to use. And to be honest, I have never used VLC, so I don't know what its capabilities are. I promote VLC, because of everyone else's good word.

 

[GhostRyder]

Well for me, Media Player Classic Supports Blu-Ray and everything ive thrown at it without a hiccup. I use it mostly to play HD movies and to play .MKV Dual Audio Video files which it does very well.

VLC to me just had constant loading issues with HD movies and some distortion issues on the MKV video files when 720p+.

 

[Kibaruk]

Myself got pretty much the same performance out of vlc, gom, classic and the pot I tried, in the end gom won just for the easier interface and playback shortcuts to control the movie without having to press multiple keys.

 

[Guest]

I really never liked VLC media player because of its support on the obscure formats along with issues in 1080p+ videos. I watch alot of shows on the format .mkv which is supported but has issues in loading or textures blurring among other things which caused me to switch to Media Player Classic.

If yall want a really good media player that just works for everything at least ive come across no if's and's or but's about it, try Media Player Classic.

Or try Potplayer which is way better than Media Player Classic and VLC. PotPlayer can even play broken videos whereas the other two cannot.

VLC an play broken/incomplete videos, I do it quite often.

But VLC doesn't handle broken/incomplete videos as seamless as PotPlayer. In one instance, I attempted to play a badly broken video with VLC and it stuttered all the way to the end. PotPlayer, on the other hand, played the video flawlessly.

 

[Guest]

Well for me, Media Player Classic Supports Blu-Ray...

Unencrypted Blu-ray content? Or encrypted one? I assume the former because there's no way Media Player Classic supports playing copy protected Blu Ray disc.

 

[Guest]

I recommend you GOMPlayer, it's an amazing player that supports everything I've thrown at it, I liked it better than VLC just for the reason that the shortcuts were "friendlier". Back then I used VLC until I needed something that used less resources on my old old notebook that had problems playing MP4, I found a solution on GOM.

Amazing player indeed. Shame it doesn't support Linux.