VLC Media Player 1.1.11

VLC is one of those great pieces of software that anyone should install on their computer. It is not because downloading and using the software will not cost you anything, it is not because it comes with support for numerous operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS, Syllable BSD, MorphOS, Solaris and Sharp Zaurus), and it is not even because you need much less than 100MB of free disk space to install the software.

The main reason why you should get VLC is that it will play pretty much any audio or video file you can throw at it, straight out of the box. Just to put things in perspective, VLC can play MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Raw Dirac, M2TS, DivX, mp3, ogg files as well as VDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It will even play audio and video files from within a zip archive file.

On top of being an excellent audio/video player, VLC can perform other tasks as well. It is capable of streaming over networks in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network, transcode multimedia files, convert files to mp3, copy and rip DVDs.

One other great thing about the VLC player is that you can take it with you. That’s right, the software is not only free, it is also portable. This means you can simply store it on a thumb drive, CD/DVD or any other portable storage device and take it, and the long list of functionality it provides, wherever you want to go. You can launch VLC and play whatever audio/video files you want; VLC will work with no need for any external codecs or programs.

Here are some other features you can expect to get from VLC:
- Instantaneous pausing.
- On the fly recording for all media types, on the fly zip file decompression and browsing, on the fly gzip and bzip2 file decompression.
- Timeshift for most media types.
- Blu-Ray Linear PCM decoder. Blu-Ray disc and AVCHD folder support.
- New and enhanced video and audio decoders, encoders, demuxers.
- Global hotkeys for Windows and Linux.
- Support for modern Apple keyboards, meaning that VLC is controllable via the Media Keys (Mac OS X only).
- Support fro DVB-S and ATSC cards (Windows only).
- Frame by frame playback.
- Improved speed control.
- HD codecs: AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, and many more.
- Dirac enconder.
- Full screen video scaling.
- Support for RTSP Trickplay.
- Zipped file playback.
- AirTunes streaming

Pros
Comes free of charge
Cross-platform software, meaning it will run on numerous operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Will play pretty much any file format straight out of the box.
Can play, record, and rip DVDs.
It is portable
Comes with a long list of features.

Cons
None that I can think of.

VLC Media Player has been reviewed by George Norman on 11 Sep 2009. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated VLC Media Player 5 out of 5 stars, naming it Essential