VLC Media Player 3.0.19 beta

3.93 from 59 Reviews
VLC Media Player (initially VideoLAN Client) is capable of rendering the most popular media file formats, plus Blu-Rays, DVDs, VCDs and streaming protocols.
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It takes excellent functionality, varied customizing options and the ability to play almost any format in order to survive in today’s highly competitive media players market.

When there are so many applications playing your movies out there, VLC, despite of its simple interface, has managed to gain and preserve its popularity.

As soon as you dig deeper into its features, you begin to understand why.

With a bit of patience and curiosity, you will discover that VLC is a reliable media files manager, that you can customize the layout or even change the skin, and very important, that you have the possibility to perform sensitive adjustments for a perfect movie watching or radio audition.

There is no point talking about advanced features until you make sure that incompatibility issues are at minimum, and VLC Media Player can play most codecs with no codec packs needed.

Flexibility is another word which perfectly describes this media player. It plays everything, from files and discs to webcams, devices and streams.

It runs on all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix) and it can do media conversion and streaming.

Advanced options include a 12-band equalizer, cropping, color, geometry, AtmoLight and other adjustment possibilities.

You just need to explore a bit more under the clear-cut, simple design, and you’ll find the hidden features of this amazing media player.

Changes between VLC Media Player 3.0.17.4 and 3.0.18:

- Fix rendering and performance issue with older GPUs

Full list of changes.

Don’t be intimidated by the surprises that VLC Media Player can reveal; the application is extremely user-friendly and it won’t complicate things unless you want to explore its advanced features.

Stick to the simple interface and use basic, intuitive commands and you’ll have a reliable and easy-to-use media player just for yourself.
Reviews & Comments
VLC Media Player 3.0.8
nonW00t
on 28 January 2020
VLC may have been one of the first universal type multi-platform players that could handle everything without the need for a system-polluting codec pack, but it sure never felt like a true Windows program.

Clunky UI, convoluted settings, and general lack of niceties found in other modern players really hold it back (even though it "just works" for most folks).

Not to mention taking forever between versions. Will 4.0 ever be released?? And finally have seek bar preview, for example? Maybe someday VLC will be a worthy alternative again.
VLC Media Player 3.0.3
Berman
on 18 August 2018
I have been a VLC user for quite some time and believe it to be the best video player available. Videolan recently released the latest version (3.0.3). I was pleased to discover that it supports closed captioning.

I sometimes have trouble hearing what people say, particularly when they have an unfamiliar (to me) accent or they mumble (which happens a lot in TV shows and movies).

One minor downside of the new version is that fast-forward at 8x doesn't work any more -- it worked perfectly in version 2.2.6. Fast-forward at 4x sort of works. It trundles along for a few seconds, then the picture freezes. If you wait a while, it will restart, but not where it left off. It restarts where it would have been if it hadn't frozen.

Another option is to quickly backspace 3 seconds when the picture freezes and, in most cases, it will get by that freeze point. It's a fairly minor point (after all, how often do you want to fast-forward at 4x or 8x?) but I do use it from time to time to catch reception errors on recorded TV programs that I haven't yet watched at normal speed before passing the program on to someone else.

Going through a one- or two-hour program at 8x takes long enough -- 4x obviously takes twice as long. Anything less than that is pretty much not worth the time. I hope that they correct this in the next version -- but that could be a long time coming.

They tend to leave a rather long time between versions. Nevertheless, VLC is a terrific video player and that one quirk is not enough to lower my rating.
VLC Media Player 2.2.6
grump
on 11 July 2017
It seems kind of sad as long as hdmi/hdcp has been out that this wonderful player would work with hdcp!!

just a note though, i did get the audio working but the picture was bad. a week later my computer crashed and i have never been able to figure out what i did again. ha ha.
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