Filtered Geek

What's VLC and why should I care?

VLC is a open source media player that has been in development for around 10 years now. It has been a popular media player in the tech communitys because of its small file size, open source code base, and ability to play just about any file type you can throw at it.

All Files You Say? Even DVDs, Quicktime, and other formats?

You bet! No matter what you need to play VLC will most likely play it. Pop a DVD into your computer, voila! VLC will play it no problem! Found a embedded QuickTime movie in a website and you don't have QuickTime installed... VLC will play it with a simple browser plugin. A handy feature that you may not even know about is the ability to play incomplete downloads... yes, you can be downloading a large movie file, and you can watch the piece you have currently finished.

Got Mac? No Problem!

VLC even works on Mac. Being a open source project has its perks, VLC has been ported to more OS's than you probably thought existed.

But Wait Theres More!

The feature list is almost to exhaustive to print in one article. Checking out the features page on the site will list out more features than you probably ever need. You can check out the features page, but here is a good rundown of the files you can play (and mostly likely will encounter)

• DVD
• MPEG 1/2
• DIVX
• MPEG 4
• H.261
• Windows Media
• Real Video
• QuickTime
• Any Audio File (Except MIDI)
• Plus many many more

You can even run a VLC server and stream your media across your home network. (But that is a little more geeky than this blog will get into, unless anyone is interested in learning!)

VLC - Filtering the Filter

So VLC is quite the media player, 10 years in development and fairly unknown outside the tech circle. I personally couldn't live with out it, and I bet you will love it too when you give it a go!

So lets recap

• FREE to download
• Plays just about every media format out there
• Can stream media across a network
• Multiple platforms
• Small file size (carry it on a thumb drive)
• Open source

Go out and give VLC a try... Make your media playback quick, easy, and free!