VLC has been downloaded over a billion times • Hacker News Board

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#21

Post by itg » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:04 PM UTC

fierarul wrote: post #2

I cherish the VLC.app for iPad that was pulled from the AppStore! It's just great to copy a movie in the app folder and know it will play in VLC without any conversion, etc. It's actually the reason we stopped taking the laptop while away for the weekend. I just put a movie on the iPad for VLC and we are good to go. Edit: But the new VLC on OSX is horrible. Had to revert to the older version, mostly due to the way on…

Try MPlayerX for OSX, I prefer it over the new VLC.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#22

Post by vibragiel » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:07 PM UTC

obtino wrote: post #20

lmm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it just use mplayer's libraries for playing DVDs? Seems like they would be a better target for donation (particularly since most efforts to support new formats e.g. bluray seem to happen there)

Both VLC and MPlayer use ffmpeg as one of the many decoding modules. The ffmpeg module (libavcodec) decodes many of the codecs out there.

And this is what ffmpeg have to say about donations:

Want to donate to FFmpeg? Well, theres no way to do that currently. Luckily we dont need any money. But there are many not for profit organizations with noble goals that do. Select one of your choice that you trust and agree with their goals and instead of donating to FFmpeg, send your donation to them. http://ffmpeg.org/

So yeah, donating to VLC directly seems like a good choice.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#23

Post by Zirro » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #7

fierarul wrote: post #2

I cherish the VLC.app for iPad that was pulled from the AppStore! It's just great to copy a movie in the app folder and know it will play in VLC without any conversion, etc. It's actually the reason we stopped taking the laptop while away for the weekend. I just put a movie on the iPad for VLC and we are good to go. Edit: But the new VLC on OSX is horrible. Had to revert to the older version, mostly due to the way on…

The new VLC really has regressed. It crashes for me now (I don't remember the last time it did before the latest update). Also, the audio delay for volume changes is multiple seconds instead of instant, and for some reason, the "repeat this video" is always on whenever I start it up. Plus, the interface is ugly. Even with all that though, VLC has regressed from being an amazingly solid piece of software to being mere…

Unless you have a different bug, "the audio delay for volume changes is multiple seconds instead of instant" was fixed in version 2.0.1 along with several other issues.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#24

Post by xyzzyb » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:17 PM UTC

fierarul wrote: post #2

I cherish the VLC.app for iPad that was pulled from the AppStore! It's just great to copy a movie in the app folder and know it will play in VLC without any conversion, etc. It's actually the reason we stopped taking the laptop while away for the weekend. I just put a movie on the iPad for VLC and we are good to go. Edit: But the new VLC on OSX is horrible. Had to revert to the older version, mostly due to the way on…

Try hosting your video files on a Plex media server paired with the Plex iOS app.

No need to copy files to the iPad, Plex streaming works great even over 3G. You can register your server with myPlex then sign on Plex clients to make getting to your video collection super easy.

Custom video categories are fantastic for keeping track of programming screencasts. I just setup my Plex with Peepcode, Destroy All Software, and Railscasts categories and am very pleased with the setup. If I start watching a video on the Roku box on my TV, I can pick up where I left off on the iPad or my iPhone whether I'm at home or not.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#25

Post by rachelbythebay » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:25 PM UTC

At least one of the Santa Clara county DAs uses it to play back 911 calls in court. That orange cone on his laptop was unmistakable.

Conclusion: VLC is everywhere.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#26

Post by program » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:47 PM UTC

I know that it's a fallacious statistic but here is the VLC all time OS market share (rounded):

Windows: 89.38%

OS X: 10.27%

Other: 0.35%

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#27

Post by SeanDav » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:53 PM UTC

VLC used to be a nice simple program that just did what it said on the tin. Now much more bloated with really slow start up. I use GOM player mainly (Windows)

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#28

Post by shawabawa » Mon, May 14, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

program wrote: post #26

I know that it's a fallacious statistic but here is the VLC all time OS market share (rounded): Windows: 89.38% OS X: 10.27% Other: 0.35%

Note that it said on the site it purposefully didn't include linux downloads as it's mostly delivered through package managers.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#29

Post by hackermom » Mon, May 14, 2012, 3:01 PM UTC

If you want something smaller, faster and tons more efficient for OS X, I highly recommend MPlayerX instead. It's everything VLC is, and more, with none of VLC's bloat.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#30

Post by hackermom » Mon, May 14, 2012, 3:03 PM UTC

program wrote: post #26

I know that it's a fallacious statistic but here is the VLC all time OS market share (rounded): Windows: 89.38% OS X: 10.27% Other: 0.35%

I wonder how many percentiles of the Windows number comes from Windows' re-re-re-re-install-ish nature. "Dang, my FPS is low, I gotta "format Windows" again."