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VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

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Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#101

Post by niels_olson »

rytis wrote: post #43
xyzzyb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex runs on a computer at home. You then stream that computer's media over the Internet on the iPad/iPhone using the Plex app. To make things super-easy you can register your home Plex server on myPlex and sign into it using myPlex on the iPad/iPhone. Bam! No need to bring a computer OR move files to the device. You can even stream over 3G with pretty decent quality.

Some people go where there is no 3G/WiFi coverage. Sometimes it's also financially not feasible to do this (think roaming costs). Example - a ferry trip from UK to France. No 3G for about 1.5hrs, or in other words - no 3G for a average length movie.

Try a month in Japan. Not even the same basebands. You want Internet? Get yourself a new device my friend!

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#102

Post by Knoopi »

These guys killed the MediaPlayer market for the bad.

It is one of the apps making knock my head on the table. It is so terribly poor in UX.

While the appearance is IMHO seems to be heavily "inspired" from existing players (e.g. Quicktimes controls overlay) without any charming twist, it is implemented ridiculously poor.

Boys, a cursor that hides when you try to click the playhead!? Ridiculous. The playhead is so idiotically tiny that this crap product turns into a Aim & Click game.

Yea, it's free but this is for no good as it kills any efforts to make something better. This is such a pity.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#103

Post by dagw »

xyzzyb wrote: post #72
moheeb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude it's 2012...gigabytes haven't been precious for over a decade.

Neither has bandwidth. :-)

Only if you are at 'home'. If I where to use 3G on my phone when traveling in the US, I'd pay $17/MB! Even a 3 hour drive from my house (a trip a regularly make) will put me in a new country and I'm paying $7 for the first 50MB and then $3/pr additional MB. That makes watching movies kind of expensive.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#104

Post by keeperofdakeys »

danso wrote: post #31

This is an incredible number...I didn't believe it at first but it makes sense given the cumulative version downloads. But except for other techies (fellow students in comsci/comp. eng), I ran into very few people who ever used VLC. They just put up with WMP/VLC/iTunes. Now with Netflix/Amazon/iTunes, I've found myself rarely ever needing another video player. Not that these commercial entities are "better" than what…

The trouble with these statistics is there are some rather variable gaps of time between the releases, which makes it hard to gauge growth without doing more research.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#106

Post by Anderkent »

barrkel wrote: post #90
xyzzyb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither has bandwidth. :-)

Only 3 GBP / MB when roaming. Remotely viewing a movie with a high-res encoding might only cost approximately the same as a car.

Why don't you just buy a local pre-paid SIM? Though I guess most of the time I'm travelling I'm on vacation, so don't need to be reachable on the usual number. That might be an issue if you're on a delegation.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#107

Post by Anderkent »

ElliotH wrote: post #47

There's a lesson in how to make a product in VLC's success. It has a horribly unfriendly interface, and is certainly not pretty, but it doesn't matter - Whatever media file you point it at, you can feel confident that VLC will play it, without hassle.

Except when it doesn't. I don't know if they fixed .mkv support yet, but last time I tried (a year ago?) the artifacts were terrible.

Still my fallback if mpc-hc doesn't play something though. But that's rare.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#108

Post by barrkel »

Anderkent wrote: post #106
barrkel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 3 GBP / MB when roaming. Remotely viewing a movie with a high-res encoding might only cost approximately the same as a car.

Why don't you just buy a local pre-paid SIM? Though I guess most of the time I'm travelling I'm on vacation, so don't need to be reachable on the usual number. That might be an issue if you're on a delegation.

That's fine in theory, but you have to find a reasonable deal, find a shop to purchase it in, familiarize yourself with how to charge it up, and all in the time you spend in that country. I've found it burns at least half a day - usually not worth it. Most of my leisure travelling is motorbike touring, and I may spend each night in a different country, or cross borders several times a day (mountains with interesting roads are frequently on borders).

If my travel was simpler, sure, it's somewhat workable, and I do have e.g. a German SIM. But it's usually better to just rely on hotel wifi, cached maps on phones, offline GPS on bikes, etc.

Re: VLC has been downloaded over a billion times

#110

Post by feepk »

taligent wrote: post #4
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…

You mean that giant pill shaped toolbar ? If so I hate it too. Raised a bug report for it being too large and one of the developers told me to buy a Retina Mac and that my 17inch MacBook Pro has too small a resolution.

This will be fixed in VLC 2.0.2 :)
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