newbie2
May 18th, 2012, 09:20 AM
VideoLAN's VLC is one of the most popular media players around, tackling most every media format under the sun with aplomb. The app has been in development since 1996 and recently hit version 2.0. It also just hit a rather important milestone: over one billion downloads.
VideoLAN didn't start tracking downloads until February 2005 and isn't making any guarantees on accuracy. The numbers also only account for downloads on Windows or OS X and the source code; Linux downloads weren't included, as most of those are made by the individual Linux distros and not necessarily by the users. It's an impressive number — if you've never checked out VLC (or want to help push the app to its next billion downloads) you can grab it from VideoLAN.
http://www.theverge.com/apps/2012/5/15/3022571/vlc-celebrates-one-billion-downloads
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/More-than-one-billion-VLC-downloads-1575316.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/07/why-microsoft-pays-for-what-the-french-get-free/
:popcorn:
Are there any technical differences between the different platform versions of VLC? Is VLC performing/working better for any reason on a particular platform?
Yes. VLC works better on Linux, because that is the OS that the majority of the developers use. Even the Windows port is developed on Linux. There are technical differences in VLC on the platforms, notably the way we display the video and how we output the audio, because those things are very linked to the APIs of the OS.
http://www.unixmen.com/vlc-player-rocks-and-jean-kempf-talks-about-it/
VideoLAN didn't start tracking downloads until February 2005 and isn't making any guarantees on accuracy. The numbers also only account for downloads on Windows or OS X and the source code; Linux downloads weren't included, as most of those are made by the individual Linux distros and not necessarily by the users. It's an impressive number — if you've never checked out VLC (or want to help push the app to its next billion downloads) you can grab it from VideoLAN.
http://www.theverge.com/apps/2012/5/15/3022571/vlc-celebrates-one-billion-downloads
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/More-than-one-billion-VLC-downloads-1575316.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/07/why-microsoft-pays-for-what-the-french-get-free/
:popcorn:
Are there any technical differences between the different platform versions of VLC? Is VLC performing/working better for any reason on a particular platform?
Yes. VLC works better on Linux, because that is the OS that the majority of the developers use. Even the Windows port is developed on Linux. There are technical differences in VLC on the platforms, notably the way we display the video and how we output the audio, because those things are very linked to the APIs of the OS.
http://www.unixmen.com/vlc-player-rocks-and-jean-kempf-talks-about-it/