VLC 0.8.6

The latest version of VLC Media Player, 0.8.6, was released almost two weeks ago. I’ve been trying it out on both my Windows and Ubuntu systems and it is the best release yet. The most notable addition, IMO, is native WMV9 support. This is most useful to the Linux release because you don’t have to download the Win32 codecs separately.

DivX and Xvid playback also seems to have been improved. All of the DivX/Xvid videos I have play smoother in VLC than they do in Windows Media Player or MPlayer (Ubuntu). Resource usage during playback is about 30% less for VLC compared to Media Player.

A full list of changes between version 0.8.5 and 0.8.6 can be found here.

At between 7 and 9 MB in size, depending on the OS you are downloading it on, the player isn’t a huge download but it also isn’t the smallest one available. I recommend it because it’s easy to use, thanks to an improved user interface, and the playback quality is great.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. – Abraham Lincoln

23.Dec.06 Software