User Reviews and Votes for VLC Media Player

Summary: Free cross-platform media player

Details: www.videolan.org

Pros: Free, cross platform, small footprint, supports almost every media format

Cons: User interface could be better though improving

Period used: Since late 2002

Other products used: Winamp 2, 3, 5, Windows Media Player 5-9, QuickTime, Media Player Classic, RealOne, XMMS, Foobar2000

Submitted by Paul Hughes on 18-Aug-2004 16:04:38

Summary: Good open source media player

Details: Can play anything, MP3, DVD, OGG, OGM, etc. Avaible for all major OSes (Windows, Linux, Mac) Can be used to stream media through a FTP server, netowrk, website (www.vidolan.org)

Pros: easy to use sinple interface

Cons: when you have it running, and your listening to music, and you load another app, it skips.

Period used: a couple of months.

Other products used: Music match

Submitted by ? on 04-Sep-2004 19:21:01

Summary: Good open source media player

Details: Can play anything, MP3, DVD, OGG, OGM, etc. Avaible for all major OSes (Windows, Linux, Mac) Can be used to stream media through a FTP server, netowrk, website (www.vidolan.org)

Pros: easy to use sinple interface

Cons: when you have it running, and your listening to music, and you load another app, it skips.

Period used: a couple of months.

Other products used: Music match

Submitted by ? on 04-Sep-2004 19:21:01

Details: Can this be used w/ the 'generic player' function? If not, please consider adding - this is my #1 used media player! Thanks & great work.

Submitted by Noyce on 23-Sep-2004 22:52:11

Submitted by Barruda on 26-Sep-2004 05:50:31

Summary: Free Software and Open Source video streaming solution for every OS!

Details: he VideoLAN project targets multimedia streaming of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX files, DVDs, digital satellite channels, digital terrestial television channels and live videos on a high-bandwidth IPv4 or IPv6 network in unicast or multicast under many OSes. VideoLAN also features a cross-platform multimedia player, VLC, which can be used to read the stream from the network or display video read locally on the computer under all GNU/Linux flavours, all BSD flavours, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Solaris, QNX, Familiar Linux...

Pros: Can read any multimedia files WITHOUT CODECS

Cons: Sometime lags sound

Period used: Always

Other products used: BSPlayer, Media Player Classic

Submitted by Jean-Michel Webbe on 29-Sep-2004 09:25:51

Summary: Free Software and Open Source video streaming solution for every OS!

Details: he VideoLAN project targets multimedia streaming of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX files, DVDs, digital satellite channels, digital terrestial television channels and live videos on a high-bandwidth IPv4 or IPv6 network in unicast or multicast under many OSes. VideoLAN also features a cross-platform multimedia player, VLC, which can be used to read the stream from the network or display video read locally on the computer under all GNU/Linux flavours, all BSD flavours, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Solaris, QNX, Familiar Linux...

Pros: Can read any multimedia files WITHOUT CODECS

Cons: Sometime lags sound

Period used: Always

Other products used: BSPlayer, Media Player Classic

Submitted by Jean-Michel Webbe on 29-Sep-2004 09:25:51

Summary: FoxyTunes rock... Have to add VLC media player though!

Pros: Have every codec installed within. Play both audio and video

Period used: some months

Submitted by Robert Svensson on 04-Oct-2004 12:17:46

Summary: great to watch all kind of videos

Details: you can use it to watch DVD or to receive a multicast stream or to generate one or even both. I'm very impressed by the reliability of the tool and the endless list of features in it.

Pros: reliability,CPU consumption, features

Cons: interface not very sexy, playlist not easy to use

Period used: more than a year,extensively, in a lab environment

Other products used: win-MediaPlayer (can't stand the prod.), winamp (wonderfull for sound)

Submitted by Masy on 06-Oct-2004 11:13:22

Summary: Very nice and versatile player.

Details: Would be ok to add optional extended GUI.

Pros: Plays anything

Cons: Takes a while to figure out just how versatile it is.

Period used: year

Other products used: WinAmp, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer.

Submitted by Hafr on 07-Oct-2004 04:07:55

Pros: Plays many filetypes

Cons: doesn't work good with WMV

Period used: 9 months

Other products used: zoom player, crystal player, windows media player

Submitted by Marcel Tjoonk on 17-Oct-2004 12:45:33

Summary: Great Freeware Player

Details: Has all functions needed. Copy protected CDs are not as easily read as one would wish to, however a great piece of equipment.

Pros: Low footprint, stability, functions

Cons: Audio CD support

Period used: approx 6 months

Other products used: Quintessential Player, WinAmp

Submitted by Felix on 01-Nov-2004 09:06:24

Summary: Good player, but I can't find the loop function

Details: Good player, and it does so much more, an free, but I can't find the loop function. I guess it Foxy does not work with it. Too bad. I will not be using Foxy.

Pros: Free and many features for the recording buff

Cons: few visualization, no help file

Period used: six months or so

Other products used: Windows Media Player, others I don't want to rember, Real Auido or what ever, always aksing for fees

Submitted by don on 04-Nov-2004 04:44:21

Submitted by Trung Nguyn on 05-Nov-2004 01:11:05

Submitted by Mirco on 15-Nov-2004 09:50:17

Submitted by Mirco on 15-Nov-2004 09:50:50

Submitted by Deepak Kumar on 15-Nov-2004 12:13:17

Summary: best player ever

Details: Ecole centrale paris Rocks

Submitted by boby on 17-Nov-2004 16:09:26

Summary: my favourite player :)

Pros: very handy player

Cons: not supported by foxytunes

Period used: 5 months

Other products used: foobar , mplayer, winamp etc

Submitted by tomo on 19-Nov-2004 11:49:33

Pros: gets the job done

Cons: awkward use interface

Submitted by vann on 19-Nov-2004 21:38:53

Submitted by alex on 21-Nov-2004 05:35:09

Submitted by Anonymous on 20-Oct-2004 16:19:04

Submitted by Leif Arne Neset on 23-Nov-2004 09:49:32

Submitted by 1 on 24-Nov-2004 15:04:21

Submitted by z on 24-Nov-2004 15:05:12

Submitted by jantje on 24-Nov-2004 15:06:33

Submitted by flipje on 24-Nov-2004 15:07:19

Submitted by rene on 24-Nov-2004 15:08:23

Submitted by jurgen on 24-Nov-2004 15:09:20

Submitted by mike on 24-Nov-2004 15:10:23

Submitted by PorkChop on 26-Nov-2004 22:45:48

Submitted by Seri on 02-Dec-2004 07:44:19

Summary: A great cross platform player

Details: A very good player with support for many formats and completely open source. The player provides a system for using many different interfaces so FoxyTunes support should be easy. I would do it myself if I figure out the interface components. The default front isn't too good looking, but it has a an alternate theme and others can be downloaded.

Pros: Cross platform, many formats supported

Cons: No interface for FoxyTunes yet.

Period used: 1 month

Other products used: Winamp, Zinf

Submitted by Ken on 02-Dec-2004 11:16:40

Summary: free and securized

Details: Free, securized, (non spy ware hidden or open) now "advertizings" Developped by one of the most famous scool/university in France reed ogg streams !!!

Other products used: all : Realaudio (spywared hiddely and officialy), Micro$oft ..., Quicktime (too restrictif), ITune (too heavy)

Submitted by OlaV on 05-Dec-2004 16:49:05

Submitted by Peter Knobs on 07-Dec-2004 00:26:08

Submitted by Otter on 08-Dec-2004 10:44:10

Summary: A great Media Player

Details: It supports so many different formats, and on so many different platforms. It's fantastic.

Pros: cross-platform, supports many media types

Cons: No media library organization, a la WMP

Period used: few days

Other products used: (Windows) WinAmp, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, etc. (Linux) XMMS, Rhythmbox

Submitted by Dan Jones on 16-Dec-2004 22:59:41

Details: I had troubles with the default player provided with gnome/FedoraCore3, installed VLC and everything works without any unnecessary pain :) Available for linux, mac and windows Handles most audio/video formats Provides a solution for streaming Open source :) Interface could be improved by adding a few extra features.

Other products used: Windows Media player, Winamp

Submitted by Gwen on 29-Dec-2004 20:50:53

Submitted by Philmie on 01-Jan-2005 19:06:29

Submitted by Derk-Jan Hartman on 03-Jan-2005 08:16:42

Summary: The best (for me) all-in-one player

Details: Multyplatform, the codecs are integrated so even if you don't have them installed you will be able to watch and listen every audio video format out there (very few exeptions), and the processor load is very small and it is a very stable program too

Pros: Integrated codecs, small processor load

Cons: Not very good subtitle support

Period used: 1/2 years

Other products used: WMP,BSPlayer,ZoomPlayer

Submitted by alex on 21-Nov-2004 05:35:09

Submitted by jan2381 on 16-Apr-2005 22:28:34

Submitted by Da_Lord on 10-Jan-2005 02:34:42

Details: i love this media player, it play any media file and y can use it in linux and windows.

Pros: all

Cons: none

Period used: 1 years

Submitted by Francisco on 15-Jan-2005 09:59:04

Summary: Its free and good for all

Details: The VLC Media Player is available on Windows also Unix and I think on Mac, too- many Styles and mutch more features - You can handle it over a http interface "remotly" and you will not miss a feature like on other Players - It handle the most (I think all) Music Formats like MP3-PRo, OGG, Midi (very important ;-)) and much more! One thing is to say: In earlier Versions the Player was not so stable when (Listen Folks) play a Video out from a Compressed Format or from a DAT File (Wich Player support it, too?) You dont have to Convert, just open with Video Lan Client! Here is the original from http://www.videolan.org The VideoLAN project targets multimedia streaming of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX files, DVDs, digital satellite channels, digital terrestial television channels and live videos on a high-bandwidth IPv4 or IPv6 network in unicast or multicast under many OSes. VideoLAN also features a cross-platform multimedia player, VLC, which can be used to read the stream from the network or display video read locally on the computer under all GNU/Linux flavours, all BSD flavours, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Solaris, QNX, Familiar Linux... VideoLAN is free software, and is released under the GNU General Public License. It started as a student project at the French cole Centrale Paris but is now a worldwide project with developers from 20 countries. More information about the VideoLAN streaming solution be found in the streaming section. For setup instructions, see the documentation section. If you have a problem that is not covered in the documentation, look at the support section to know about the web forums, the user mailing-lists and the IRC channels users and developers usually hook on. Is there somthing mor to say? Hagakure

Pros: http://www.videolan.org

Cons: Is there one to find in good pragrmmed freeware

Period used: Since 2003

Other products used: Many but.....

Submitted by Hagakure on 30-Jan-2005 11:54:49

Submitted by changia on 07-Feb-2005 04:29:52

Submitted by changia on 07-Feb-2005 04:29:52

Summary: Great Open Source Player

Period used: 6months

Other products used: WinAmp, iTunes

Submitted by Iplay2 on 07-Feb-2005 14:01:00

Summary: Simple and wonderful.

Details: n/t

Pros: Simple design, embeded codec list, stream support.

Cons: Occasional minor audio distortion.

Period used: 3 years

Other products used: winamp, wmp, itunes, bsplayer, xmms, nero media player, dbPowerAmp

Submitted by Kyle on 08-Feb-2005 00:14:18

Details: I think VLC is a reference player. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html

Period used: longtime ago

Other products used: various

Submitted by Andy on 18-Feb-2005 12:53:07

Pros: GPL, reads broken video fluxes, LAN streaming, ...

Cons: I don't see

Period used: 2 years +

Other products used: BSPlayer, WMP, MPClassic, ZoomPlayer, Winamp, NVDVD, PowerDVD, WinDVD, etc...

Submitted by Doooggy on 26-Feb-2005 07:20:19

Summary: Plays almost everything!

Details: Plays everything! Great player if you need to play even outlandish formats like ogg, ogm, mkv etc. The user interface is not eye-candy like WMP 10. And it gives errors playing .avi files sometimes. But highly recommended!! 5(!) thumbs up!

Pros: See above

Cons: See above

Period used: 6 months

Other products used: Winamp, WMP 9 and 10

Submitted by Aniruddha on 02-Mar-2005 02:44:39

Summary: Free media player for Everything

Details: VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Pros: Free, plays everything

Cons: user interface not optimal

Period used: 1 month

Other products used: winamp, bsplayer

Submitted by karl on 02-Mar-2005 09:45:45

Submitted by Nicole on 10-Mar-2005 14:41:40

Submitted by MB on 19-Feb-2005 09:20:18

Details: best free open source media player ever

Submitted by ben on 22-Mar-2005 21:52:18

Summary: Very solid open source player

Details: I continue to be impressed with VLC on both Windows on and OS X. Excellent DVD playback and very good sound quality for streaming radion stations.

Pros: Open source, good quality

Cons: Needs to stream sound track titles

Period used: several months

Other products used: iTunes

Submitted by Tom Pletcher on 26-Mar-2005 20:51:02

Submitted by Peter Jones on 23-Apr-2005 12:43:13

Summary: Marvellous

Details: It plays all kinds of movie/music formats! When using other players theres always problem that you need many players to use certain formats. In VLC you dont need. and its opensource too. And its multiplatform. And what is most bestest thing there is you can play Xvid or divX movies without needing to use any compression programs! So it plays them without need to hassle with programs. ;)

Pros: Can play almost every music/video format there is, multiplatform, free, opensource, very light, can be skinned

Cons: none found

Other products used: winamp,WMP,musicmatch,xmmp(the linux thing),quicktime and more

Submitted by Kane-b on 24-Apr-2005 05:08:37

Summary: VLC is becoming one of the most viable free media players available

Details: VLC may still be lacking in a few features that I want (one of which being the ability to go 'always on top' while in audio mode), but since winamp has been effectively killed, there is a need to move on, and VLC is a versatile and powerful open source player. incorporation with firefox would be nice, espeically with the lack of 'always on top' audio playback.

Period used: 4-5 mos

Other products used: many/most

Submitted by chris webb on 25-Apr-2005 15:16:59

Submitted by prasad on 30-Apr-2005 03:30:31

Summary: Best Video player ever, no codecs needed

Submitted by Linus on 30-Apr-2005 04:31:19

Summary: Great media player

Details: The best media player for Linux (available also for Windows and Mac OS).

Pros: Supports lots of multimedia formats

Cons: GUI (graphical user interface) could be better

Period used: About 1 month

Other products used: Totem (total crap)

Submitted by Niks on 07-May-2005 04:56:25

Submitted by alex on 21-Nov-2004 05:35:09

Summary: VLC just has to get Foxytunes support

Details: No codecs required. VLC does everything with no messing about. Open source and freeware.

Pros: Easy to use straight out of the box

Cons: It's..... UGLY!

Period used: 12 months +

Other products used: winamp, foobar, wmp, bsplayer

Submitted by unz on 13-May-2005 10:48:36

Summary: Free, trustworthy, scalable.

Details: It's free/open-source, and does exactly what I want it to do. It doesn't phone home, impose DRM, or pinch all my file associations. The first time you play something, it'll have a very simple interface. From there, you can enable advanced GUI for an equalizer and advanced video settings, or switch to Skins mode to make it look pretty. It plays most streaming media, including Shoutcast, Windows Media (mms:), and RTSP. You can go into the advanced options and stream stuff to your PDA whilst transcoding it to Vorbis and saving it to a file, or you can ignore the complicated stuff and just listen. It has remote control interfaces for web and telnet access, mouse gestures, and bookmarks, but if you don't use those features they don't get in the way. Some people don't like VLC's "ugly by default" style, but I count myself as part of the group that just wants their audio to play. For this reason I use VLC. My second choice player would probably be foobar2000.

Pros: Very easy to use, highly configurable, supports many input and output formats.

Cons: No tag editor, no FoxyTunes support, sometimes has problems with streaming WMV9.

Period used: 8 months

Other products used: Winamp, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, iTunes, XMMS, foobar2000

Submitted by Robert Marshall on 18-May-2005 14:00:36

Summary: nice prog but not supportet by foxytunes

Submitted by Taba on 25-May-2005 16:13:58

Submitted by hjl on 30-May-2005 11:47:12

Details: Also for video great. I only miss the possibility to select a directory.

Period used: 3 years

Other products used: winamp, wind media player

Submitted by R Wiskerke on 11-Jun-2005 06:28:28

Submitted by OlaV on 05-Dec-2004 16:49:05

Summary: The everything player

Pros: Lightweight, doesnt stop on errors

Cons: poor playlist manager

Period used: +6 months

Other products used: Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media

Submitted by ShamrockMan on 20-Jun-2005 07:04:42

Submitted by Paul Maxwell on 20-Jun-2005 18:17:01

Pros: Takes up fewer resources than iTunes or Windows Media Player

Cons: Virtually no music library management features

Other products used: iTunes

Submitted by Peter Jones on 23-Apr-2005 12:43:13

Submitted by mkreysern on 21-May-2005 16:41:42

Summary: The best out there

Details: Been using this for ages now.. And its simply just impressive... Plays EVERYTHING. Doesnt take up much RAM (3mb or so). Corrputed files? Windows Media Player and Real Player would just give up, showing you this idiotic popup message telling you there's been an error. VLC Plays the parts of the files that arent corrupted. This means that even a fully working AVI file, with just a half index at the start, works perfectly, but WMP and RP would just give up. Woth the download! www.VideoLAN.org

Pros: Play everything, even corrupted files.

Cons: The UI isnt really something to be proud of. Standard windows buttons

Period used: 3 years

Other products used: WinAMP, Windows Media Player, Real Player, The Core Media Player, mPlayer, Some worthless Logitech media player.. :)

Submitted by Ren on 02-Aug-2005 22:48:04

Summary: Simple yet advanced

Submitted by Karl on 06-Aug-2005 21:12:07

Summary: Wonderful

Details: Solid media player with little stress on RAM. Not a strain on system. I use it alongside Winamp for streaming purposes.

Pros: Powerful but simple.

Cons: No NSV support IMO.

Period used: 1.5 years

Other products used: Winamp, WMP, Itunes, Real, BSplayer

Submitted by Skilgannon on 07-Aug-2005 23:14:37

Submitted by schlagbasser on 16-Aug-2005 08:05:46

Summary: ...

Details: Please add Videolan player. It should be easy to control from another aplication. If you look at Preferences -> Interface -> General you could see that there are many options to control VLC with other aplications or interfaces: -http -rc -mxwindows -skinable interface -telnet

Pros: All Codecs, good quality, High Fidelity :D, skinnable Interface - selfmade or downloaded

Cons: uhm. Dont Know

Period used: 6 month.

Other products used: Real, Itunes, WindowsMediaplayer, Intervideo

Submitted by Simon Christen on 21-Aug-2005 19:13:03

Submitted by Kosta on 24-Aug-2005 17:25:23

Submitted by Julien on 29-Aug-2005 12:35:13

Submitted by Marcos on 30-Aug-2005 11:12:05

Submitted by Anonymous on 10-Sep-2005 15:06:05

Details: nice simplistic, Free Software player. :)

Period used: about 6-8 months

Submitted by Cal Paterson on 08-Sep-2005 13:25:30

Details: I use this media player for my videos, and its the best, it plays almost every video, and it uses only 3 % cpu (amd xp 3000+) with a svcd video.

Submitted by Jos Vos on 16-Sep-2005 15:13:40

Pros: Supports pretty much every format

Cons: A bit fugly and unintuitive sometimes

Period used: Ages.....

Other products used: XMMS, WinAmp

Submitted by mrben on 07-Oct-2005 10:56:48

Summary: Cross-platform opensource mediaplayer

Details: VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Period used: 6 month

Other products used: Windows Media Player, WinAMP

Submitted by Mustafa Temiz on 23-Oct-2005 08:03:24

Submitted by ec on 10-Nov-2005 00:50:10

Submitted by ec on 10-Nov-2005 00:51:37

Submitted by Anonymous on 18-Aug-2004 10:17:15

Other products used: window media 10

Submitted by david on 14-Nov-2005 16:02:31

Summary: Powerful open-source player

Details: VLC Media Player works and feels like a little window into a veritable toolshed of media player functions. It plays just about anything (a huge range of formats of files, streams, discs...) and doesn't clutter things up with bells and whistles. Sometimes this means it doesn't do something you might want it to do (the playlist interface in particular is a bit fiddly), but it's rock solid with what it does (and there's no fear of it phoning home on you). It also comes with a browser plugin to replace those three or four proprietary ones that take an age to load. Can't wait until FoxyTunes supports it to complete the browser integration.

Pros: Plays almost anything; clean, minimalist interface

Cons: Can be quite technical; lacks creature comforts

Period used: 3 months

Other products used: various MS players, various free/open-source, dbPowerAmp

Submitted by Tim P on 22-Nov-2005 11:26:00

Pros: Will play pretty much every media file out there.

Submitted by John Italiano on 09-Dec-2005 05:26:20

Period used: 6 months

Other products used: Windows Media Player, Winamp, Sonique, Media Player Classic

Submitted by Amaury Beaudouin on 09-Dec-2005 07:59:01

Summary: No codec

Details: Free, and codec free,the best media player for me

Submitted by am1n on 10-Dec-2005 03:00:23

Pros: simple and neat open source

Cons: not as flashy as WM10 or iTunes

Period used: years

Other products used: WM, iTunes, Winamp ...

Submitted by Lilybellule on 10-Dec-2005 09:32:39

Summary: VLC rocks my world

Details: I use mac os x (10.4.3) and Itunes irritates the snot out of me. I also listen to lots and lots of oggs, so itunes isn't even that agreeable (even with xiph-qt). VLC is my friend and I want foxytunes to be friends with VLC.

Pros: VLC - PORTABLE rocks, ogg works, free :)

Cons: ugly interface, but who cares? I use foxytunes

Period used: +3 years (general video use) music use more recent

Other products used: xmms, winamp, windows media player, realplayer, quicktime, whamb, itunes, and more

Submitted by Lena Marvin on 10-Dec-2005 17:29:49

Cons: does not support VLC

Submitted by Wolf on 13-Dec-2005 01:38:08

Submitted by abcd on 14-Dec-2005 08:09:55

Submitted by andrea on 16-Dec-2005 04:41:30