VLC 's Beta For Android Is Ready — Unless You're North American

MrSeb writes "The VideoLAN Project has pushed a beta version of VLC for Android to the Google Play Store. The beta brings most of the functionality of VLC for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X to Android in a native UI in the Android 4.0 Holo style. However, there are a few hitches. The beta release published to the Google Play Store today is only compatible with ARM systems that use the ARMv7 architecture set and support the NEON instruction set. That means that there are several devices — mostly those released before the Samsung Galaxy S in late 2010, and anything powered by Tegra 2 — that cannot run the current beta. Also, apparently due to a lack of North America-specific Android test devices, VLC for Android is currently not available from the US or Canadian Play Store. Both problems should be rectified soon, though." VLC is one of those impressive programs that just works with nearly any input thrown at it, and one of the first things I put on any computer. I hope the Android version retains pitch-controlled variable-speed playback, perhaps my favorite VLC feature, and something I miss on my tablet.

Comments

Hardware acceleration?

[JDG1980]

Will this version of VLC support hardware acceleration for H.264 and other video formats on those devices where the hardware supports it?

What for

[vlm]

What do I do with this? I could set it up. But beyond the hack value "hey I'm running VLC"...

So the target market is a subset of android users who know how to put files on a memory card but don't know how to transcode, who want to watch movies on a tiny little screen with a tinny mono speaker where the battery probably doesn't live long enough to watch a movie so its tv shows only ... I'm kinda getting painted into a corner for what to do with this.

I'm not (only) trying to make a rhetorical question but it is a fair question in general, what to do with this.
1) No access to a desktop to transcode on
2) Access to short/TV length files in odd formats that don't play natively
3) Not terribly concerned that it only works on certain / my hardware
4) Very concerned about video but not care about the awful audio
5) Tiny screen is OK (I thought the most important feature of couch potatoe viewing was the larger the screen the better, 60+ inches etc)
Man if I could do the above, then I would... um... what? I donno. Understand that I'm a pretty creative dude in general but in this specific instance and at this specific moment, I'm completely stumped.

Re:tegra 2

[Man On Pink Corner]

Although the i7 is today's "wickedly fast" x86 processor, I don't remember really giving all that much of a damned about it. The marketplace has matured, and nobody really cares all that much any more.

I think that has more to do with the phenomenon known as Getting Old, than with the state of the marketplace. We, the desktop users, are the ones who have "matured."

Back in the day, you could argue about whether a 386-40 or a 486-25 was the better way to go. Some benchmarks went one way, some went the other. The difference between the fastest x86 CPUs and the slowest ones on the shelf at any given time was perhaps 2x-3x. A lot of us paid very close attention to the CPU market and were always up for an argument or flame war about it.

Today, the difference between the high-end Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge CPUs and the low-end parts is stupefying. The performance spread between the fastest and slowest devices is 6x in the "high end" category alone. In the broader market the spread is more like 30x-50x. And this doesn't even consider GPU-based computing.

So I'd say the desktop CPU market is a lot more interesting now than it was back in the day... but there's too much other stuff going on that's even more interesting, like getting work done and paying the mortgage.