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VLC 3.0 Adds Chromecast Support and More as the Best Free Media Player Gets Even Better (pcworld.com)
Ian Paul, writing for PCWorld: The best free media player is getting even better. After three years of development, VLC 3.0 'Ventari' is rolling out to all platforms, and it's packed full of goodies such as Chromecast support. The latest version of VLC contains a lot of great additions, as well as a tweaked UI. Chromecast discovery tops the list. It's only available on Windows desktop and Android right now, but Videolan says the feature's coming to VLC's iOS and the Windows Store apps in the future. [...] VLC 3.0's refreshed UI isn't a fresh, new look from previous versions, but it is noticeably different. The icons at the bottom of the window are cleaner, and the small icons used within menu items are also new. Version 3.0 also adds support for 360-degree video and 3D audio, readying features for a VR version of VLC slated to roll out in mid-April. The new VLC also adds hardware decoding across all platforms for better performance and less CPU consumption, especially when dealing with more resource-intense video.
Couldn't agree more.
VLC has been my go-to solution for anything that wasn't trivially supported by other apps, and the absence of Chromecast support meant I didn't have easy access to my media server which I have set up to just share the content. Was toying with the idea of grabbing the code and trying to add it myself but they beat me to it (and I couldn't be more thrilled about it).
Only issue will be that the Chromecast will only play what it understands how to play, which likely means no sound from anything in a MKV container if my experience trying to cast the screen to get around this previously is any indication, but that's not VLC's fault. Will be happy to be able to cast from it regardless.
Kudos.
~AC
The pinnacle of media playback; Even installing it was a joy, All been downhill since then.
Whoever wrote that summary is not a geek, otherwise they would know VLC versions are named after Terry Pratchet's Discworld characters. Version 3.0 is named after Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
It seems to be available for MacOS too.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
As far as I can tell, the playback UI is missing obvious features like X second skip forward/back, slow motion, etc, and isn't at all touch screen friendly. I don't need much that is touch screen friendly, but a video player would be one place where it'd be nice.
If you have a chromecast device plugged into your TV, you can then display video from your phone or whatever on the bigger screen.
Some geeks just aren’t into Terry Pratchett.
Great writer... just not into it.
Can anyone name a better paid media player? I certainly cannot.
Eventually a version crippled enough to be approved to run on iOS will come out.
And it's been years since the last version of VLC was released. We've been waiting for WebM WebVTT subtitle support for that entire time.
It has NOT been years since the last version of VLC. Version 2.2.8 was released for OS X and Windows (both x32 and x64) less than three months ago.
Why not use plex instead? That will transcode the audio to the chromecast.
Do you mean MPC-HC (mpc-hc.org)?
Yes, MPC-HC. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that VLC has, but it renders virtually everything I've thrown at it perfectly.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Hmm...I'm trying to wonder what video from a tiny phone looks like on a nice 4K TV, or even a regular 1080p tv....?
It looks like standard 1080p video. The screen on most smart phones has at least 1080p resolution or higher. Just because the screen is smaller doesn't change the quality of the video. 1080p video on your phone is still 1080p video on your big ass tv.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...
As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
Yes, it is.
Since I usually use VLC for listening to streaming broadcasts of classical music, I will wait for an x64 Windows version.
Does classical music sound better when played on a 64 bit application than it does on a 32 bit? Remember, these "bits" aren't bits of resolution in the digitized audio signal, but rather they're simply the architecture of code: 64 bit code can in theory do more in less time. Streaming of classical music, even at high definition rates of 96kHz sampling frequency and 24 bits per channel of audio should work just fine even in a 32 bit application on any modern CPU.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Only issue will be that the Chromecast will only play what it understands how to play, which likely means no sound from anything in a MKV container if my experience trying to cast the screen to get around this previously is any indication, but that's not VLC's fault. Will be happy to be able to cast from it regardless.
From the article:
VideoLAN designed VLC’s Chromecast support as a workaround for any media formats Chromecast can’t natively support. VLC can re-encode video on the fly to make it work with Chromecast, including casting DVDs from your Windows machine.
I gather from the article's statement that the greatest value of the Chromecast support is precisely that any video format VLC supports can be reencoded on the fly to play on the Chromecast. So VLC is ahead of you on this score.
I am disappointed that VLC doesn't support receiving a Chromecast. It would be very nice to be able to Chromecast from my phone and other devices to a Window on one of my PC displays. This would also enable the assistant on my Google Home to audio and video to my PC in response to voice commands. Google has a tool to receive a Chromecast, but only offers it to schools. They apparently don't want to do anything to make PCs easier to use. Otherwise, Google Assistant itself would already be a feature of Chrome on PCs.
VLC has been far from the best media player on Linux. I went back to mplayer because its speed is unparalleled, seeking in a stream is fast and doesn't break the playback completely, and it doesn't flail around and spaz out if it doesn't understand how to play something.