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.

Comments

Re:It's about time!

[Anderson Council]

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

It's "Vetinari"

[Ecuador]

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.

Availability

[Translation Error]

It seems to be available for MacOS too.

Re:Has the UI gotten any better?

[xxxLCxxx]

As far as I can tell, the playback UI is missing obvious features like X second skip forward/back, slow motion, etc, ...

As far as I remember, it's customizable: Tools => Customize Interface

... and isn't at all touch screen friendly.

You just won't believe this, but it has support for different skins too! Just use a search engine and look for something like: vlc touchscreen skin. ;-)

Re:It's not out yet

[DERoss]

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.

Re:Availability Not Yet Complete

[BitterOak]

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.