About:
VideoLAN Client (VLC) is a media player, streamer, and encoder for Unix, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, QNX, and PocketPC. It can play most audio and video codecs (MPEG 1/2/4, DivX, WMV, Vorbis, AC3, AAC, etc.), has support for VCD, SVCD, and DVD (with menus), and can read or dump streams from a network source (HTTP, UDP, DVB, MMS, etc.). It can also act as a server and send streams through the network, with optional support for audio and video transcoding.

Author:
The VideoLAN Team <videolan |at| videolan |dot| org> [contact developer]

Rating:	reset 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
9.45/10.00 (839 votes)

Homepage:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Tar/GZ:
http://download.videolan.org/[..]ub/videolan/vlc/0.8.6i/vlc-0.8.6i.tar.gz
Tar/BZ2:
http://download.videolan.org/[..]b/videolan/vlc/0.8.6i/vlc-0.8.6i.tar.bz2
Changelog:
http://wiki.videolan.org/Changelog/0.8.6i
Debian package:
http://packages.debian.org/vlc
OS X package:
http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/0.8.6i/macosx/
CVS tree (cvsweb):
http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/browser/
Bug tracker:
http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/report
Mailing list archive:
http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/
Mirror site:
http://www.fr.videolan.org/vlc/

Trove categories: [change]

[Development Status]		5 - Production/Stable
[Environment]		MacOS X :: Carbon, Win32 (MS Windows), X11 Applications, X11 Applications :: Gnome, X11 Applications :: KDE
[Intended Audience]		End Users/Desktop
[License]		OSI Approved :: GNU General Public License (GPL)
[Operating System]		BeOS, MacOS X, Microsoft :: Windows, POSIX
[Programming Language]		Assembly, C, C++
[Topic]		Multimedia :: Sound/Audio :: Players, Multimedia :: Video :: Display

Dependencies: [change]
libmpeg2 (required)
MAD (Default branch) (required)
FAAC (FAAC branch) (recommended)
[download links]

 Branches

Branch	Version	Last release	License	URLs
Stable	0.8.6i	28-Jul-2008	GNU General Public License (GPL)
Ourumov	0.4.6	15-Nov-2002	GNU General Public License (GPL)
Testing	0.8.4-test2	09-Nov-2005	GNU General Public License (GPL)
Trevelyan	0.6.2	14-Aug-2003	GNU General Public License (GPL)

 Releases

Version	Focus	Date
0.8.6i	Minor security fixes	28-Jul-2008 17:12
0.8.6h	Minor security fixes	07-Jun-2008 19:39
0.8.6f	Major security fixes	15-May-2008 17:13
0.8.6d	Major security fixes	01-Dec-2007 00:10
0.8.6c	Minor security fixes	17-Jun-2007 23:24
0.8.6b	Major bugfixes	19-Apr-2007 06:32
0.8.6a	Major security fixes	04-Jan-2007 18:39
0.8.6	Minor feature enhancements	18-Dec-2006 22:34
0.8.5	N/A	12-May-2006 04:52
0.8.4	Major feature enhancements	27-Nov-2005 18:09

 Articles referencing this project

• Debian: New vlc packages fix several vulnerabilities
  by Patrick Lenz , in Security
  Sun, Apr 13th 2008 15:13
  
• Debian: New vlc packages fix arbitrary code execution
  by Patrick Lenz , in Security
  Sun, Jul 15th 2007 10:10
  
• Debian: New vlc packages fix arbitrary code execution
  by Patrick Lenz , in Security
  Sun, Jan 28th 2007 09:35
  
• Debian: New vlc packages fix arbitrary code execution
  by Patrick Lenz , in Security
  Thu, Mar 16th 2006 09:16
  
• Linux DVD Players
  by Catie Flick , in Category Reviews
  Sat, Oct 5th 2002 00:00
  

 Comments

[»] LOVE IT!!!
by KmIAMs - Jul 23rd 2008 20:09:04

I absolutely love this program! Not only does it handle the FLV files I was looking to play it let me play my international DVD's as well as my domestic DVD's

--
KmIAMs

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[»] great stuff
by david a thompson - May 23rd 2008 19:54:45

I found that vlc was able to handle a wmv stream that kaffeine and mplayer both had trouble with (all standard debian installs). Nice job with a feature-rich piece of software...

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[»] VLC - A great Software!!
by SPSK - Apr 30th 2008 22:06:39

VLC is really a great thing...
You can play video/audio file of any format with it.
This has become the trend-setter of the field of multimedia.
Thanks to Videolan.

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[»] ...
by joeecracker - Mar 14th 2008 08:22:44

Easy to install and easy to handle! Great tool!

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[»] Best player out there.
by M Phoenix - Jan 16th 2008 11:31:12

I give it a 9 out of 10 for the sole reason that the GUI and fullscreen playback controls could use some improvement, but it beats all the other players hands down.

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[»] Awesome
by Gear7 - Nov 29th 2007 01:48:39

This thing is awesome. I just recently discovered it while looking for a player to play a broken divx I had. This player will play anything I throw at it. My only gripe is that, I wish that while in full screen, if I move my mouse to the bottom, the controls would pop up. I hate having to exit full screen mode to back a video up a bit.

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[»] VLC cpu efficiency
by printercarrier - Oct 29th 2007 06:09:09

This program can play 640x480 divx videos 4000kbps at 30fps fulscreen on a a pentium 2 450, and fullscreen 1920x1080 HD divx videos at 30fps on an athlon xp 1500, also 320x240 flc flash 9 videos fullscreen at 30fps on a pentium 2 450, very impressive, haven't tried h264.

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[»] cool player!
by phiro - Oct 7th 2007 05:09:03

Thx guys, you did an awesome job - I love this player!

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[»] VLC
by hozeyzachary - Aug 28th 2007 01:45:19

The King of Player! Period.

--
Knowledge is the answer to everything.

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[»] Excellent program
by kuroneko22 - Jul 18th 2007 10:58:27

A clean and efficient media player. Installs without any problem.

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[»] VLC for Linux (Suse 10.2)
by Anugrah Sinha - May 20th 2007 19:18:01

The Best!!!!!! Awesome..... Very simple and good installation procedure through the HTTP server. Plays all formats even DVDs too. Good package. Well done VideoLan..... Good work.

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[»] VLC really the best
by vodkazero - May 13th 2007 03:11:11

Simply the best player in the world.
------------------------------------------

- It can read all kind of files types fast and without problems;

- It can read video parts even if they are not complete and for this ability it is really good for previews while emule is downloading;

- It has support for skin changing and there are lots of skins

It's tha only one real player, take it, do not have doubts.

Cya ... Vz

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[»] thank you
by gecko99 - Mar 5th 2007 17:20:59

Thanks for this fantastic player, i've tested many other videoplayer, but this one playes all without problems ;)

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[»] Thanks
by yrili - Jan 14th 2007 19:01:04

Thank you guys . You did an awesome job . I would be dead on my Mac mini without it . Keep up the good work .

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[»] Thank you!
by Michael - Nov 28th 2006 04:10:47

Thanks for this great video player. I just installed it and it works perfectly. I always had some video files on my harddisk I couldn't read with the normal Windows Media Player. But with your player: absolutely no problems! Thanks again and keep up the good work.

Michael

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[»] VLC is the best
by oneminizut - Nov 3rd 2006 23:15:10

I'm running Slack 11.0 on 2.6 kernel and VLC compiled and ran with no problem whatsoever. In fact, this is the best player I've used yet under Gnu/Linux and I've used them all. This is a sharp project, props to the dev. team!

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[»] VLC Media Player
by RadicalPi - Oct 7th 2006 13:53:36

I use VLC mainly to play DVD's, it free, and it gives you the ability to copy them in a variety of formats. I give VLC a rating of and 8 as opposed to a 10 for one main reason. Whenever I try to copy video files into certain formats (usually wmv), VLC will "encounter an error, and be forced to close". I do not know why this problem occurs, but other than that, VLC Media Player is the greatest.

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[»] VLC on Ubuntu
by morgaihas - Sep 5th 2006 04:25:34

I just recently installed VLC on my ( 5 year old ) Dell C610 which runs Ubuntu Dapper drake.

VLC installs perfectly with the synaptic installer tool. The tool is somewhat less complex than its main competitor "mplayer" under Lunix.

To some this may be considered as a Con as Mplayers complexity allows more configuration possibilities. However i find the simplistic interface by VLC a mayor plus.

With Mplayer I had to manually change audio settings in order to get sound and image synchronised and even than it was far from perfect. VLC does the job right out of the box.

Good job ( as far as i can tell )

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[»] Videolan (VLC) Player
by gazzy - Jul 1st 2006 18:06:56

If you want a player that's stable, diverse, multi-functional and that will open your downloads even before they are fully downloaded.. Look no further.. I hate WMP and have had various problems with Quicktime, Realplayer and thier alternatives.. VLC always works and never lets me down..

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[»] Re: Videolan (VLC) Player
by Philippe F. - Aug 4th 2006 08:52:36

Definitely. VLC is the best player out there.

--
-- Philippe

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[»] Re: Videolan (VLC) Player
by torson - Dec 18th 2006 14:29:07

VLC is the best. When I remember how many time I spend looking for plugins. Congrats.

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[»] VLC media player & Screen Capture
by Rupert - Jun 7th 2006 01:38:21

Wow the --nooverlay switch (see online documentation)

eg: "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --intf wx --nooverlay


This allows you to take a normal screen capture of video while VLC is playing.

This is something I have been trying to do for ages but never managed to do with other media players

Thanks heaps!

Rupert.

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[»] VLC
by remoran - Apr 28th 2006 06:23:59

It's a 5 on both Mac and Win. Great app!

--
A graphic designer who beliveves in open source and understands systems from the user perspective.

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[»] Thanks
by jondoe - Apr 15th 2006 15:17:20

Downloaded it, tried it, definitely recommend it.

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[»] Great programm
by serlis25 - Mar 21st 2006 07:17:22

Just downloaded it. Want to say thanks to the developers. Great programm.

--
the place i love http://www.linuxjournal.com

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[»] This is great!
by smooveb - Mar 15th 2006 06:10:28

So far so good. I've just recently downloaded it, but so far it's great.

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[»] VLC
by file_agent - Mar 1st 2006 14:38:15

A+++ Makes any other media player seem like child's play!! Plays any file you can throw at it

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[»] The only
by Philippe F. - Feb 12th 2006 09:45:51

The only player that I use right now! Very good work.

--
-- Philippe

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[»] Great!!
by dimatrix - Jan 28th 2006 06:13:56

AMAZING PLAYER!!

I've been having lots of troubles trying to play HD videos with H.264 codec in pretty much all players existent and the results were awful until I heard about this player, I try it out and voila!!...excellent reproduction of the files, nothing more to add, just great...maybe just one thing, that will be a interface improvement but the main thing (reproduction) is perfect...

Two thumbs up!! :)

--
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c47/miketezer/0016lq.gif

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[»] even better on Windows!
by Alberto - Jan 12th 2006 13:34:01

P.IV-512Mb Ram-WinXPpro-not a special Video card: it rocks!
Just put the CD, call VLC and when pressing 'play'. A nother screen apears where you just select the Disk tab, the VCD radio button and specify the drive letter. Nothing else, just enjoy the show!

--
Get Ur FREE multiplatform e-book with the Book of Life- or get your FREE TreePad 2006 Calendar the Book of Life site

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[»] VLC
by caf4926 - Jan 5th 2006 22:39:56

A Brilliant player, need I say more!!!

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[»] One of the best!
by Marcus Moll - Dec 29th 2005 14:20:29

With VLC i get best results for playback on my G4 350MHZ. Won't use any other prog!

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[»] Re: One of the best!
by D-Man - Dec 20th 2006 05:18:30

Same thing with different frequencies.

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[»] The Best!
by strannik2 - Nov 21st 2005 21:53:38

DVDs, just about every other format, and over the network too! Good performance, even on my slow box. Very top rate software.

Some quicktime files play without sound for some reason I haven't been able to figure out yet, and
there is no real media codec as there is with mplayer, but otherwise, this is as good as it gets!

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[»] VLC Rocks
by pawow - Nov 19th 2005 13:58:30

This is a really versatile system. It rocks to say the very least. Thanks.

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[»] vlc on osx
by milezdaru - Nov 2nd 2005 01:54:31

With VLC on OSX you can even watch windows .wmv files ;]

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[»] website
by daveishere - Aug 19th 2005 04:16:26

The website, it lives!! Thank for reopening it.

--
Yer Baby! Ka Cing!

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[»] where is www.videolan.org ?
by daveishere - Aug 19th 2005 03:55:45

I want to download the source and/or binaries, has the project died? been bought out? nolonger free? where is the web site???

--
Yer Baby! Ka Cing!

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[»] VLC for OS X
by Idles - Jul 15th 2005 22:40:48

VLC brings one very important feature for an OS X user. By default, the powerbook DVD drives are region locked. You can only change the region five times, and then it stays locked.

By watching the DVD's with VLC you can do it region free, and not consume the five change -limit built into the OS. This has helped me a great time.

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[»] VLC
by carlosc1dbz - Jul 9th 2005 09:56:12

I think that this program is really cool. I am really into anime and I get fan subs. Most of the time, I would not be able to to watch it because the only program I had was Windows Media Player which I now know that is practically useless as far as everything. So know thanks to this program I can play practically any type of media file no matter what its format is.

--
carlosc1dbz

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[»] Re: VLC
by Philippe F. - Oct 25th 2005 17:40:03

Completely agree ^^^^ VLC is a definitive WMP replacement. I really like the ability to read many formats without having to install all the usual plugins. And it work well with streaming. Good job.

--
-- Philippe

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[»] Great for Streaming
by Kimbo Mundy - Jun 26th 2005 09:27:27

This is the only player I've found that can handle streaming video from my ReplayTV.

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[»] A simple, free way to play DVDs on Windows XP!
by Stefan Lasiewski - May 26th 2005 09:02:52

Windows XP doesn't play DVDs by default. Most solutions cost $10-20 , which is too much to pay for basic functionality that should have come with Windows in the first place, especially when I'm talking about an entire office.

VideoLAN installs and plays DVDs and a bunch of other video formats right away. Simple to use, works well. It's much better then the pirated media players that most people use.

What more could you ask for?

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[»] There is also Mplayer for linux
by Veerakumar - May 19th 2005 01:40:21

But VideoLan is a good cross-platform video player.

--
Visit me at Veera

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[»] Unique Player
by cherub96 - Feb 12th 2005 13:42:31

This player does what no other does (that I am aware of) - it plays incomplete divx files and it plays them while they are still in the process of being downloaded.
That is very useful.
One small thing: It would be nice if there would be a modus where the player can be switched to no-frame display in window mode, that is the only thing visible being the picture itself, no progress bar or header bar or whatever. Just the picture.

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[»] videolan player
by maliki - Jan 22nd 2005 08:46:06

Just downloaded it to be able to play MPeg 2 files looks great certainly use it in preference to wmp thanks very much.

--
A.T.B. Maliki

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[»] VideoLan
by PhiberOptik - Dec 14th 2004 11:03:32

Just got copy of VLC Media Player and nice job. It plays some video that is unrenderable by the usual Windoze and other suspects. Am a huge fan of open source.

Nice work.

Wayne Renardson
Nashville TN

--
Wayne Renardson Nashville TN

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[»] V0.8.0 Crashes
by baiti - Nov 7th 2004 04:01:05

So far I was using V0.7.2. I just upgraded to V0.8.0 by first uninstalling V0.7.2 (Windows XP SP2) and then installing V0.8.0. Some of the movies (SVCD) which would perfectly play with V0.7.2 do not play with V0.8.0. Once started, just nothing happens.

I stumbled over at least one movie which repeatedly crashed V0.8.0 but plays fine with V0.7.2.

I am now back at V0.7.2 and the problems are gone.

Don't get it wrong, the program is absolutely top. It is the best movie player I ever had on my machine. I am sure the bug in V0.8.0 will be found and eliminated quickly -- Keep up the good work.

--
baiti

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[»] Comments/Questions about 0.70
by Marko Niinimaki - Jan 6th 2004 03:42:14

vlc sure is a great package! I compiled 0.70 on my linux box and it went eventually ok, but maybe it would be a good idea to include a "pre-configure.sh" script that uses wget or something to get all the other packages vlc depends on (mad, dvdcss, ffmpeg etc), unpacks them and
calls configure with --with-mad-tree=../madstuff etc.

Question: I don't have a compiler in my Windows box, but I'd love to try vlc's windows port to play DVD's with it. Does the windows binary (zip) come with dvdcss? If not, can it add it separately?

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[»] Re: Comments/Questions about 0.70
by Sam Hocevar - Jan 6th 2004 11:45:30


> vlc sure is a great package! I compiled 0.70 on my linux box and it went
> eventually ok, but maybe it would be a good idea to include a
> "pre-configure.sh" script that uses wget or something to get all the
> other packages vlc depends on (mad, dvdcss, ffmpeg etc), unpacks them and
> calls configure with --with-mad-tree=../madstuff etc.
This is usually the job of the distributions (why aren't you using Debian sid anyway? :p). But such a script is being developed, please see extras/contrib/README in the vlc source tree.


> Question: I don't have a compiler in my Windows box, but I'd love to try vlc's
> windows port to play DVD's with it. Does the windows binary (zip) come with
> dvdcss?
Yes it does.

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[»] Finally we can see really dvd in linux!
by Apopatos - Apr 24th 2002 23:40:56

I f you have Videolan to watch DVDs with its perfect GUI and ogle for menus, then you don't need anything else!

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[»] A great app
by roryh - Apr 6th 2002 09:28:39

vlc has been the best dvd player I've found so far (though I realise it owes a debt of thanks to other projects, such as Ogle). DVD playing is easy, and high quality, just what I've been after.

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[»] Posted URL up yet?
by clicket - Aug 10th 2000 10:13:48

Is VideoLan.org up yet? This project sounds intense.. There was something of a DVD-decoding race between two different Linux development groups..And this wasn't one of them to my knowledge.. These guys just popped up out of nowhere w/ wild claims about MPEG2.. Amazing. I really would like to know more.

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[»] Re: Posted URL up yet?
by BAKup - Feb 14th 2001 11:34:41


> Is VideoLan.org up yet?
>
> This project sounds intense..
>
> There was something of a DVD-decoding
> race between two different Linux
> development groups..And this wasn't one
> of them to my knowledge.. These guys
> just popped up out of nowhere w/ wild
> claims about MPEG2.. Amazing.
>
> I really would like to know more. It's up, I just got the tarball from them, but I'm not going to be able to check it out until tomorrow :( Gosh Durn VD day. :)

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[»] Re: Posted URL up yet?
by d2 - Feb 21st 2001 04:21:59


> These guys
> just popped up out of nowhere w/
> wild
> claims about MPEG2.. Amazing.
>
> I really would like to know more. Check out this /. discussion dealing with 3 of the most famous DVD players (LiViD, OMS, Videolan). Actually, I tried the previous version (0.6.1) of videolan yesterday, and it ran really smoothly ! A few bugs, yet. But I couldn't achieve the same frame rate with the other 2 DVD Players. I didn't try Xmovie.

--
-- d2

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[»] Re: Posted URL up yet?
by Lepus - May 3rd 2001 11:05:29


> Check out this /. discussion dealing
> with 3 of the most famous DVD players
> (LiViD, OMS, Videolan).
> Actually, I tried the previous version
> (0.6.1) of videolan yesterday, and it
> ran really smoothly ! A few bugs, yet.
> But I couldn't achieve the same frame
> rate with the other 2 DVD Players.
> I didn't try Xmovie.
Erm... I thought OMS == LiVid, since OMS is on www.linuxvideo.org... ^_^

Well, anyway this seems pretty nice, I'll have a try with it. By the way, the new MPlayer now can play DVDs, and plays them million times better and more reliably than that bugware OMS. The only problem is that you have to start it with a VOB file explicitly, but I hope that will soon be remedied.

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