VLC Hit 1 BILLION Downloads

[Renegade]

A billion is a big number... very big...

http://blog.qt.nokia...000000000-downloads/

The VLC media player recently hit 1 billion downloads, VideoLAN project reports.

VLC’s enormous popularity is largely caused by the huge variety of video-formats it supports, and its cross platform support. VLC is made with Qt and it’s free software. It runs on desktop systems including Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. It also runs on *BSD systems, Solaris, Android, QNX, Syllable, Maemo, MeeGo and OS/2.

It was in 2008 with version 0.9.0 when the VLC project switched to Qt. Since that point it has been downloaded around 824 million times. The real number is even higher because Linux, *BSD and smartphone systems are omitted from the statistics since VLC is downloaded directly from app stores.

The project manager Jean-Baptiste Kempf has spoken to us previously about why they switched from wxWidgets to Qt. It’s cross platform, open source compatible and has UTF-8 support, making it Asian-language friendly. With this 0.9.9 release, the team had to redo the UI from scratch. The did that with Qt, and VLC became a huge success, with the new Qt-based interface a large part of the success, according to Kempf.

“The problem with Qt is that you spend more time thinking about your
problem than coding the solution  ” –  Jean-Baptiste Kempf.

(Been looking into the current state of cross platform GUI toolkits...)

[zridling]

That open source stuff might have a future after all.

[IainB]

Maybe someone could consider writing a new Mini-Review of VLC on the DC Forum.
VLC is certainly a powerfully useful proggie, not only for video viewing, but also for other stuff - e.g., including converting the audio tracks from videos to mp3 files. (I used it only last night for that.)

[app103]

1 billion downloads does not equal 1 billion users, or even 1 billion computers, or anywhere near close to it. VLC doesn't auto-update on Windows. It checks for new versions but you then have to visit the site and download the new version yourself, each and every time there is an update. I wonder what percentage of that 1 billion downloads were people just updating their existing copies.

[Tuxman]

Although VLC is so mediocre in terms of video/audio quality? Respectable.

[Josh]

That open source stuff might have a future after all.

-zridling (June 25, 2012, 12:40 AM)

I doubt this has anything to do with it being open source and more about it being free. Remember, OSS and Free do not ALWAYS go together. Were they to start charging for it, I guarantee it would no longer have the "appeal" it does now.

Although VLC is so mediocre in terms of video/audio quality? Respectable.

-Tuxman (June 25, 2012, 06:20 AM)

I cannot notice a difference and I've used this, and many other video/audio players, to output from my laptop to our 46" LCD TV. Perhaps you can enlighten us on which player has better audio/video quality for a combined player?

[jgpaiva]

That open source stuff might have a future after all.

-zridling (June 25, 2012, 12:40 AM)

I doubt this has anything to do with it being open source and more about it being free. Remember, OSS and Free do not ALWAYS go together. Were they to start charging for it, I guarantee it would no longer have the "appeal" it does now.

-Josh (June 25, 2012, 06:43 AM)

While I don't believe that its success is due solely to being OSS (I agree that being free has a large influence too), I think some credit should be given to the development model: there are several unsuccessful free players. Also, VLC is a technically advanced player/encoder/whatever-it-does, I do believe that being feature-full is related to having lots of people working on it, due to being OSS.

[Tuxman]

All players which use native system codecs and don't bring their own ones, presumably.

VLC's major problem is the overdriven audio output IMO, but also video has worse quality than Media Player Classic with ffdshow. Interestingly most problems are gone when I tick the checkbox to "use system codecs", but VLC's only advantage is gone then.