VLC Media Player 1.1.10

VLC Media Player 1.1.10 (The Luggage)

VLC is a free media player program which has been made available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. The source is freeware so any platform that can compile it should be able to run it.
It's most recognisable by it's icon picture which depicts an orange traffic cone with white horizontal stripes on it.
It's biggest asset is that it is compatible with a wide variety of media formats from Audio, Video, and picture formats. It also contains various options for output, including streaming and realtime effects.
Most users will be using it for it's playback ability though.

The Good:
- Versatile. It can open and play a wide variety of video formats and most of the time it plays them flawlessly. It has many options for tweaking the output and handles subtitle formats quite well.

- Free. It doesn't require any payment to use VLC but if you find it useful, you can donate to the developer which might allow them to improve on the code.

- Skinnable. Like most media players nowadays, the interface is skinnable. These skins can be user-created so you can customise how the player looks when not in fullscreen mode.

- Lightweight. The entire package (for Windows) is around 20MB which is smaller than a number of alternate media players.

- Codec. It comes with the option of using the default codec, or you can use system codecs for decoding certain media types.

The Bad (as of 1.1.10):
- Efficiency. VLC is not the most processor efficient player and the default codecs are built for compatibility rather than speed. This is most notable on devices with limited processing power playing high bitrate/compression streams.

- Robustness. It struggles to play a number of formats well. .MKV files above 720p are one example. These files usually contain chapter information and oggvorbis audio streams which VLC has had trouble playing or keeping sync (at least on my system).
1080p/i files also exhibit strange artifacting at regular intervals when other system operations occur, even if the system isn't bottlenecked. The only good thing in this respect is that VLC can happily co-exist with other media players on the same system so you aren't locking your choices out by choosing VLC and can switch to another player such as Media Player Classic when VLC isn't able to handle the file.

- Multi-level options. The options menu has two views. Basic and Full. The Basic view shows the most popular options for quick and simple adjustments. This is fine for most people. Sometimes though, there are times when you need to access a certain option or function to let you play the media correctly, and it isn't immediately obvious where the option is in the settings. Then , once you find the option to turn on Full options, the menu structure changes and the finding settings can be difficult, even though everything is labelled appropriately.

- Update isn't an updater. The update system on VLC doesn't update your installation. All it does is initiate a download of the file from an arbitrary server and loads it in an arbitrary location. There is no control over the download and the process is manual. It also downloads the entire installer (not too much of an issue at 20MB) instead of just the parts that need updating.

- Window default size. Sometimes, the window size defaults to the size of one of the most recently played files. This isn't necessary the most recently played file, and sometimes this can get irritating at the end of a file where the window ends up being bigger than the actual viewport.

Summary:
- VLC is a great little program that is indispensable to the media enthusiast, who might have a slew of media all in different fomats. It's akin to a swiss army knife of media players. With the exceptions mentioned above, there is little it cannot play well, and with a bit of tweaking it should be able to play anything. Having this installed alongside something like Media Player Classic should cover you for all media playback need.

Score:
- 9/10