VLC Media Player for Pocket PC

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.videolan.org/vlc/' target='_blank'>http://www.videolan.org/vlc/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"This new release features many improvements including a full playlist rewrite, improved preferences, Mac OS X Tiger compatibility, a brand new Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin, a port to Pocket PC, mosaic picture in picture system, easy snapshots..."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050708-VideoLAN.jpg" /><br /><br />Some of you may be familiar with VLC Media Player for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The latest build, v0.8.2, now offers support for the Pocket PC, so if you've been looking for a new mobile media player, then VLC may be it! I've yet to try it so I'm wondering how it stacks up against BetaPlayer. For those of you who give this a go, let us know what you think.

[MitchellO]

Can you post a direct link. I can't find it!

[Darius Wey]

Can you post a direct link. I can't find it!

They're released as nightly builds. As far as I can tell, this one's the latest (dated July 1st): http://vthr.via.ecp.fr/~videolan/build/wince/vlc-wince-xscale-last.zip

The rest of the nightly builds are listed here: http://vthr.via.ecp.fr/~videolan/build/wince/

[MitchellO]

Yeah, I managed to find it. Trying it now!

[MitchellO]

Betaplayer is definately better. Its really not very good.

[Gerard]

Stinks on ice, actually. Tried it the night it came out, then a little more the next day. Ridiculously buggy. But then... it's a beta.

The feature set is fun. Looks very comprehensive. Too bad it crashed out every time I tapped a preference menu listing. It'd be nice to see what's under the hood, a little. Figure I'll check back when it's closer to ready for prime time. I think the contributors are still taking pot shots.

[MitchellO]

I didn't want to be too harsh, but I agree. Its very unstable.

Betaplayer still rocks!!

[Ward]

I tried it a few weeks ago. I really wanted it to work because it seems to support subtitles. But no matter what, I couldn't get it to play any video. Add to that fact that its not VGA aware and brute forcing it actually imperils the stability even further...

:(

[hamishmacdonald]

Yeah, nice try, but... It ugly!

The File/Open dialogues are those unusable ones that try to find everything on your system, and only one directory deep. And it didn't play the simple MPEG I opened. These days, software only gets one try from me, particularly when there are strong alternatives.

BetaPlayer is still *the* video player on the platform. It's astoundingly capable in a TextMaker kind of way: "You can do that on this platform?!"

My only wish is that it were prettier. It still has a Windows 95 kind of look-and-feel to it. I know that has nothing to do with functionality, but it is part of the experience.

[MitchellO]

Yeah, that file open dialog took ages to load on mine!!

[allenalb]

i also prefer BetaPlayer, however...

VLC is one of the best video players out for windows. it is especially ideal for viewing incomplete streams (in other words, a .part file from a p2p client that makes a sound like an old country-western tv show). it is also neat in that you generally don't need to download any codecs for it.

it might not be great for PPC right now, but i'm, sure it will improve...

[carphead]

One of the cool things about VLC on Win32 is the ability to stream any Windows Media device.

I use it to watch TV over a wi-fi link from my PVR Server (not running Media Edition). This one records the shows and then allows me to watch at my leisure.

If Ce VLC includes support for that then I'll use it. Many times I'd wished for that on my x50v. Currently I have to re-encode stuff to let me watch it.