July 13th, 2009
Can VLC 1.0 change the world?
There’s a new hit on the Web.
VLC 1.0 has about 6 million downloads since its launch a few days ago, and the number was climbing at over 11 per second at last count.
I have had VLC for a few years, and you may be wondering what the big deal is.
Start with the fact it breaks all the assumptions we’ve had about the proprietary video world. It reads anything, and ignores everything producers try to put in front of your video experience. On a Netflix DVD it will skip the previews, for instance.
As Matt Asay notes, VLC records as well as plays video so you can hoard everything Anne Hathaway has ever done on your hard drive. It can be used as a server to stream video to others.
Even while VLC may be a better player than what you have under Windows, its heritage is Linux, and open source. It’s licensed under the GPL V.2 and is compatible with the open source Ogg Theora codec. It supports many other codecs as well.
The VLC team is aware they have something special. They have ditched their old logo, a roadside traffic cone, for a snappy new bulldozer (above).
In summary, the new VLC media player is everything the copyright industries have fought against for over a decade — open source, wide-open access, free, streaming, Linux. VLC ignores all the agendas that have hampered Apple QuickTime, the Real Player, and Windows Media Server over the years.
Now, will it change the media world, or will the media industry work to shut it down?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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