App Pick: VLC 3.0

App Pick: VLC 3.0

In its latest incarnation, the VLC media player addresses some long-standing complaints and adds some killer new features. Enough so that even casual users may want to go to the trouble of installing and using the new version of the app.

For years, VLC was part of the default set of apps that I installed on every PC. The reasoning here is simple enough: Microsoft’s built-in apps were simply too unsophisticated. And that’s true whether you were talking about legacy apps like Windows Media Player or newer attempts like Videos/Zune Video, which debuted in Windows 8.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

But two things changed to make VLC less useful to me. First, Microsoft’s built-in video app, now called Movies & TV, improved to the point where it offered everything I needed, including support for subtitles and captioning. And worse, VLC, while excellent, never adapted to the high DPI displays that are common now on the PCs I travel with. The app just didn’t keep up. So I stopped using it.

Previous VLC versions did not scale well on high DPI displays

Well, things have changed yet again. This week, VideoLAN shipped VLC 3.0, a major update to its video player. And this release is a big deal, one that addresses my complaints and adds some other great new features.

VLC 3 finally supports high DPI displays seamlessly

Key among them:

  • Chromecast compatibility
  • Scalable UI that finally looks right on high DPI displays
  • 4K and 8K video playback support
  • HDR support

There’s a lot more, but those are the big ones. Also note that VLC is available across a wide range of platforms, including Windows XP or newer, macOS 10.7 or newer, iOS 7 or newer, Android 2.3 or newer, Android TV, Chromebooks with Android support, Linux, and others.

The one unknown here is battery life: Whatever you think of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) generally, or Movies & TV specifically, it’s going to give you the best battery life. And that matters when you’re on the go. There’s no way to know how or if VLC changes that dynamic, but it’s something to think about if you’re using a portable PC on battery power. And nothing in VLC’s release notes says anything about battery.

Still, a very nice update. And an app that I will, once again, install on all of my PCs going forward. You should give it a look.

 

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 22 comments

  • Siv

    10 February, 2018 - 9:54 am

    <p>I checked in my 2.x version for updates and it said I was up to date??</p><p>In the end I had to download it from the VLC site.</p><p>My only gripe with VLC was it's determination to not remember the size you set its window when you last used it. It always seemed to create a huge WIndow so you have to resize it back to a more manageable setting.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      10 February, 2018 - 10:44 am

      <blockquote><a href="#244733"><em>In reply to Siv:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yep, I did the same. </p>

  • Paul Tarnowski

    10 February, 2018 - 10:32 am

    <p>I actually prefer the Universal App version, funnily enough. Not that I think it has anywhere near all the options of the desktop version, it's just easier to deal with since I only use a video player sparingly. To that end just ran the Store app and had it update VLC automatically.</p>

    • NazmusLabs

      10 February, 2018 - 4:31 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#244736"><em>In reply to ScribT:</em></a></blockquote><p>I like the UWP one as well. It's just that I don't like it wasting resources managing my library. I have iTunes, Groove, Movies &amp; TV, and Photos apps to do those. I love using the Win32 player as a standalone player that just plays video on demand from file explorer without much overhead.</p>

  • glenn8878

    10 February, 2018 - 10:42 am

    <p>You would think the UWP app would work better than the Win32 application, but it’s the opposite. Video would be blocky. Pictures and video would not orient automatically. Takes a long time to play. Just bad performance overall and can’t take advantage of a new and speedy Intel processor. In fact, it seems like my iPhone 7 plays videos faster than my PC. I uninstalled it and forgot it. </p>

    • NazmusLabs

      10 February, 2018 - 4:29 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#244748"><em>In reply to glenn8878:</em></a></blockquote><p>You might be interested to know that I believe the UWP has also been updated with the features introduced in the VLC Win32 engine. In fact, even the Android and iOS received the update, which you will note if you read their full changelog.</p><p><br></p><p>You may be interested to see if the new update mitigates the issues you noted with the UWP version.</p><p><br></p><p>P.S. One big pain point for me in regards to the UWP version is that the app tries to build a media library, making the initial setup slow. It's frustrating to see the app doing all the extra processing updating it's library when I open a video or audio using it. I use iTunes and Windows's built in apps to handle library management. I love the simplicity of VLC Win32 in that I can use it as a standalone player to open files on demand from file explorer.</p>

      • skane2600

        10 February, 2018 - 6:31 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#244819"><em>In reply to NazmusLabs:</em></a></blockquote><p>"P.S. One big pain point for me in regards to the UWP version is that the app tries to build a media library, making the initial setup slow."</p><p><br></p><p>It just illustrates that whether it's a Win32 application or a UWP application, delays like this are really just a function of the developer's feature choices, not something intrinsic to the platform choice. One could imagine that if the desktop version of VLC had this capability, it might be enabled/disabled by a checkbox within a traditional Win32 installer (the horror!) that would allow someone who wasn't interested in the feature, to enjoy a more responsive experience.</p>

  • warren

    10 February, 2018 - 11:12 am

    <p>About time they fixed the high-DPI issue. I stopped using VLC ages ago because of that.</p>

  • Bobby Williams

    Premium Member
    10 February, 2018 - 11:56 am

    <p>Finally! VLC is usable again. The dpi issue was really pissing me off. Origin has the same issue. If it wasn't for my love of The Sims 4, I would never use Origin.</p>

  • MikeCerm

    10 February, 2018 - 12:12 pm

    <p>VLC has never properly supported GPU acceleration for some reason, so that's why the battery drain is higher than other apps. The only reason I really use VLC is because there's never any codec issues and because it's so easy to manipulate playback speed. But if you're just watching a common file time at regular speed, there are better options.</p>

    • alexangas

      10 February, 2018 - 2:18 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#244779"><em>In reply to MikeCerm:</em></a></blockquote><p>Just had a scan through the changelog and there seem to be several new hardware acceleration features. So might be worth taking another look! </p>

      • MikeCerm

        11 February, 2018 - 2:42 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#244792"><em>In reply to alexangas:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yeah, they say that every time. Nominally, VLC supports hardware acceleration. But if you compare its CPU usage with media players that actually do support hardware acceleration, you'll see that there's something going on with VLC's acceleration. It's far more CPU intensive than any other player.</p>

  • gvan

    10 February, 2018 - 1:05 pm

    <p>Can it play videos downloaded via iTunes?</p>

  • karlinhigh

    Premium Member
    10 February, 2018 - 1:10 pm

    <p>I am happy to see FluidSynth MIDI playback has returned to VLC. It allows setting custom sound fonts. With the <a href="http://schristiancollins.com/generaluser.php&quot; target="_blank">S. Christian Collins GeneralUser GS</a> SF2-file in place, VLC becomes my favorite MIDI-to-audio converter.</p>

  • Rcandelori

    Premium Member
    11 February, 2018 - 6:45 am

    <p>Great to finally have HiDPI support.</p>

  • PeteB

    11 February, 2018 - 10:52 am

    <p>Gimped UWP version is pointless and way more laggy than proper Win32 version. Did they not get the memo that wmobile is dead and there's no upside to sticking low quality phone oriented apps into Microsoft's petty DRM wrapper?</p>

  • Shmuelie

    Premium Member
    11 February, 2018 - 1:56 pm

    <p class="ql-indent-1"><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">The one unknown here is battery life: Whatever you think of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) generally, or Movies &amp; TV specifically, it’s going to give you the best battery life. And that matters when you’re on the go. There’s no way to know how or if VLC changes that dynamic, but it’s something to think about if you’re using a portable PC on battery power. And nothing in VLC’s release notes says anything about battery.</em></p><p class="ql-indent-1"><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">I'm curious if the UWP version of VLC (that has also upgraded to 3.0.0) will be comparable to Movies &amp; TV for battery life.</span></p>

  • seapea

    14 February, 2018 - 2:21 am

    <p>It was a piece of cake to update to VLC3.</p><p>As for concerns about battery life and Chromcast, well …</p><p>" <span style="color: rgb(73, 78, 82);">If media codecs are supported by your Chromecast device, VLC only acts as a streaming server (which is battery consuming). If not, VLC will transcode&nbsp;</span><em style="color: rgb(73, 78, 82);">and</em><span style="color: rgb(73, 78, 82);">stream media, which is highly cpu&nbsp;</span><em style="color: rgb(73, 78, 82);">and</em><span style="color: rgb(73, 78, 82);">&nbsp;battery consuming. "</span></p><p><br></p><p>geoffreymetais.github.io/features/vlc-30/</p>

  • robinwilson16

    14 February, 2018 - 3:21 pm

    <p>I can't install this.</p><p>Have been trying since this announcement and always get the same error:</p><p>The app didn't install. Code: 0x80246013</p><p><br></p><p>The Office 2016 UWP apps give the same error.</p><p>Everything else is updating/installing ok though.</p>

  • Birraque

    14 February, 2018 - 6:04 pm

    <p>VLC is a good media player but version 3.0.0 looks like a unfinished product to me.</p><p>My Event Viewer has a lot of ERROS from vlc.exe now.</p><p>It's easy to reproduce the problem:</p><p>1. Start VLC</p><p>2. Close VLC</p><p>3. You'll see a VLC media player stopped working in reliability history (Control Panel; All Control Panel</p><p>Items; Security and Maintenance; Reliability Monitor).</p><p>You'll not see any dialog box of stopped working, just one entry in reliability history.</p><p>The problem is with both 32-bits and 64-bits version.</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC