VLC 2.0 Announced: New UI and Blu-ray Support for OS X
by Kristian Vättö on February 13, 2012 4:00 PM ESTVideoLAN has announced VLC 2.0 and the first release candidate is available to the public today. The biggest changes are in the OS X version but there are a few interesting changes in the Windows version as well, such as a 64-bit version and support for multiple video files inside RAR archives. The OS X version has a totally new user interface (see pictures below) along with Blu-ray playback support.
Lets talk briefly about Blu-ray playback in OS X. Apple does not officially support Blu-ray as they provide no option for Blu-ray drives and the software support is poor to say the least. Blu-ray discs are encrypted so not just any player can play them. Since Apple doesn't support Blu-ray, there hasn't been a player that would enable one-click Blu-ray playback. However, it's still been possible to rip and encode the video with the OS X version of MakeMKV, in which case the video will become a regular MKV file that is supported by various players. There is also a direct playback method but it's rather complicated and doesn't work with all discs. VideoLAN is promising that VLC 2.0 will sport experimental Blu-ray playback support, but unfortunately we don't know yet how functional it is. Another big improvement in the OS X version is support for Lua-based extensions. There are at least a dozen different extensions but the most notable are probably subtitle finder and movie information.
Update: The Blu-Ray support is limited decrypted media, which means commercial Blu-Rays with DRM won't work. Also, the OS X version doesn't support Blu-Ray at all yet, although VideoLAN is planning on porting it to the OS X version as well.
The Windows version isn't getting any major new features; it's mainly under the hood changes but it already supports the features that are new in the OS X version. VideoLAN is apparently also working hard on porting VLC 2.0 for iOS, which is a bit of surprise given that the original VLC app was pulled from the App Store about a year ago.
The first release candidate can be downloaded here and the complete change log is available here.
Source: 9to5Mac
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Ethaniel - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
If he owns the movie, I really don't see the problem.bah12 - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Unfortunately the courts do. IIRC they ruled that the act of circumventing the encryption was illegal (ironically they never actually addressed the issue of copying a disc you own). It is presumed that yes you can copy, as long as you can do it without decrypting the disc. I believe this was a CA court case, and it never really made it very far. In the end I'd find it hard to believe any "damages" could be proven in a criminal court.nafhan - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
So, assuming he owns the disk AND someone else made the copy, he should be good - no encryption was broken by the disk owner in this case.StealthX32 - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Did they ever get the GPU acceleration to work? My Mac runs hot decoding 1080p, I'd rather it offload some of that CPU time onto the GPU. The x264 acceleration works great on the PC version iirc.Zak - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
It appears to be buggy: video playback is choppy. So back to the older version for now. And there still no True HD audio support (MKV)?Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
God tell me they fixed that stupid bug. I can lay on the couch and load a video from my ipoop. I can change the volume on my receiver via an ipoop app. Only to have to get up and click on the stupid tray icon twice to get the taskbar to go away. It is so retarded and irritating.Herp Derpson - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
Yeah, Mooly Eden was seriously pissed off about that when faking DX11 Demo :DPessimism - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
For those of you commenting on VLC sucking on IOS, its not VLC's fault. Video acceleration under IOS is limited to a very small handful of formats and restricted to quicktime use only. There is no API exposed for VLC to make use of.mindbomb - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - link
why would you even install something like this?The default media player is fine for 1080p video and stereo audio and text subtitles.
cara12345 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
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