VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
It doesn't need any external codec or program to work.

Main features
Video
- Rewritten video output core and modules, allowing subpicture blending in GPU.
- Shader support in the OpenGL output, for colorspace conversion, including 10bits.
- New video outputs for Windows 7, Android, iOS and OS/2.
- New debanding, grain, denoising and anti-flickering filters.
- New deinterlacing filter, including an Inverse Telecine algorithm.

Audio
- New resamplers for higher quality audio.
- New dynamic range compressor and karaoke filters.
- Simplification of the audio core for faster processing.
- New audio outputs for iOS, Android and OS/2.

Formats
- Multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM.
- Support for 10bits codecs, WMV image and some other codecs.
- Rewritten support for images, including jpeg, png, xcf, bmp...
- Important changes in RealVideo and Real Format support.
- CrystalHD cards and Android OpenMAX support for hardware decoding.

Input and Devices
- Experimental support for BluRay discs:
- Menus are deactivated in this release (will come soon).
- AACS and BD+ DRM libraries and keys are not shipped, for legal reasons.
- Support for SDI capture cards and QTKit devices.
- Support for new adaptive streaming protocols, like HLS and DASH.

For Mac Users
- Completely new, single window interface:
- Available in 2 colors: Lion grey and QTX black.
- Extensions support and better Lion integration.
- Support for all QTKit devices through qtcapture and qtsound modules.
- Continued support for X 10.5 and PPC users (1080p and ProRes on Dual-G5!).

For Anime Fans
- Vastly improved MKV demuxer.
- Rewritten linked segments and ordered chapter files support.
- Correct support for FLAC, RV and Hi10p in MKV.
- Rewritten seeking support in cue files.
- Various ASS subtitles improvements.

For professional Users
- Support for ProRes 422 and 4444, AVC/Intra.
- Support for Jpeg-2000, Dirac and DNxHD/VC-3 in 10bits.
- Support for EBU subtitles (stl) and EIA-608.
- SDI and HD-SDI card support for input on Linux.
- New Dirac/VC-2 encoder, faster than the previous one.

For Developers
- libVLC, libVLCcore and libcompat have switched from GPL to LGPLv2.1+.
- New libVLC examples are available: media player, photobooth and mediainfo clones.
- New JSON requests on the web interface to control running VLC instances.
- Implementation of the MPRIS2 interface to control media players.
- VLC's web plugins have been rewritten for better integration and stability in all browsers.