VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, and OGG, as well as for DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It also can be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

New in VLC 1.0.0
# Independant of systems codecs to support most video types
# Live recording
# Instant pausing and Frame-by-Frame support
# Finer speed controls
# New HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, …)
# New formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS, …) and major improvements in many formats…
# New Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder
# Video scaling in fullscreen

VLC can play:

* MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 / DivX files from a hard disk, a CD-ROM drive, and so on
* DVDs, VCDs, and Audio CDs
* From satellite cards (DVB-S)
* Several types of network streams: UDP/RTP Unicast, UDP/RTP Multicast, HTTP, RTSP, MMS, etc.
* From acquisition or encoding cards (on GNU/Linux and Windows only)

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