VLC is one of the most popular video applications because it plays almost any format you use. Fans will be happy to hear that VLC 4 will offer a more modern look in the app in the coming months.
The team behind it is also considering the possibility of adopting a Plex-style business model to ensure the future of the app, and is planning a moon shot – literally …
Protocol has a piece that looks at both the past and future of VLC, starting with the history of the app.
The student staff who run the campus network of the École Centrale Paris had a problem. The university’s Token Ring network has become far too slow for students living on campus. For years, technology has done its job, providing access to email and newsgroups. But by the mid-90s, students wanted more. They wanted to download files, browse the internet and especially play Duke Nukem 3D, which was impossible for the aging network architecture.
However, the university could not provide a network update. In urgent need of an outside sponsor, the students entered into an agreement with a major French broadcaster, who wanted to use the campus site as a test bed for an early version of TV delivery on IP. The idea: Instead of equipping each dormitory with its own satellite dish and set-top box, students would find a way to stream TV signals over their local network.
‘The aim of the project was to show that you could send the satellite supply and decode again [it] on normal machines, which would cost much less, ”said Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN. To achieve this, students developed a video server and a playback app, then called VideoLAN Client. The project went awry as students graduated, and eventually the team behind it decided to open-source it.
It was the Mac that led to the first significant increase in usage.
Weeks after VLC was released as open source in 2001, a developer in the Netherlands transferred it to MacOS, causing the first real usage spike. Apple’s initial versions of OS X do not have a built-in app for DVD players, and early adoption of the new system flows to VLC as a replacement.
Popular because VLC remains, it is not exactly known for a nice or modern user interface. But Jean-Baptiste Kempf, chairman of VideoLAN, says it’s about to change.
Twenty years after the first open source release, the app is just as popular as ever, with between 800,000 and 1 million downloads every day. In addition to the computer versions, there are now also official VLC programs for iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV and Chrome OS, among others. And in the coming months, VideoLAN will release VLC 4.0, with a revamped UI. “We changed the interface to be a little more modern,” Kempf said.
The team has always turned down offers to commercialize the app, but is now considering one possible way to secure the future of VLC.
Kempf points to Plex and its ad-supported video services as one model to learn from. “This is something that could work for VLC,” he said.
Oh, and that moon shot …
Videolan also plans to celebrate its twentieth anniversary this year, starting with a literal lunar shot: The team wants to place a video time capsule aboard the first commercial lunar aircraft later this year, asking VLC users to submit their own videos. “There are a lot of people in the VideoLAN community who actually like space,” Kempf said. ‘We have SpaceX fans, hard fanboys’ […] “The moon thing is absolutely idiotic, but it’s so much fun.”
There is no word yet on the release date for VLC 4, but keep an eye on this space.
Photo by Redrecords of Pexels
FTC: We use revenue to earn automatically affiliate links. More.
Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: