The changelog lists all of the changes and additions that the developers have packed into the new release of the VLC Player including live recording, finer speed controls, new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, Real video 3.0 and 4.0), formats, video scaling in full screen or zipped file playback. VLC Media Player can still play most video and audio formats out of the box without needing third party codec installations to do so.

VLC Player is still cross platform which means that the new release is available for all supported operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OSX and Linux. Users can download the new release directly from the developer’s website.

A viable alternative is SMPlayer which uses less resources than VLC Player while providing most of the benefits.

XBMC has been expanded since then and it can now be installed on various platforms including Windows, Linux or Macintosh computers. It is intended to be used for media PCs (like the Xbox but with additional features) that stream the media to the television but it can be installed on any computer meeting the requirements obviously.

The interface has been designed with usability and wow effect in mind. Links to video, music, images, settings and plugins are available from the main menu. The first three entries lead to similar sections of the media center. The user has to first pick at least one data folder that contains files that can be read by the player. This takes a few seconds at most and it is possible to navigate with the keyboard, mouse or gamepad in the menus.

The media center will pick up metadata automatically but it can also search the Internet for additional information like movie posters, plot summaries or actors.

Plugins enhance the system further. They can add all kinds of new functions to the system like games, communication, news and service integration (Youtube, Apple Trailers, Podcasts).

As I said All In One Fix ships with several patches for known issues. The real difficulty here for the end user is that he has to select which patches he wants to apply. There is no initial scan of the system environment, not sure if this would be even possible to do in this case.

The fixes that can be applied are the following:

Audio Codecs Missing

• MPEG1 Audio Codec Missing – This component will un-register the default mp3 filter that comes with your Operating System and then re-register it: “l3codecx.ax”
• LPCM Audio Codec Missing – This component will un-register the LPCM audio codec and then re-register it: “mlcom.ax”

Video Display Problem

• Remove Bicubic resize filter – Included in many codec packs ex.: Nimo – Can cause no video to appear, or video that is upside down or mirrored.
• Remove XviD filter – This removes the XviD DirectShow decoder filter. Many codec packs ex.:. Nimo feature Nic’s build of the DirectShow filter that steals playback of DivX FourCC’s. Unfortunately, most of these build can not playback all DX5 series video and the result is the start of files not playing, video appearing green, or other artifacting.
• Remove G400 filter – This filter is part of several codec packs, including Nimo’s, and causes video to play upside down. It should only be installed on systems using Matrox G400 cards in the first place.
• Remove DivX Anti-freeze filter – This filter is included in codec packs (inc. Nimo) – May cause some instability with DivX Codec and Dr DivX as well.

Player Off Limits

• Sometime, when opening the DivX Player, it goes out of the screen but it is in the taskbar. This component will bring back the player in the middle of the screen. The player needs to be close before you run this fix.

Burning Engine Update

• This will update the DivX Player Burning Engine to the latest version.

Ordinal Error

• If you receive “ordinal 2250 can’t be found in PX.dll” error when starting the player, this component of the fix, will solve the problem.

DivX Player Reset

• This option will delete all the preferences already set in DivX Player. This could fix some bugs like runtime error, player freeze at startup etc…

Connection Diagnostic

• If you have connection problem, problem to download VOD, to create an acocunt or to connect to your VOD account with DivX Player, Please select this option.

  This will run some tests on your computer and create a log file (connect.log). The file will be placed on your desktop. Please include this file when reporting your incident.

Web Player Fix

• If the web Player is already installed on your computer but you are still prompted to install it, choose this option, it should fix your problem.

Explorer Crash When Open A Folder

• When opening a folder containing DivX or XviD .Avi files under some specific configurations, the thumbnail generation crash Windows Explorer.

  This option Disable the Thumbnail generation.

DivX not in the list of codecs

• Choose this option if DivX is not in the list of the Codecs available from your favorite encoding application

Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 Bug

• The program Easy Media Creator 9 from Roxio don’t seem to be able to decode the DivX or Xvid file properly. If you apply this fix, the DivX Decoder should work properly.

  DivX needs to be reinstalled after you apply the patch. You dont need to uninstall, simply download the installer from the following link and run it.

  http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXInstaller.exe

Change the Skin Of DivX Player 6.x

• Choose this option you want to change the Skin of DivX Player. This is useful in case you are using the 800×600 resolution and missing some part of the default interface.

  There is 2 choices for the 800×600 display mode, 800×600 or Grayout

Read More:

All In One Fix

VLC Media Player is one of the few players that is able to play most file types out of the box without the need for additional codecs or plugins. It does not use a lot of processing power or ram even when playing large video files. A 700 megabyte testfile used about 32 megabytes of ram and most of the time 0-2 processing power. Media Player Classic used less ram on the files (24.6) but between 18-28 processing power. So, if you are looking for a new media player to switch to give VLC a try, it is worth it.

The second tip on the tvu player beta page deals with the problem that many users seem to face: the problem that they have no picture at all or a very bad one. The entry suggests to do the following:

• Upgrade your Windows Media Player to Windows Media Player 10
• If the problem still occurs, try the following steps
• Have VLC player installed on your computer. Click here to download VLC
• Right click the “TVUPlayer” icon on your computer’s Desktop
• Select “Properties” -> “Shortcut”
• Append ” -v” (with a leading space) at the end of the line in the “Target” box
• If the line in Target box is: “C:\Program Files\TVUPlayer\TVUPlayer.exe”
• then after appending, the line should be like this: “C:\Program Files\TVUPlayer\TVUPlayer.exe” -v

Last but not least I have five unlimited invites for the tvu player beta, if you would like to participate write a reply to this thread.

The player supports most used multimedia formats like avi, mp(e)g, divx, xvid, asf, wmv and many audio formats like mp3 and wav. It supports subtitles, drag and drop, resolution changing, multipled audio streams and is able to capture frames. If you are still using media player you should try and make the switch, it´s faster and better than it.