VLC Media Player for Windows 8 is a go

If you are using Windows 8 on a desktop PC or laptop, or not at all, then you may not be that excited to hear that the VLC Media Player campaign on Kickstarter reached its funding goal of £40,000 five days before campaign end. What this means is that Videolan developers will produce a version of the popular media player for Windows 8 that will be available in the system's Windows Store. Why is that not exciting for desktop users? Because they can install VLC Media Player anyway. Users who cannot on the other hand, which means Windows RT users, for instance people who bought the Surface RT from Microsoft, benefit from this as they get their hands on a media player that will improve the overall experience of the system.

Windows RT users will benefit from additional format support including DVD, VCD and unencrypted Blu-Ray disc playback, something that the operating system does not support by default. While most RT devices come without disc drivers, you can still connect an external DVD or Blu-Ray drive to the system, and if you do that, you may also want options to play media on the system.

Next question. Why are people still donating even if the project goal has been reached? Answer: because the developers will use the money to add features to the client that were not planned initially. Here is the list of features that may make their way into the application (the team calls them proposals):

• Camera input support to record anything your connected camera sees and live stream the picture as well
• DLNA client and server integration to play media stored on servers and stream media to devices that support DLNA
• Smartglass support
• Support for locally attached devices for media playback and synchronziation

Additional funding furthermore will speed up the development process so that the final application will be available sooner rather than later. Here is a mockup that VLC posted a while ago on the Kickstarter page.

While Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro users may prefer the desktop version of VLC most of the time, it may sometimes makes sense to use the app instead as it may provide better fullscreen access or an easier to use interface that users of all experience levels can work with.

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