VLC is one of the most popular third-party video players and the slim application has now reached v.1.1.0. The big news with the new version is the support for GPU-accelerated video playback.
VLC Media Player is currently a bit limited in its GPU acceleration since it only supports NVIDIA GPUs. ATI needs further optimizations for VLC’s architecture while Intel hasn’t given the developers any access to its hardware.
GPU acceleration is primarily intended for High Definition video formats and supports H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 through DxVA2, which requires either Windows 7 or Vista.
Other news include improved support for MKV HD with 8-channel audio, and support for new codecs, Blu-ray subtitles and MPEG-4 lossless. New interface, better possibilities for streaming video, faster decoding and optimized code.
More on VLC 1.1.0 at videolan.org.
