Software Update: VLC Media Player 2.2.0

Version 2.2.0 of VLC Media Player has been released. This open source and cross-platform media player can play a variety of audio, video and streaming formats without the need to install the appropriate codec. In version 2.2.0, those with WeatherWax just like the previous version to a character from the Discworldbooks by Terry Pratchett, the Vertical Video Syndrome is addressed, the desktop now also remembers where it left off and support for hd codecs such as vp9, opus and h265/hevc has been improved. Furthermore, extensions can now be downloaded directly from the media player and the Android version is no longer offered as beta.

New VLC releases

The 2.2.0 release of VLC media player for the desktop is coordinated, for the first time ever, with releases on iOS, Android (including Android TV), WinRT (Windows RT and x86) and Windows Phone. VLC runs everywhere!

Those releases are the result of more than one year of volunteer work, add numerous new features, fix more than one thousand bugs and improves the scope of the formats supported.

The releases on all the platforms share the same core to support video and audio formats, named libVLC: VLC plays everything!

So, what’s new in VLC 2.2.0, codename WeatherWax?

• Fight the popular vertical video syndrome! VLC automatically detects rotated videos and rotates them using hardware acceleration (on compatible platforms)!
• This is supported for MP4/MOV, MKV and raw H264.
• Resume playback where you left off. Supported on all the mobile versions of VLC for quite some time, it is now available on the desktop.
• Vastly improved support for UltraHD video codecs like VP9 and H265, including encoding.
• New hardware acceleration mechanism, GPU 0-copy decoding, faster and implementations for Linux, Android, and Raspberry Pi. (Other OSes will have it in 3.0.0)
• Extensions: supported since a long time, we now feature an in-app downloader for the desktop, like Firefox
• Subtitles download extension
• Compatibility with a very large number of unusual codecs
• Vastly improved compatibility for problematic files in Ogg, MP4, and WMV.
• Support for Digital Cinema Package to play native movie theater formats.
• Experimental support of Interactive Menus or BluRays: BD-J
• On OS X, we’ve updated the interface for Yosemite compatibility.
• On Android, we rewrote most of the UI to match Google Material Design.
• This is the first public beta releases for Windows Phone, Windows RT and Android TV.
• It is also the first non-beta release on Android.

This is made possible through a lot of improvements of the VLC engine, the libVLC library, which starts showing its maturity and solidity.

Therefore, today, we release:

• VLC media player 2.2.0
• VLC for iOS 2.4.1
• VLC for Android 1.1.0
• VLC for Android TV 1.1.0
• VLC for WinRT 1.1.0
• VLC for Windows RT 1.1.0 Beta
• VLC for Windows Phone 1.1.0 Beta