Following a lengthy beta testing period, The folks over at VideoLAN just launched VLC, the world’s most used media player, in the App Store on the fourth-generation Apple TV.
The recently released app gives users access to all of their files and video streams in their native formats, which means that you don’t have to convert content in order for it to play properly on your device. This goes along with the company’s goal of stating that “VLC plays everything and runs everywhere.”
As of right now, the VLC for Apple TV can play, pause and look for all the file formats you’re used to on other platforms, even going as far as including support for chapter and title navigation along with multiple audio and subtitle track selection. The app can also automatically discover content on the local network using Windows Shares (SMB), DLNA/UPnP media servers, FTP and PLEX servers. The login credentials that users utilize for the devices and services are securely stored on the Apple TV and synced to the respective iOS device (whether it’s the iPad or iPhone) or vice versa. VLC also supports custom playback speed, which the VideoLAN team mentioned no other media player on the Apple TV currently offers.
Alongside all of the traditional features that everyone is likely used to, the new app also includes a handful of Apple TV-specific features. Out of these, Remote Playback is likely the most interesting as it is a custom way of casting media stored on other computers to the Apple TV via a browser. So how does this feature really work? VLC provides you with an IP address for your Apple TV. If you open it in your browser, it allows you to drag and drop one or more files to play them on the Apple TV.
VLC is currently beta testing Apple TV support for cloud services Dropbox, OneDrive and Box. The feature will be available in the near future.
VLC for Apple TV is available at no charge in the App Store on your Apple TV. VLC for Mobile is available at no cost on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the App Store.
The iOS app requires iOS 7.0 or later and is localized in English, Afrikaans, Arabic, Belarusian, Bosnian, Cambodian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Faeroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian Bokmål, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Singhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish and Ukrainian.
VLC media player Now Available for Apple TV