In April 2013, VideoLAN, the creators behind the highly popular VLC Media Player, launched a campaign to bring the multimedia player to the Windows Store and Windows 8 users. Almost a year later, they’ve finally done it. VLC for Windows 8 has launched.
We’ll show you how it works, what’s new and how you can get started with one of the best multimedia players available.
Cool Tip: Control VLC Media Player from Your iOS or Android Device
How VLC for Windows 8 Was Launched
VideoLAN launched a Kickstarter campaign in the beginning of 2013 to help get VLC on the Windows Store. They raised over $80,000 for development and took the next year to focus on getting a Metro version ready for users who eagerly wanted it. You can read more about the process here.
VLC for Windows 8
You’ll find VLC available in the Windows Store now.
Just search for “VLC” and you’ll land on its app page.
VLC for Windows 8 is available for 8 and 8.1. VideoLAN has said they plan to support ARM later in the year.
Two of the biggest changes to VLC for Windows 8 includes MKV support – making it the first multimedia player on the Windows Store to offer it natively – and H.264 codec support. This is in conjunction with everything else VLC has offered users for years.
At the moment, it’s still in its beta stages, despite being available for release. The app is relatively stable but runs into some issues, most notably freezing momentarily during playback. If this happens to you, you’ll need to shut down the app and restart it, restarting your multimedia, too.
Once launched, just like the desktop version, you’re able to manage your music and video files through VLC.
Full-screen mode allows you to watch movies, TV shows, and other videos as you see fit.
When you hover along the bottom, you bring up the controls in the desktop version. In the RT version, you can use the touchscreen functions to more easily control what you’re watching.
Music management and playback work the same as the video.
At the moment, we’ve found that using VLC on a desktop PC seems to be buggier than using it on a RT device. As VideoLAN addresses more bugs, as we said it is still in the beta stages, we expect the PC version through the Windows Store will work better than it does now.
Conclusion
Truth be told, if you’re using an RT-based tablet that supports Metro VLC, this is a great option for multimedia playback. If you were hoping this would bring functionality to move away from the desktop version of VLC, you’ll be disappointed.
Sticking with the desktop version if you’re using a desktop PC is the only way you’ll get full functionality out of the VLC app for Windows 8 and 8.1; at least for now.
