Hands-on: VLC, the prodigal media player, returns to iOS
Playing video on iOS is kind of like Henry Ford’s Model T: You can use any file you want, as long as it’s an MP4. But with the return of a once-missing app, your options for video formats may soon increase.
VLC is a popular media-playback app on the desktop—an open-source project, it runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And, once upon a time, it was even available on the iOS App Store. Just a few months later, however, it was forced out, thanks to a licensing dispute.
That issue has now apparently been resolved, and VLC is back in the App Store as version 2.0. The goal of the free app remains the same: Play any video files you throw at it. While the app itself could reasonably substitute for iOS’s built-in Videos app, it offers a number of additional features beyond just greater codec compatibility.
For starters, in addition to being able to transfer files to VLC over iTunes File Sharing, VLC can also download a file from a URL, view a network video stream, or access files from your Dropbox, if you give it permission. There’s also a built-in Web server that lets you upload files directly to VLC, à la Good Reader, but I couldn’t get it to work in my quick tests.
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