Ah yes, the VLC Media Player, if you’ve ever had to play a file you “found” on the internet that didn’t work in QuickTime – really, why would it? – or Windows Media Player then you’ll have no doubt stumbled across this great gem of a media player. It truly is the king of media players and it’s cross-platform to boot, Mac, Linux and Windows, whatever you run, it’ll run. Now, the time has come for VLC to come to Android in at least some small official way.
For quite some time, you’ve been able to get VLC from XDA as an installable app however, now, there’s an official beta of the application to be found in the humble Google Play Store. I installed the app on both my Nexus S and my HP Touchpad of which both worked flawlessly and it was a lot smoother than MX Player is on the Touchpad. It’s got a good interface, scans your device for media at first launch and played a number of tricky files I threw at it, such as MKVs and compressed MP4s of course, Android can play a lot stuff itself however, it’s never really had a dedicated video player and in fact, the Gallery app has to do double duty on that front. Have no fear though, the VLC Beta is here and it seems pretty solid to me but, as always, your mileage will vary. Have at it now in the Play Store here.