VLC media player to go universal, coming soon to iPhone and iPod touch

About a month ago Applidium released VLC player for iPad and now they have recently announced that VLC will soon be available for iPhone and iPod touch. This would come as a universal update to the current iPad application hence making it compatible with all iPhone and iPod Touch as well.

applidium_vlc_iphone

Currently Apple is reviewing the update and we  hope that it will be available soon in the App Store. This update will have several new features such as smooth playback by enabling low-level assembly optimizations that will allow VLC to use the ARMv7 core of the A4 CPU as efficiently as possible. It will have support for more video extensions as well and it would now be possible to open attachments from Mail, Safari or other applications directly in VLC. Still, 720p will not play smoothly since direct access to the hardware video decoder isn’t allowed yet.

These new cool features will be for the current generation of iPhone and iPod Touch and will also work with iPhone 3GS but users with older devices will not get this new VLC player update.

Here are some more facts about the coming update of VLC player by Applidium:

  • Playback should be smoother than the previous version. Indeed, we’ve enabled low-level assembly optimizations to use the ARMv7 core of the Apple A4 processor as efficiently as possible.
  • It’s still not possible to use the hardware video decoder, so unfortunately in most cases 720p video still won’t play smoothly.
  • Unfortunately, we couldn’t support older iPhones and iPods. You’ll need either an iPhone 3GS or an iPhone 4 (or a same-generation iPod). The reason is actually pretty simple : based on our tests, the older iPhones (3G and Edge) don’t have enough power to properly decode most movies.
  • We’re supporting a lot more video extensions. Also, as many of you requested, it’s also now possible to open attachments from Mail or Safari (or any other applications actually) in VLC!

Stay tuned to iTD for the latest on VLC Player for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Subscribe to our site or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to stay up to date with iOS news.

About the Author

I am a student of computer science. My interests are software development and blogging. Been blogging since a year now. I mostly cover Apple news.

Leave a comment