When it comes to video playback, my laptop takes a lot more of the beating nowadays than the DVD player. Long waits at the airport and land travels that take hours find me watching movies on disc or downloaded. Add to that home videos sent by email, various versions of different film projects, as well as the occasional must-see video on YouTube.



Many users, myself included, have come to appreciate the obvious features of the VLC Media Player Download. It plays a multitude of formats, allowing you to access videos from various sources while sticking to just one player, one interface.

You can Download VLC Player from www.DownloadVLCPlayer.com

The post-production people I work with tend to send over rough drafts of projects in different formats, depending on which video editing software they use. I don't think I'd have the patience for them if I would be required to surf, download, install and (Heaven forbid) pay for a player just to view a four-minute long file.

The VLC Media Player Download further supports most operating systems. I use a Mac and the features available on my version does not vary significantly from those on Windows, BeOS, Linux, Syllable, and other operating systems. At the very least, you are not missing out on the playback of the most popular file formats.

Risking a cliché, the VLC Media Player Download is the little DVD player that could. Foremost because it knows no region. Personally, I don't understand the unnecessary fuss about region coding. It only stands to inconvenience highly mobile movie addicts who get to buy videos from anywhere in the globe and on any region.

Good thing that the player feels the same way. It simply ignores the region from whence your DVD came and dishes it out with the same ease and quality.

The choppy playback viewers have to deal with because of CPU loading is still a possibility. While the VLC Media Player Download does not support hardware acceleration, later versions are proving to lessen the pain. Despite being a software-only player, expect neat playback 99 percent of the time.

A recent plus point for the VLC Media Player Download is the DTS sound support. I've done a few tests (another excuse to watch a movie) and so far, it gets two thumbs up from me. This is just using the laptop's internal speakers and, sometimes, a set of headphones. Audio quality is clean and well-balanced.

But the next question is: what's it going to take? Something has to give, right? Another plus point for the VLC Media Player Download's DTS support feature is the workout it gives the CPU, which is pretty much the same with other media players. I did not notice any unusual huffing and puffing from the unit while playback. Likewise, the video quality did not suffer.

It being a new feature, expect more improvements on the VLC Media Player Download in the near future. The open source vibe on which the player was built upon makes the thought of a better movie experience on your computer exciting.

Latest version of VLC Player can be downloaded from www.DownloadVLCPlayer.com