That smells like proprietary software and drm
I swore this was already a feature. I remember years ago (15+) I was able to play YouTube videos on it.
The new feature is for FAST, which is a type of IPTV stream. Imagine something akin to a TV channel guide, like Samsung’s and Roku’s built in streams.
And the “ad supported” bit is misleading; The channels are supported by ads, and run them as part of their programming. It’s not VLC showing ads before you’re allowed to stream the video, like YouTube. Just like regular TV channels, where they have commercial breaks.
Slightly wondering whether this is a roundabout way of creating Ad-Free YouTube playback capabilities. “Hey community, we are adding support for ad enabled streams. Would be a shame if you hated that so much you wrote some ad blocking plugins.”
You can already watch youtube ad-free with VLC…
That’s pretty cool, I didn’t know!
Very generous of you to assume that adding native support for advertising is a move to protect users from advertising…
Now you put it that way… 😃
Ad-Free YouTube playback capabilities.
The last time I tried, VLC could already do that.
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That’s great, I had no idea!
Oh god, no…
Not a fan of that tbh
Dude, they are not starting their own ad supported streaming service. They are merely adding dupport for one more streaming protocol that happens to be used for that. If these services were using RTSP for their streams, they’d already be supported. This is absolutely in line with VLC’s swiss army knife-approach.
Otherwise, new GUI sounds good to me. The old one is proven but a bit clunky.
I think there should be local-only players. VLC was one forever. There are tons of streaming service clients out there and I personally don’t want VLC to add this feature. But it is just my personal opinion. I never said it’s bad
But it has had networking capabilities for like… ever? RTSP, HTTP, …
Idk about that. I don’t even care much cuz I don’t use VLC at all. Lol I just wanted to send a regular short controversial unpopular opinion comment. I hope it’s not considered wrong here
It also supports some funky stuff like raw H.264 over UDP if you use ffmpeg to prepend special packets to the start of the video stream (Ideal for a DIY low latency video streaming solution ). If you decrypt digital OTA tv signals (DVB format), VLC will play the live underlying raw mpeg stream just fine.
Truly a swiss army knife of video playback, especially the underutilized network url file open option
Yes, “VideoLAN Client” doesn’t sound like anything which might have network support.
VLC stands for VideoLAN Client, and was originally designed as a player for network streams provided by the VideoLAN server. It also supports local media playback, which has become its most common use. It adding additional streaming functionality is just reinforcing its original purpose.
I don’t have anything against that. The dev has the right and adding that feature can make the client more popular
One doesn’t have to use the feature and it’s not like it’s going to be felt, nor noticeably use any resources when not in use.
Ain’t nobody want thisHowever, he also clarified that plans for this were not finalized yet, and if it were to happen, it would be optional for VLC users.
Happy to see some sanity prevails.
Having read the article, it sounds like the logical evolution of VLC. FAST Channels are here to stay and they actually are a vital thing in a world where Google have a monopoly on online video. While they’re not what I would go for, I’m glad they’re available as even my cable provider offers FAST channels.
Will be interesting to see VLC compete with JWPlayer and the various forks of it.
Also I don’t think anyone disagrees that the core needs rewriting and the UI needs a refresh. Wonder when Android will start seeing these builds on the beta channel.
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Maybe read more than the headline.
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Damn this dude loves to delete themselves I guess
For the sake of lemmy civility and prosperity I just didn’t want to start an argument.
Let’s just say I did read the whole article before posting and shouldn’t be assumed otherwise unless there was something incorrect being said, which was imposible due the nature of the comment itself.
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Please actually read the post.
plans to support ad-supported online media streams
Why are they saying it like it’s something good and exciting?
rewriting the whole core of VLC for the 4.0 release which will see a new interface
Where have we see it before? It’s basically the classic scenario where popular software/service makes a complete chnage of design nobody asked for and it fails miserably. I recommend everyone to make a backup of the installer of the last version before this release…
They dont display ads, the channels send video streams that have embedded ads for money purpose things (whoever buys shit because of ads)
Why would that need special support? If the ads are embedded, that should work out of the box.
They support adding online streams which is currently not there or hard to find
Isn’t this an optional feature? Wouldn’t you have to log in to that service?
I mean, the guy who made vlc hasn’t charged for like 15 years now.
For most people the only time they open VLC is to view a file locally. I’m surprised they’re not also trying to become more like plex/jellyfin then pivot to ad supported streaming
I’m surprised they’re not also trying to become more like plex/jellyfin then pivot to ad supported streaming
Well, not people are driven by money, but I do agree that several costs need to be addressed, and sadly ads are one of the means to achieve this (and more depending on your greed).
I really don’t see the what the fuss is in this thread. The source does make it seem a bit nefarious, but even so, it appears the changes in VLC amount to adding support for a streaming format and adding a channel listing of some sort.
FAST is simply a streaming format. Whether to run ads is an individual decision of each channel.
If I can have a streaming client that can play certain streams versus one that can’t, I’ll obviously pick the former. (Unless they employ a DRM scheme which does weird things to my devices but it doesn’t appear that’s part of the discussion here.)
Yeah, I think evil bastard streaming services choosing open source (VLC) is rather a win for the society.
Yep, here’s the section
When he was talking about that, he also shared that they plan to add support for FAST channels and other kinds of ad-supported online media streams that would allow users to watch ad-supported movies, TV shows, and more.
However, he also clarified that plans for this were not finalized yet, and if it were to happen, it would be optional for VLC users.
.
It does when you consider that there are over 1,500 FAST channels in the US alone, plus countless others around the globe, with the number still growing.
They already support other forms of streams, why not this. It would be weirder if they chose to not support it
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Some of the new stuff looks cool, and for all of these knee-jerk reactionaries… optional.
Surprisingly, the popularity of this media player doesn’t seem to be going down in this age of online streaming, as the project reported a whopping 5 billion downloads of VLC across various platforms since 2005.
How the fuck is number of downloads since TWO THOUSAND AND FIVE in any way indicative of popularity not declining?
it would be optional for VLC users.
“Optional” like all the “optional” features crammed down your throat on Plex?
I’m very interested in the financials involved in this new change, and if someone is going to be filling their pockets in this transition.
Not assuming anything, just asking questions.
almost 1 download for every human on earth
“BUT IT’S NOT POPULAR! ALL THE DOWNLOADS ARE FROM JANUARY 1ST 2005 AND NOBODY EVER DOWNLOADED IT EVER AGAIN! IT’S ALL A CONSPIRACY BY BIG TRAFFIC CONE! I DON’T WANT FACTS LALALALALA” --this guy
Big Traffic Cone is coming for you. It cautions us all. That’s why it’s orange with reflective stripes. You should have heeded it’s warning. Be afraid, very afraid.
Big Traffic Cone is coming for you
damn me if this is not the best Brand New Sentence I have seen in a long time. congrats!
If all those downloads were from 2005 to 2015, and there’s only been a few hundred in the last nine years, that would mean the popularity has declined.
But we don’t know that. We don’t know if the downloads have increased, decreased, or stayed the same based on the proffered numbers. We only know a flat number from the last twenty years.
Thats the point theyre making, not that its unequivocally unpopular now.
Also you’re about three billion shy of one download for everyone on earth.
(to the entire public) STOP HAVING FUCKING BABIES
When I was in my prime it was 6 billion, and we liked it. Now get off my lawn!
The original article (https://www.lowpass.cc/p/vlc-five-billion-downloads-vision-pro-app) states
The app surpassed three billion downloads in early 2019
so there has been at least 2 billion downloads in the last 5 years. Also,
The latest version of VLC, which was released in November, has already been downloaded more than 335 million times by desktop users alone.
LOL what are you even talking about? You ever heard the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics”? If not, you should look it up.
How would they earn money on this? It’s still a FOSS project. They are simply revamping their GUI and adding support for one more protocol.
Plex is NOT FOSS! Plex is a private company’s cash cow.
Your mistake is assuming for some reason that FOSS projects can’t make money when they absolutely can and have.
Stick a fork in it, it’s done.
Why lmao?
Sorry, that was supposed to be a pun on “fork”, in release-management sense of the word.
The question was “why,” you may as well be protesting the addition of a new codec
I just saw the screenshot of the early design of the new UI, looks like crap.
I even disliked the change from wXwidgets to Qt way back in the day, I have come around and like the Qt interface now, I don’t expect that to happen with the new UI
10 years later
“vlc is updating their UI again! I liked the one we have now, this just looks stupid. I don’t think I’ll like the changes.”
That’s fair, though the change from wXwidgets to Qt was fairly minor compared to this
It seems to have the “Classic” option as well, so it’s fine.
Yeah, it looks like they are trying to port the mobile UI to their main program, going backwards in terms of usabillity on mainstream computers
