VideoLAN Celebrates Over 1,000,000,000 Downloads of VLC

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

VideoLAN, the non-profit behind VLC media player has announced that the application has surpassed one billion downloads. What first started as a project for students at the École Centrale Paris in the late 90's has now been downloaded over a billion times. VideoLAN, now responsible for coordinating the development of VLC, announced the news via its website today.

"VideoLAN would like to thank VLC users 1 billion times, since VLC has now been downloaded more than 1 billion times from our servers, since 2005!" the announcement read.

However, when providing data for the milestone, VideoLAN admits that the numbers are likely to be inaccurate. For one thing, the foundation doesn't include Linux download statistics as most downloads for this OS are made through distributions. For another, the stats were only started in February of 2005, and VLC's history stretches back to quite a bit before that. Judging the numbers, almost 90 percent of the downloads were for Windows machines. VideoLAN says that of the one billion downloads, 895 744 483 were for Windows.

VLC version 1.0.0 was finally released in July 2009 after more than a decade of development. Version 2.0.0 was released earlier this year, on February 18, 2012.

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Jane McEntegart
31 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jurassic512
    Yet you still can't set it to shutdown your PC after a video is finished. And you still can't get it to loop videos.

    IQ controls are top notch though, which is why I left MPC-HC (again), to go back to VLC.
    Reply
  • ben850
    For good reason.
    Reply
  • sixdegree
    This is should be a heads up for Microsoft. A free program that works better than your media player. Better do something fast about it or ends up like IE to Mozilla/Chrome.
    Reply
  • annymmo
    sixdegreeThis is should be a heads up for Microsoft. A free program that works better than your media player. Better do something fast about it or ends up like IE to Mozilla/Chrome.
    Don't change this situation, because if it will become like that it will be very good.
    Reply
  • panders4
    I'll admit I have probably downloaded this 100 times on various windows machines since 2005.
    Reply
  • Zingam_Duo
    That one has shitty sound! A few bugs... Cannot play some quicktime movies properly. It is the best in its category but far from perfect.
    Reply
  • anti-painkilla
    panders4I'll admit I have probably downloaded this 100 times on various windows machines since 2005.
    Agreed, because it is easier to re-download than find the installer on another comp. I love VLC but still use wmp, because it is a resource hog and plays vids properly while folding.
    Reply
  • Ameloma
    jurassic512Yet you still can't set it to shutdown your PC after a video is finished. And you still can't get it to loop videos.IQ controls are top notch though, which is why I left MPC-HC (again), to go back to VLC.
    Just wondering, why would you want it to shut down your pc?

    Also, it can loop videos.
    Reply
  • jryan388
    Take that, WINDOWS 8!!
    Reply
  • mpioca
    Had been using it for like 5 years. I made the switch to MPC-HC lately. VLC didn't always quit properly and I had the VLC icon on the tray even after i shut the program down. Had a tad bit of problem with subtitles too. But apart from these little annoyances it's a really great media player IMO. Will see if I like MPC-HC better in the long run. :)
    Reply