One gripe today common for most of the Windows Phone users is the lack of support for video codecs. Currently Windows Phone provides only a limited support, restricting users to uses only MP4, 3GP, MOV, AVI and WMV format, leaving out currently popular MKV and FLV video format.
Sadly on top there is not even a single good 3rd party video player that can provide support for these file formats on the Windows Phone Store. For many it even turned out to be a deal breaker because many of they wanted to just copy paste their files in the memory card(since WP supports mass storage mode as opposed to iOS) and watch the videos on their phones, they didn’t wanted the hassle of converting the videos to compatible codec first and then transfer.
VLC for Windows Phone
So many turned their attention to one of the most popular video players on the Windows Desktop Platform, VLC player. As a result the guys at VLC started a kick starter campaign and turned toward crowd funding to support their work for VLC on Windows Phone and WindowsRT. VLC was successfully able to raise the expected amount within their timeframe and thus the project was well kick started. The project which started on Nov 29, 2012 reached their target of 40k pounds on Dec 27, 2012.
After that there have been constant updates from the VLC on what they have been working on and they also released some screenshot of their “Metro/Modern” styled app for Win8 and WinRT a while back showing us a glimpse of what to expect, but there was still no news on the Windows Phone version.
So one guy(@MSFTnadThings) took it to twitter and ask the guys on the progress. VLC guys replied that VLC for Windows Phone will soon follow as it shares the core with WinRT of which they are already sending out betas for testing to those who backed up the kick starter. This news will certainly provide some relief to Windows Phone users as it will be bringing the ability to view all kinds of video formats, and finally their video conversion days will be over. It will also act as a boost for all those video junkies who rejected windows phone based on the lack of video codecs support. Now only the question remains is when we will be seeing it.
For more information on VLC’s progress, please visit the VLC’ kickstarter page by clicking here.