VLC reaches 3 billion downloads and gets AirPlay support

VideoLAN broke the three billion download barrier for its VLC video player at CES. The first release took place seventeen years ago. VLC will also soon receive support for Apple’s AirPlay.

The VideoLAN team is present at CES in Las Vegas with its own booth where a counter displays the number of downloads for VLC in real time. In the night from Thursday to Friday, the number of three billion was reached.

VLC has its origins at the École Centrale in Paris, where it started in the mid-1990s as a client and server project for streaming video via satellite dishes. The name VLC therefore stands for VideoLAN Client. The first version of the software as a media player appeared in February 2001. The development is done by the non-profit organization VideoLAN, which releases the software under an open source license.

Speaking to Variety, VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf announced that AirPlay support will be added to the media player in about a month. The support for this protocol from Apple makes it possible to cast via VLC on, for example, Android or Windows devices to iOS devices and the Apple TV. During CES, several TV manufacturers announced that they would support AirPlay, including Samsung.

source: Twitter