VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, Ogg, OGM, MOV, wma, wmv...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Features in VLC (VideoLAN Client) 1.0.5 :

- Rewrite of the playlist (tree structure, input preparsing ...)
- Preferences improvements
- XML parsers
- Client-side SSL/TLS support
- Massive Matroska improvements
- Support for SOCKS proxy
- Support for Shoutcast Meta-data
- Support for (HE-)AAC raw-audio streams
- TiVo demuxer
- Samba (Windows shares) access module
- Dirac decoder and encoder
- PNG decoder/encoder
- Support for Apple Lossless Audio Codec
- Services discovery modules (brand new SAP module, HAL discovery, DAAP (iTunes shares), shoutcast)
- Support for 20/24 bits LPCM
- Video snapshot support (png or jpg)
- Image file video output (png)
- Mosaic (picture-in-picture system)
- Pocket PC port
- Brand new Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin
...

Changes from VLC (VideoLAN Client) 1.0.4 to VLC 1.0.5 :

• Decoders:
- SubRip extra styles improvements
- Fix potential crashes in SSA and svg decoders
• Windows port:
- Use of gcc 4.4.2 to compile instead of gcc 4.2. This might slightly increase performance and fix x264 issues
• Translations:
- Portuguese Brazilian, Lithunanian, Romanian, Ukranian, Japanese, Bengali, Walloon, Galician, Danish, Khmer, Polish, Slovenian, Vietnamese, Finnish, Russian, Slovak translation updates
- New Malayalam, Macedoninan, Nynorsk translations