Considering VLC has worked wonderfully for many years, I am not sure how an arbitrary version bump is particularly meaningful.

I don't care that much too, but I would say: it's good to see some software which doesn't suffer from the eternal beta syndrom (like Gmail).

What actual difference does this make? Is VLC 1.0.0 any more stable or secure than the non-1.0 versions? Would Gmail be any different if it didn't say "beta"?

(As an aside, VLC still crashes on malformed data because the video codecs are written in careless C code. Changing the version number isn't going to fix that bug. )

For VLC: apparently this version 1.0 is effectively not a special release, a "major version, with long time support". 1.0 just comes after 0.99. However, quoting one of the developer blog: "After the longest feature freeze stabilization period in the project's history, VLC 1.0.0-final is coming at last..." (http://www.remlab.net/).

In general case: for me "version 1.0 not beta" means "we give you the insurance that this software is very stable and reliable. We consider all bugs as important issues. We respect you."

In the case of GMail, I'd like Google to give me this insurance and stop the "no warranty at all, f* you if there is a problem" era. I think they have the power to do it. Would it be really different? No, but I would be able to sleep at night knowing Google takes really care of my email.

Time, cost, quality, right? Even google can't do miracles.

yeah, you get what you pay for. VLC has worked for me when Quicktime would not (to play a movie from a DVD, for example)

"1.0 is stable and reliable"?

True of very few, IME.

I agree with this. By declaring this branch stable, who knows what new features will be brought in...can't wait to see the 1.x/2.x roadmap.

Uh, did you click the link? The changelog from 0.9.9 is right there on the page.

> the eternal beta syndrom (like Gmail).

Of all days to make that claim... :)

Bet you feel dumb this morning. ;-)

Publicity! I believe the current VLC 1.0.0 release thread at reddit is the highest-voted VLC post ever. We're all suckers for nice round numbers.

New HD codecs work well. It can finally handle my Blu-ray rip of Blade Runner without being choppy.

Thank the folks over at ffmpeg for that; they write the (en|de)coders.

Does it support AVCHD files (.mt2s extension)? I have a Panasonic HD camcorder which records in that format and software support still seems very limited. http://www.avchd-info.org/

The official website, announcing the news: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This version doesn't support Mac OS X Tiger anymore. From the changelog:

  Support for Mac OS X 10.4.x was dropped due to its technical limitations.

While nothing beats mplayer-nogui, it's nice to have an alternative running on Windows.

You can run VLC without a GUI too: vlc -I dummy

There's also a skins, ncurses and http interface.

If they all have the same backend, why is it that nothing beats mplayer-nogui? Is it so that you can watch video in a screen session? </humor>

Now seriously, what is the application? Isn't that a defect in the GUI?

Well, MPlayer and VideoLAN share most of the libraries so it's basically the same back-end. I like them both and I'm glad they share resources (speeding up the development process). Basically the best video players out there.

This news and Google Apps coming out of beta in the same day?

I can't take all this sudden and drastic change!

They're missing checksums for the download files. Here are md5sums:

  ca4041c2d80391b9963e7599b75b8c1d *vlc-1.0.0-win32.exe
  58d0e276690442fa887e9a07767ddd6c *vlc-1.0.0.dmg

After experiencing frequent crashes with VLC (every 2 out of 3 launches, on different pc's), I eagerly upgraded to 1.0 to find that... it still crashes 2 out of 3 times. I must be doing it wrong.

dusty?