VLC media player 1.0.0 final is now available for download. Built by the VideoLAN project, the media player comes with support for a variety of operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. In this regard, even before version 1.0.0 was finalized, VLC was playing nice with the next iteration of the Windows client, Windows 7, in addition to releases such as Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows XP SP3. Version 1.0.0 continues in the same tradition as past releases from VideoLAN, meaning that the media player is free and open source. In this regard, while end users can access, download and install the VLC 1.0.0 bits, developers can also grab the source code and modify it according to their preferences.

“The VideoLAN project is pleased to announce the release of the first version of the Goldeneye branch of VLC: 1.0.0. This major release introduces many new features, new formats and new codecs to the VLC multimedia framework and fixes a very high number of bugs that were present in the 0.9.x or 0.8.6 versions. The VLC project only lives with volunteers and would love help from new users and contributors: time, code, hardware and money would help us a lot,” VideoLAN revealed.

With version 1.0.0, VideoLAN manages to bring to the table support for a range of new High Definition codecs. In this regard, users will be able to turn to VLC in order to play content in AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0. Still, the range of video formats supported by VLC is extensive and goes beyond the new HD codecs. The player comes with support for MPEG-1/2, DIVX (1/2/3), MPEG-4 ASP, DivX 4/5/6, XviD, 3ivX D4, H.261, H.263 / H.263i, H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, WMV 3 / WMV-9 / VC-1 etc.

According to VideoLAN, “VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) 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. It doesn't need any external codec or program to work.”

VLC 1.0.0 Final is available for download here.