VLC Submits iPad App to App Store | Hacker News Reader

VLC Submits iPad App to App Store

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38 pointsGarbage43 comments

Surely they are not really expecting approval?

I can't imagine that Apple would let anything through that weakens the iTunes/iOS death grip on media playing. Especially something as robust as VLC.

It seems to me that software that allows the iPad to stream movies from any brand media server is a game changer.

3rd Party AppStore developer here.

There isn't a ban on "media playing".

However, there is a ban on GPL licensed apps, as they GPL is incompatible with the app store terms of use.

I suppose, but with GPLv2 there's nothing more than a technicality in the way, is there? As far as I understand it, the app store agreement prevents you from taking that particular copy of the app and doing free things with it, but nothing truly restrictive. You can still get a copy of the source from the app-maker, and exercise all your normal free software rights.

Then again, saying that makes me feel like I'm missing something. Am I?

Apple would be in violation of the GPL for distributing the app with those restrictions tacked on. If I were them I wouldn't distribute GPL apps either.

They would basically have to special case apps licensed w/ the GPL. Sadly I doubt it's worth the legal and/or operations costs involved.

I'm not a license snob, whatever works for a project is great (GPL has been great for Linux). However this is a prime example of why MIT and BSD licenses are more free than the GPL.

Doom for the iPhone is available on the App Store and it's been GPL'ed for a long time.

http://www.idsoftware.com/doom-classic/

There are probably more examples. The GPL is not incompatible with the App Store.

Actually, the GPL is not exercised in that example. As the author of Doom, id Software can do whatever they want with it; they are not going to sue themselves for violating the GPL.

The GPL's terms only become relevant when a third party wants to use it to distribute the work. And it seems the GPL (v3, at least) would not allow a third party to publish Doom on the App Store.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/762498/iphone-and-gpl

It seems that you're right. I did some further digging, and it seems that at least in the case of GNU Go, the FSF held the following opinion:

"the particular license violation that FSF brought up with Apple was section 6 of the GPLv2, which states that a redistributor of the licensed program may not impose further restrictions on the recipients to copy, distribute, or modify the program. Apple's App Store terms of service do impose several restrictions, such as limiting usage of the program to five devices approved by Apple."

http://lwn.net/Articles/391423/

Looks like I was wrong!

>I can't imagine that Apple would let anything through that weakens the iTunes/iOS death grip on media playing.

The iPad does video so well because it uses hardware support. From the "hardware limitation" comment, I suspect VLC isn't able to take advantage of this. Given that, I don't think it could weaken the iTunes/iOS "death grip" even if it were accepted.

But if they aren't using hardware acceleration then I suspect it wont get approved. Would you want a player that everyone is going to be downloading (so they can watch any video) out there making people think your device is slow and underpowered? I wouldn't.

EDIT: Nevermind my last paragraph. There is apparently already players in the store that don't use acceleration.

I know someone who tested OPlayer HD[1] and he said that the player does not use the H.264 acceleration, some videos were absurdly slow, yet the player is in the App Store.

[1]: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oplayer-hd/id373236724?mt=8

Disclaimer: VideoLAN chairman and VLC dev here...

VLC on the iPad doesn't have any GPU/DSP because there are no APIs to to so... So, forget playback of 720MKV for now. But to decode DivX, Xvid, or DVD rips, the CPU is more than enough...

More than enough with what battery life?

With DivX decoding, I believe 7hours+

7 hours? The battery life is about 8 hours for normal usage. Since decoding Theora takes about as much CPU as decoding DivX all the statements about Theora halving battery life are probably bull.

Most reviewers reported seeing 10 to 11 hours of continuous h.264 video playing. I haven't empirically tested this, but I have definitely watched at least four or five movies without charging the iPad. 7 hours is a significant hit, although still plenty enough for a few movies, so it's probably a wash in practice.

Let me just say I have been longing for this, ever since iPhone 1.0. I have a lot of video and I don't want to convert to MP4 and wind up with two of everything. I know CineXPlayer is there, so I'm hoping VLC will be too. Will there be an iPhone/iPod Touch A4 version coming? And, OT, a webOS 2.0 version -- is that possible?

iPhone will come very quickly after the iPad. WebOS should come easily, if I have a device...

I didn't blame you guys for not doing hardware, I knew you would if you could. I was simply pointing out that most people don't know anything but "this runs slower in VLC than iTunes".

Anyway, thanks for a great product! I haven't really used any video player but yours since I first found out about it.

Now that VLC for iPad is out, I've installed it and tried playing WMV files but they don't appear on the shelf. Is it forthcoming?

    the iTunes/iOS death grip on media playing

Which death grip is that? I have one app that synchronizes .avi videos through iTunes and another that plays media streamed over the network on my iPad right now.

What are the apps?

ZumoCast and AirVideo - both stream audio/video and play it over the network

plex too

They approved Cinexplayer and AirVideo.

Cinexplayer being notable for just being a straight XVid video player.

> It seems to me that software that allows the iPad to stream movies from any brand media server is a game changer.

Apple approved Plex, for both iPhone and iPad. Check out what Plex Nine does.

Hooray! I hope VLC gets approved. I'm really missing being able to overclock lectures on the iPad.

Damn, I've been working on a web-based version on and off for a while now. I guess I won't find the time to finish it, especially if this gets approved.

Where would you play videos from? Dropbox or something?

VLC can do client-server streaming from another copy of VLC. So your desktop machine can stream your dvd/avi/mp3 collection to the iPad

Kind of funny that this had to be asked, considering that VLC's original purpose was streaming videos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player#History

and you can do this already, too, right? stream to the ipad by just opening a transcoded stream?

E.g., Plex, which does it on the fly and is in the app store.

I think plex only lets you share your iTunes with other iStuff and only if the iDRM approves.

VLC lets you share iWhateverTheHellYouWant from iWhateverMachine with iWhateverOS to iWhereverYouWant.

You can copy data over using iTunes, works fine for other apps (e.g. cinexplayer)

Disclaimer: VideoLAN chairman and VLC dev here...

Exactly. + http, mms, rtsp and other protocols.

Whaaa? VLC developers spent time making an iOS app when a much more open and free platform was available? Interesting. I hope Android sees the same love!

Oh come on, it wasn't even a dig on iOS, give me a break with the downmods, jeez. I was just surprised at their choice considering all thats happened with them in the past with AOL and what not. I was just genuinely surprised to see an OSS project with a history of being burned by corporations choose an iOS device as their first mobile target. But hey, I mentioned Android. Flame away HN, flame away.

Using your logic VLC shouldn't release a Windows version since Linux is more open than Windows. I'm sorry, the world just doesn't work like that.

Besides, even with Android NDK it's probably easier to port VLC to iOS than to Android?

VideoLAN chairman and VLC developer here.

This is exactly the point. Porting VLC from MacOS X to iOS is more or less just a rewrite of the audio and video outputs (sinks). Plus an interface, of course...

Porting to Android is taking longer and is, of course, on the way...

Cool. Thanks for the reply. Any details on why the Android port is taking longer or why it's so much easier to port to iOS? Maybe a VLC blog post or something?

iOS is very similar to Mac OS X, where VLC runs already...

Android is very different from usual Linux, using a different libc and libraries than normal GNU/Linux and requires Java bindings to run...

I'm impressed that Apple has maintained such consistency across the desktop/mobile operating systems. That is an interesting advantage of iOS that I pretty rarely see mentioned. Thanks for your thoughts.

Not at all. Windows isn't a walled garden, Windows doesn't have a history of killing off applications that Microsoft doesn't like or sees as competition, etc.

I didn't say they shouldn't have an iOS release. This in-between-the-lines reading and putting words in my mouth and downmodding me for it is disappointing.

Netscape much?

Although I mostly agree.

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