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Comment by jbk | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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?

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.

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