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Comment by amir734jj | Hacker News Reader

How was VideoLAN started? I remember "Media Player Classic" and "K-Lite Codec Pack" were popular back then and when I installed VideoLAN and it blew my mind. Extremely fast, no buffering and very lightweight. I am 26 but I have been using VideoLAN as long as I can remember. The best media player.

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My memory is that early VLC was actually a bit slower than MPC, at least on my low-powered Windows 98 PC of the time (cobbled together for schoolwork from spare parts). There would be skipping or a loss of sync between audio and video on some heavier clips that didn't happen on MPC.

But what I primarily remember in making the switch was that VLC could play everything I threw at it, right out of the box, without installing a bunch of sketchy codec packs. And that also allowed me to basically just throw the VLC binary onto my flash-drive, and then be able to open any videos as needed from parents'/friends'/school computer by just plugging in the usb stick. It was definitely a game-changer.

The last bit 100 times over. The pain of trying to play AIV and DIVX files 15 years ago was generally miserable. To me VLC saved me from codec hell on, iirc Windows ME, and I've never looked back. Downloading and installing codec packs back then felt like it was a dice roll to getting a virus. It was also the only player I've used that could easily play FLV videos back then. Honestly, VLC is the only software I shove on friends computers if we're trying to play video.

I remember MPC did hardware acceleration better than VLC, which is why I used it. I had some old Athlon 64 CPU around 2010 (IIRC) that couldn't handle some videos without acceleration from the GPU.

Yeah. It was a game changer with respect to being very obviously lightweight + purely functional, and it was very cool to me that it was available on linux and windows. It may have been the first cross-platform app I ever used.

I forgot about those K-Lite Codec packs and all that - even back then that stuff had bloatware with it, which was why vlc was so refreshing.

The video at the end of the press release explains the story.

But in tl;dr: form:

Ecole Centrale Paris campus network was managed by students. In 1995, they wanted a faster network, to play video games, and upgrade from their Token Ring network.

The Univ did not want to pay so they went to see partners, and one said "put the satellite feed on your network to justify the need for a better network. We'll pay for it, instead of having 2000 dishes and decoders.". This PoC "Network 2000" was a success. Some students restarted the project in 1998 and called it VideoLAN.

In 2001, VideoLAN and all the software projects (Server, Client, network, libraries) became GPL. VideoLan Client became VLC. Community added Windows, macOS support.

In 2008, I created the VideoLAN non-profit to escape the university and make VLC grow.

was "network 2000" multicast? how similar/different was it to xing streamworks (commercial multicast mpeg suite from that time)?

It was an ATM backbone, but the routers did not support mcast. So they cheated to do multicast on a non-multicast network.

Thank you guys for the great work! VLC is just great.

2008 makes sense, about the time where k-lite codec pack and media player classic started to be eclipsed! Wow. Thank you for the best video player out there, for all those exciting, strange and exciting codecs!

Ah I have fun memories of configuring Token Ring networks and playing with Novell NetWare to get my lab to connect properly. I can see why you'd want to upgrade from that though, 4Mbps was pretty pokey, even back then.

Thank you so much for keeping VideoLAN not greedy!

Can you share any stories about offers to monetize thoroughly?

Heh, I remember VideoLan from early 2k research university days and using it to play multicast video streams out of places like JPL and other uni test things. The LOL let's do something to justify better network rings so, so true.

...so that's why it's called VideoLAN/VLC. I've always thought it was an odd name for a media player.

To clarify, the partner you went to was referring to paying for the costs to get the satellite feed onto the LAN, as opposed to footing the bill for upgrading the network?

Assuming the former, that is a very nice intersection of deploying the technically most ideal solution, and business management.

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