VLC Kickstarter campaign for Windows 8 port

By Martin Brinkmann on November 29, 2012 - Tags:media-player, multimedia

The popular media player VLC is currently only available for the desktop part of the Windows 8 operating system, and here only on systems running Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise, but not Windows RT, which Surface tablets run on for instance.

A demo of the player has been released as a video in the beginning of November, but it was not really clear back then if, how and when the player would make its debut as a Windows 8 Store application.

A campaign on the popular Kickstarter crowd financing platform sheds some light into future development plans. The VLC development team needs £40,000 to create a VLC application for Windows 8 that will run on the start screen on both Intel and ARM systems.

Here is the presentation that VLC has uploaded as part of the campaign.

What is probably most interesting from an end user perspective is the intention to build a media player that supports CD, DVD and unencrypted Blu-Ray playback out of the box without need for media packages and the like. As you may know, Media Player does not support DVD playback on Windows 8 until an add-on package is bought and installed. While that is free right now, it will come as a price in the future.

The developers plan to create a version of VLC that will be offered in Windows Store to reach the maximum number of users. This is actually the only way the program can be made available for users of Windows RT.

VLC for Windows 8 will be created by core members of the VideoLan team who will work full time on the project if the funding goal is reached. About that: VideoLan has set the goal to £40,000 which may not sound like much in times when certain games ask for one million Dollar or more. Considering that you are not getting a game in the end, but an application that is offered for free in the store, it could become a challenging goal.

Pledges start at £3 which will add your name to the list of sponsors. You get a VLC for Windows 8 t-shirt at £40. Companies may be interested in a banner opportunity on the VLC for windows 8 website for a limited amount of time.

£2400 of the requested amount have been reached so far with 29 days to go. Do you think that VideoLan will achieve the amount they are hoping to get?