subject: VLC & The Hostory of Media Players [print this page] VLC & The Hostory of Media Players VLC & The Hostory of Media Players
In 1979, Kane Kramer, founder of the British Inventors Society (BIS) designed and introduced one of the first digital media players, capable of the playback of audio formats, named the IXI.
The IXI had a playback time of 3 minutes. These days we are used to 80hrs-160hrs of media playback but back in 1979 this was an extraordinary feat in those times.
Kramers IXI never entered commercial production though it led the way for future devices and the progression of the level of technology used in digital multi media players today.
Fast forward to 1996 and we saw the release of the first MP3 player designed by Audio Highway. It featured 32MB of internal memory which was around 18-24mins of audio playback, a big improvement over the previous 3mins seen by the IXI.
This was the first time we were able to download music directly onto a portable device and listen to our favourite soundtracks on the move. The digital download era had begun!
During this time a group of French students were working on the first piece of software that was able to stream media content across a network (VLC Media Player, though formerly known as VideoLan Client) however the first successful stream was not broadcasted until 1998.
It has only taken 19 years for the initial concept off the digital download to finally come to fruition as we currently know it, as the easy to operate, much loved, multi media player VLC.
VLC Media Player is a free multi media player released under the GPL. VLC can play virtually any audio or video file format as well as being the first encoder of the Blu-Ray X264 format. It's 100% free to download and use.
We believe in free software. Do you? Download VLC Player now and start watching all your videos and movies like they were supposed to be watched.
