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VLC has been promising us that the official app for Windows 8 and Windows RT would be coming soon and that progress has been good so far. This app has been in the works for quite some time now and has faced quite a few issues along the way but a release is indeed nearing!
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The folks over at Neowin managed to obtain a few new screenshots of the app, which will debut for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 at first. Eventually, there will be a Windows RT version of the app. “At the same time, we’re spending quite a bit of time to get a working version for ARM, so we can deploy on Windows RT too. We don’t know exactly how much time, but we hope it’s a matter of weeks. The issues are mostly compiler related,” VideoLAN President Jean-Baptiste Kempf stated.
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A Windows Phone version of VLC will be made soon after, as the VLC code from Windows RT only requires a UI modification.
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VideoLAN has managed to fix the pesky audio issue that has been plaguing the app for a while now, giving us hope that a release is near. Here is what Kempf had to say:
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“We have video (correct one), audio, support for all files formats without our old trick (sending it on a local network), network streaming playback, and subtitles. All that with passing the WACK (technical certification). We have submitted it already (and got rejected, because of a crash). We will try to get around this nasty bug (race condition) and resubmit (this week? the next?).”
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Back in early September, VLC for Windows 8 passed the Windows App Certification Kit test, which is necessary in order to get your app published to the Windows Store. However, in order for VLC to achieve this, they had to disable audio output. In other words, VideoLan has a VLC app that lets you play a video but with no sound. VideoLan had been working on the audio issue and finally fixed it in November.
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Now, it seems an app crash has prevented the app from passing re-certification. Once this issue gets fixed, the app should hopefully be approved. Eventually, the app will be open sourced.
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“As soon as we have one release out, all the code will be open sourced, and we will welcome contributions, notably on the UI/XAML part,” Kempf added.
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So as we sit here patiently waiting for this app to be released, take a look at two new screenshots of the app. We’ll keep you updated as soon as the app hits the Windows Store.
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