# VLC media player 172 Hacker News commenters recommended VLC media player and 83 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (7 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A free, long-standing cross-platform player that opens almost any media file and just works, though critics cite rendering flaws and poor output when used for conversion. ## Why people recommend it - Plays almost any codec (6 comments): "So many hours of fun watching videos over the years, without the constant fear that some odd codec would make the experience impossible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851625)) "Today with modern tools like VLC or MPV and ffmpeg nearly anything can be viewed, streamed, or locally saved" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901327)) "I used VLC only because of the nightmare of codecs back in the day, and worked well for me for ages." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45954529)) - Simple, reliable, just works (7 comments): "friends, family and I have been using it for a good 15+ years without encountering the issues folks are describing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465877)) "To me, it's like any other application - you double-click the file (or run `vlc file.mp4`), and it plays." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45868572)) "I double click on something I want to watch and it opens in VLC. Dead simple and works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987377)) - Same app across platforms (5 comments): "Also available on tvOS and you can watch video files from your home NAS or just send them from your iPhone/iPad!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854668)) "VLC also still (or at least recently?) provides APKs you can download to install on very old Android versions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851869)) "It's one of the few programs where I expect the exact same look and feel regardless of the underlying OS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465226)) - Tolerates broken files (2 comments): "VLC tends to be more tolerant of slightly broken files or random issues that you encounter when streaming" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471992)) "it lets you mess around with them and maybe get something usable, where other apps would just give up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48489269)) ## What people warn about - Rendering and playback quality issues (6 comments): "on Windows, it often renders things much worse than stock WMP (both legacy and modern). Videos with a lot of motion play especially poorly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46469506)) "It was notorious (to the point of it being a popular meme topic) for video artifacts, slow/buggy seeking, bloated/clumsy UI/menus" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465596)) "VLC always renders subtitles at the video's storage resolution and then up/downscales all bitmaps returned by libass individually" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46475212)) - Bad for conversion and editing (2 comments): "VLC is great for playing stuff back, but can produce some horribly incorrect video files especially if you're dealing with stuff for editing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466430)) "It seems to me he's talking about using it for re-encoding/conversion as part of your editing workflow and is not really talking about its media playback capabilities. In that sense he is very much correct." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467097)) - Better alternatives exist now (3 comments): "VLC was a godsend a few years ago but I’m not sure what VLC brings to the table nowadays" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851732)) "VLC is glorified because it was a video player that used to be amazing back in the day, but hasn't been for several years now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468297)) "On Windows at least VLC has had better alternatives for the past 20 years, both feature and UI wise." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853659)) - Clumsy UI and settings (2 comments): "My main problem with VLC is that when I accidentally hit the wrong key on my keyboard, it is quite often almost impossible to get the settings back" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471567)) "It was notorious (to the point of it being a popular meme topic) for video artifacts, slow/buggy seeking, bloated/clumsy UI/menus" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465596)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [mpv media player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mpv.md): 82 recommend - [Infuse video player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/infuse.md): 78 recommend - [Kodi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kodi.md): 64 recommend - [TV Explorer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tv-explorer.md): 37 recommend - [Stremio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stremio.md): 23 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "VLC media player", https://hackerapproved.com/p/vlc-media-player/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).