Android: If you've been waiting for news on an Android version of VLC, wait no longer. The media player finally launched an Android beta today, and it brings VLC's trademark play-anything goodness, multi-track subtitle support, and even whole-library management tools to Android devices, but be warned: the developers make no bones about the fact that it's a beta, and there's a lot of work to be done on it. The first thing worth noting is that the VLC for Android beta is a port of the iOS version, largely to get a framework in place where the VLC mobile team can work from. They point out that everything about the app will change as it gets updated, including the UI and major features, and hardware decoding only works on a few devices at the moment. Even so, it's still VLC, can play just about anything (including network streams), supports multi-tack audio and video with subtitles, has a home-screen widget for audio control without launching the app, and it supports headsets with in-line audio controls.
The developers point out that "It might kill your kitten, destroy your house and start the mayan apocalypse," and warn you to "Use at your own risk." They also point out that this version is for "power users and hackers," so while it worked great on the devices we tested, make sure your device is supported before trusting it with your media. It's definitely not as polished as our favorite media player for Android, MoboPlayer, but Android has no shortage of great media players, and hey—this is VLC! If you give it a try, let us know your experience with it in the comments below.
VLC Beta | Google Play via Mashable
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