VLC media player brings its multi-format playback to the Apple TV

By Joseph Keller
published

Apple TV running VLC
Apple TV running VLC (Image credit: iMore)

VLC, the popular, versatile media player, is now available on the Apple TV. VLC can play a wide variety of audio and video files and automatically find storage devices attached to your network.

Additionally, VLC for Apple TV supports a feature called Remote Playback. With this feature, VLC provides you with a URL, which you open on your computer's web browser, arriving at a site that allows you to drag and drop files for viewing on your Apple TV. That video will be available under Network Stream for future playback.

VLC for Apple TV has support for navigation by chapters, and you can select multiple audio and subtitle tracks. The TV app also features its own custom playback speeds, with options for 0.25x, 0.50x, 0.75x, normal speed, 1.25x, 1.50x, 2.00x, and 4.00x.

VideoLAN, the company behind VLC, says that support for playback from cloud services like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box, will be added soon, and the feature is now entering beta testing. It's a feature already supported in the iPhone and iPad app.

VLC is rolling out now on the Apple TV App Store.

Source: VideoLAN, Felix Kühne

Joseph Keller
Joseph Keller

Joseph Keller is the former Editor in Chief of iMore. An Apple user for almost 20 years, he spends his time learning the ins and outs of iOS and macOS, always finding ways of getting the most out of his iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.

4 Comments
  • YAY. Plex can suck it, the Apple TV has VLC now. ^_^
  • Sounds cool. But I wish Appletv had a USB port so i could us my hard drive full of media. That's my biggest issue. Regardless, so what formats can this play without transcoding? MKV, AC3 audio, etc.? And is it only playing from cloud sources? That seems strange.
  • "Additionally, VLC for Apple TV supports a feature called Remote Playback. With this feature, VLC provides you with a URL, which you open on your computer's web browser, arriving at a site that allows you to drag and drop files for viewing on your Apple TV. That video will be available under Network Stream for future playback." I wouldn't really say this was a cloud source, it's from your own computer on the same network as the Apple TV
  • That sounds like the play to feature or how in chrome browsers you can send youtube on a computer to any networked media player with the youtube app running. But, Yeah I can honestly say that is way way too cumbersome to me. I currently have a hard drive plugged into an older media streamer through usb. I simply go to videos, the folder (say "Movies") and, click the movie. My videos, music, photos, are stored on two hard drives locally. But regarding apple tv, it's more a USB problem than a VLC issue. Currently, I have a laptop that isn't always on. Not a computer networked all the time. And I'm not going to buy a any sort of desktop of networked server. So no matter what I really need is a media player that can play video from hard drive without a computer. Right now that's just roku and some others. I just don't want to have to jump through all those hoops of trying to use a browser. And at the moment i'm not spending $200 either to buy a new router that let's you network a drive. The bigger problem isn't vlc it's the apple tv's limitations. But i'd still like to have more info in these things. You know the real nitty gritty that a power user would want to know. The tenor of my comment is i wish i had way more information, does it do dts, does it play embedded subtitles. etc.