VLC 1.1.0 was released on Jun 22, 2010. Since the monolithic VLC bundle obviates the necessity for installing external codec packs, it is an indispensable install for many HTPC builders. VLC 1.1.0 brings to the table many interesting features missing earlier. High definition video playback received quite a bit of attention in this release. In addition to support for decoding videos with GPU assistance, handling of MKV files has also been improved. VP8 / WebM support is also an interesting addition. A number of other improvements have also been made, and you can find details in the changelog here.


In our opinion, GPU decoding support in VLC is a big game changer. HTPC enthusiasts often spend a great amount of time getting DXVA to work well in their favourite media player. If VLC manages to get similar results from a layman's viewpoint, it would be a godsend for HTPCs to take off from the niche they currently hold. Anandtech set out to test the GPU acceleration provided by VLC on the Windows platform. Read on to find out what we discovered.



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