Well, color us surprised (and delighted). Apple has approved VLC Media Player for iPad, an app that plays a multitude of movie formats unsupported by the tablet’s built-in video player.
VLC has been a popular open-source app on the desktop, capable of playing a wide range of media formats at high resolutions, making Apple’s standard iTunes video player (which primarily plays .H264-encoded MPEG-4 videos) pale by comparison.
Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel got an early sneak peek at VLC for iPad about two weeks ago and said it was one of the most polished video players he’d seen, despite a few bugs.
Why is this such an interesting decision? A lot of consumers get movies and TV shows through (cough) alternative means, and before if they wanted to load their videos on the iPad, they’d have to go through the trouble of converting files to be iTunes-compatible. Approving VLC eliminates such headaches and opens the door for some serious competition with iTunes video rentals. I’m personally more interested in what it means for the new iOS-based Apple TV, if it turns out that third-party apps can indeed use AirPlay, a new feature that enables iOS devices to wirelessly stream content to the Apple TV.
VLC Media Player is a free download in the iPad’s App Store.
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Supporters of accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning held demonstrations and events in 19 cities last Friday and over the weekend to draw attention to what they say is the unfair prosecution of a conscientious whistle-blower.
Manning, 23, is being held in solitary confinement in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia. He was arrested last May and has been charged with leaking classified information, including video of a deadly 2007 Army helicopter attack in Iraq that claimed the lives of a number of civilians. WikiLeaks had released that video under the title “Collateral Murder” in April 2010.
Manning is also suspected, but not charged, in the leak of a detailed and mostly-classified log of 92,000 events in the Afghan war, which WikiLeaks published in part last July. In his chats with the former hacker who turned him in, Manning described leaking a database of 260,000 State Department diplomatic cables, and a classified Army event log from the war in Iraq covering 500,000 events from 2004 through 2009. WikiLeaks has denied receiving the diplomatic cables, but is reportedly preparing the Iraq event log for publication within weeks.
Threat Level dispatched Wired.com video producer Annaliza Savage to attend the San Francisco protest, which unfolded Saturday at the War Memorial Building, and resembled nothing so much as a 1960s peace rally. The event drew a surprisingly older crowd of about 100 demonstrators.
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