A couple of weeks ago we reported that the folks behind VLC had launched a Kickstarter project in order to bring the media player onto Windows 8 with native support. While the software itself still has yet to reach its Kickstarter goal, the company has released a statement giving us some pretty good news, which would seem like motivation for its supporters to donate to its Kickstarter fund. The good news comes in two parts – firstly it seems that VLC may come to Windows Phone 8 devices, and secondly it looks like Microsoft has extended their help to the team in terms of hardware, technical and design help.
The first important news is that a port of VLC to Windows Phone 8 appears to be easier than expected. While the roadmap is about Windows 8 for Intel followed by a version for Windows RT, it appears to be feasible to publish another version with a specific interface for Windows Phone shortly after, since the WP8 APIs are way more similar to Windows 8 than WP7 ones.
Therefore, this fundraiser will help developping a version of VLC for Windows Phone 8. Interestingly, while WP8 offers the same programming interfaces available to Windows 8 & RT apps, it is less restrictive in some regards. Notably our existing networking code is going to run as is.
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Then, we’ve been in touch with Microsoft representatives, who are thrilled about our endeavor and ready to collaborate with us. They are looking into ways of supporting us directly through non-financial matters, notably hardware, technical and design help. This is great news. Moreover, we’ve been in touch with several designers and some hardware chip vendors about this project.
If you’d love to see VLC make its way onto Windows Phone 8, or maybe on your Windows 8 device, you can head on over to its Kickstarter page where you can help the team by donating some funds. At the moment they are sitting at £14,521 with a goal of £40,000 with 18 days to go, so it looks like they will need all the support they can get!