VideoLan has released Modern UI version of VLC Media Player for Windows 8 and 8.1. Just like the desktop version, this all-in-one media player is capable of playing a wide variety of audio/video formats like the Ogg, FLAC, MKV, MPC, etc. This Windows 8 version VLC supports live tiles, background audio playback, and removable storage and DLNA servers.
This “Modern” UI version of VLC can be downloaded from Windows Store free. However, keep in mind that, it is currently in the beta phase and some features are still not perfectly stable. In addition, it is not compatible with ARM-based Windows RT devices like the Surface 2.
This application features:
1. Works on Windows 8. and 8.1
2. It is compiled for Intel x86 CPUs. Windows RT version will be released later.
3. Plays all video/audio formats of desktop VLC supports, including MKV, Ogg and Mov files or FLAC and MPC.
4. Supports multiple-audio tracks selection, embedded subtitles, background audio playback, live tiles, and removable storage and DLNA servers.
5. Features an easy-to-navigate but complete UI, notably for audio browsing.
There are a few limitations:
1. This app is currently slow, and is slower than VLC for desktop for video decoding and has no hardware acceleration;
2. Subtitles support is not very good yet, and notably it only supports embedded subtitles; this is our major point of focus for now.
3. Audio does not seem to work in all configurations;
4. Playlists and streams are not supported in the UI (they are present in the core)
Download Windows 8 version of VLC media player from Windows Store (source)
