It was started as a student project at a French engineering school in Paris back in 1996. The students wanted to be able to watch television on their PCs, so they began writing VLS (VideoLAN Server) and the VLC (VideoLAN Client) to stream and read video streams. SEE ALSO: 4 Free FLV Players for PC The origin Let’s learn more about VideoLan organization and its members from the source.

Still, hardly everyone knows that the software is backed by a team of volunteers united into the VideoLan project. It’s free to download and use, supports the majority of audio and video files and perfectly works on various platforms: Windows, iOS, Android, Mac, Linux, etc. Note: It can take some time for VLC to discover and list all the folders and sub-folders from your UPnP and DLNA servers.VideoLan: The Open-Source Project Behind VLC Media PlayerĪsk any geek for a good media player recommendation and you’re guaranteed to hear VLC mentioned quite often.

You will be playing media from your network in some time.

Browse through them and right click on them to Play, Stream or Add to Playlist.

You’ll see a list of files or streaming networks listed on the left.

On the left under Local Network, click on Universal Plug’n’Play.

Here’s how you access media from UPnP or DLNA using VLC: It’s like a private network for audio and video files. There should be another device sharing media files using this standard or protocol. If you have VLC on your computer, you will be accessing the files available via UPnP as well as DLNA. All of them should be connected to the same network or Wi-Fi. It’s like sharing the media content that you have on your computer or phone to other devices without the need to copy and move files. You can see televisions make use of this feature to access videos from your laptops and other devices supporting the standard. UPnP and DLNA allow you to stream content over your local network. The option is available in the View > Playlist section of the media player.

VLC can easily access media from UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) as well as DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance).

Videolan server