Can I permanently disable updates so I don't lose 5.1 again?

[hydrallus]

I'm not sure I have the right to complain about free software but for the love that all that is holy the people on this project removing the SPDIF feature and not understanding why we, the userbase, would object and taking so long to restore it has caused me to lose a bit of faith in this product.

I don't want to ever update again. I know I can disable it asking but it still seems to phone home. I want this version of VLC to never add or remove features again, how do I do this?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

SPDIF was not removed and is still present. And you can disable update in the preferences.

[hydrallus]

SPDIF was not removed and is still present.

Be present now and removed earlier are not the same thing. I guess you forgot about the 20,000 topics you yourself complained about responding to? I'm not here to argue.

It was gone, it was functionality I depend on from even the simplest MKV player and the devs seemed to really not understand why people would be upset. It demonstrates many things.

I have disabled updates but still I get critical flaw prompts and my settings do not persist after such an update despite my request that they do.