I think the problem that VLC (when doing TV-playback by RTSP) consumes 100% of CPU after some time (3 hours in my case) is related to the version of the
live555 library. I have seen that the same problem (of 100% CPU usage after 3 hours) appears on all three versions:
vlc-0.8.6a, vlc-0.8.6-bugfix and vlc-0.9.0-svn
if I compile them (under Linux) with the live555 version from 11/1/2007. However after upgrading live555 to the version of 20/2/2007 even the version vlc-0.8.6a is working fine (after recompilation). I have tested more than 9 hours without any problem.
Maybe it would be a good idea to repackage the official vlc-0.8.6a windows binary package in order to replace the live555 library by the most recent version. This appears reasonable since vlc-0.8.6a needs not to be patched itself and it would avoid complications for people who are not aware how to get the bugfix version etc.
Actually, in the above post of Christoliquide one can see that the vlc-0.9.0 nightly build version depends on live555 from 20/2/2007 (the latest version) and therefore it works without the 100%-CPU bug.