The VideoLAN Forums

In the "multimedia formats", one finds: "WMV-3 / WMV-9 / VC-1 playback is through the FFmpeg-library since VLC 0.8.6.", but I can't find this 0.8.6 version. Is it still in the works, or in beta testing, and will it be for "older" Macs, that is non-Intel processors?

Ok. This is bad.
VLC 0.8.6 is not out yet but will be with this feature.
You can have a nightly build version that plays it HERE

Thanks for your answer, the only problem is that I don't have 10.4 so I shall wait for the forthcoming stable release, as it is mentioned… Anyway, does the note in the "multimedia formats" mean that 0.8.6 will run WMV-9 media just by launching VLC or will it be necessary to download the ffmpeg library, install it and so on?

What is your OS version ?
It means that VLC will be able to read it out-of-the-box without installing anything

I have 10.3.9 and currently use VLC 0.8.5.

I've been using 0.8.6 for a while, specially WMV9, since I subcribe to an IPTV service that streams all TV channels via WMV9/mms: - and I can say that it works quite well.

Before, I was using Flip4mac quicktime component, and although it worked OK, the streams stalled all the time and would not recover. So I had to START/STOP the channels quite often. Not the user experience you want when watching TV.

It's obvious that VLC has much better streaming code than F4M. It hardly ever stalls, and when it does, it recovers quickly (with a few exceptions). Another thing, not very obvious to the naked eye, is TIMEBASE. It shows very clearly on scenes that show a horizontal text crawl, like a news or stock streamer. The Timebase of VLC seems to be "rock solid" (fluid frame rate) where F4M has a very "jerky" not consistent frame rate.

Unfortunately, the VC1 decoder in VLC is just a baby, just released (beta) and it shows in picture quality. The decoder is not very sharp in detail and suffers from color shifting from time to time. I'm not complaining, since I know this will get better with time.

But there is ONE thing that might prevent me from using VLC as my main media player. Front Row! (Media Center for OSX - if you're not a Mac user)

Right now, I have all the IPTV channels individualy saved as quicktime reference movies in my MOVIES folder. This way I can use Front Row (and my Mac Mini connected to my TV) as a Set Top Box to access all the channels. Works like a charm!

So... VLC having SO MANY interfaces (http, ncurses, terminal, etc) why doesn't it have a Media Center Interface? (full screen file navegation)

I can't beleive this hasn't occured to any of you guys coding this great application (VLC)...

Lets put this on the To Do List, ok?

Full screen navigation on OS X is in the works i think.

Another 10.3.9 user here eagerly waiting for the 0.8.6 build (assuming, of course, that 10.3.9 compatibility will be restored with the stable release )