According to the VLC help "vlc --longhelp --full-help" there are a number of command line options that can be used to adjust GUI settings.
The one I was trying to use was the option for disabling update notifications "--no-qt-updates-notif"
But when I launch "vlc --no-qt-updates-notif" and check the options menu, the update notification is still switched on. Also I had a look at the vlcrc file in %appdata%\vlc and the entry in there was qt-updates-notif=1
Just for testing, I also tried "vlc --qt-updates-days=10" to see if I could modify the delay between notifications, but again, looking at the GUI options and the vlcrc file both still showed the default value of 7.
This was on Windows XP so no UAC problems or so on.
Are those command line options maybe buggy in 1.1.4?