If you are like me who loves watching TV, movie and other video clips on my computer, you will find VLC a constant companion.

VLC is a free/open source software for video playback. It supports multiple multimedia formats, is cross-platform and even provides a streaming server for free. I sometimes use VLC to transcode video from one format to another.

VLC just released version 0.8.6 with these changes:

1. The HTTP interface is now only available on the local machine by default. If you want to make it available from other machines, you will have to edit the ".hosts" file.

2. This version of VLC contains a new interface for Windows and Linux. This interface lacks a few features that used to be present in vlc 0.8.6:
- "Streaming wizard" and "VLM control". These features will be replaced by a better alternative in the next version. If you absolutely need these features, we advise you to keep vlc 0.8.6
- Similarly, "Bookmarks" will be reintroduced in an improved version at a later point

3. Vastly improved playlist support:
- Media library support
- "Live search"
- Shoutcast TV listings
- Audioscrobbler/last.fm support

4. Video output
- Adjust, Invert and Distort (now split into Wave, Ripple, Gradient and Psychedelic) video filters can now be streamed
- New puzzle video output filter
- Additional OpenGL effects (cylinder, torus, sphere, ...)
- Improved libcaca support

5. Interfaces:
- Windows/Linux
Brand new interface for Linux and Windows, based on the Qt toolkit
- All
Improved user interaction

6. Shoutcast TV listings support

7. Input:
- Support for RTSP authentication
- Support for adding subtitles on the fly
- Fixed MPEG-PS duration calculation
- ATSC support for DVB input
- Partial reading support for DVR-ms recordings
- Partial reading support for MXF and GXF file format
- Improved support for Flash Video files

8. Decoders:
- Native WMV9/VC-1 support
- WMA Speech support (through binary codecs)
- VP5/VP6 - Flash Video support
- The True Audio Lossless codec support
- WavPack support
- Improved H.264 support (interlaced, speed improvements etc)
- Fixed a problem with MPEG2 field pictures
- Fixed swapped colors on DVB subtitles

You may get the full list of changes from videolan.org.