VLC made a name for itself by pretty much playing anything. I noticed its existence during the “download a bunch of codec packs and hope they’re not malware” period, and it is pretty much my default media player at this point. It doesn’t even care about DVD regions (if your drive, itself, doesn’t have a hard-coded check, and they rarely do these days) for those of us who don’t read the websites of online retailers carefully enough when buying a movie.

But anyway, it’s now at a new major version: VLC 3.0.0 “Vetinari”.

In terms of features, this new version adds HDR and 360 videos, as well as extended support for BluRay discs (BD-Java menus and overlay). That said, it still will not just play any BluRay off the shelf. I tried. It cannot circumvent the required copy protection, so that will need to be taken care of some other way. Hardware acceleration is now enabled by default, so high resolution videos will be easier on systems.

As always, VLC is free. Download away.