The VideoLan Organization has released a major update to its popular open-source, cross-platform VLC media player software. Among the highlights in version 2.1.0 are a new audio core, hardware decoding and encoding, initial support for Ultra-HD video formats, advanced subtitles and improved efficiency.

The mentioned audio core rewrite makes it possible to support higher sample rates, introduces better volume management, new channel layouts and new outputs. Hardware assisted encoding and decoding makes its debut on OS X 10.6+, Android Jelly Bean and GNU/Linux platforms, while on Windows support is expanded to include Intel QuickSyncVideo, which is built-into 4th generation “Haswell” Intel Core processors.

The update adds support for more than a dozen video codecs and improves the current ones, further building upon its reputation of being able to play anything you throw at it. VideoLAN has also updated its Android and iOS ports of VLC, now offering support for far more devices than in the past, releasing new "partial ports" of VLC for Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT as well. And that’s just scratching the surface. VLC 2.1.0 offers dozens more new features in all areas including input and devices, mobile and for developers.

To top it all off the company says more than 1,000 bugs were also fixed. You can check out the rest of the highlights here, the full change log on Video LAN’s site, or just pick your platform below to get the latest version.

Download: VLC 2.1.0 for Windows | Mac OS X | iOS | Android