A year ago, VLC on iOS was forced to remove its support for AC3 codec. I found almost all my videos on iPad were muted.
Since then, I haven’t bothered to check other options. I don’t mind paying a few dollars but I’ve been using VLC since years on all of my computers and mobile phones. There’s simply no other comparable alternatives that works equally well on Windows, Linux, OS X as well as iOS.
Today, I opened VLC on my iPhone again and noticed that I can play my videos with sound again! I checked the official website for sure and got this:
The link on iTunes also confirmed this. However, nowhere did I find details how did the developers solved the patent issue. Let’s hope it’s fixed for good.
Another good example of this, Firefox has H.264 support not because H.264 is free, but Cisco paid the royalties to the MPEG LA. Further, some codecs are free for implementation in players, but not in encoders. There is a DirectShow filter which has been used for ages to play subtitles, it is called DirectVobSub or VSFilter.