Ready for HD

• GPU decoding on Windows Vista and 7, using DxVA2 for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
• GPU decoding on GNU/Linux, using VAAPI for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
• DSP decoding using OpenMax IL, for compatible embedded devices
• Improved support for MKV HD, including seeking fixes, and 7.1 channels codecs
• Support for new codecs, like Blu-Ray subtitles, MPEG-4 lossless and VP8

NB: so far, on Windows, VideoLAN is quite sad to be forced to recommend nVidia® GPU, until ATI® fixes their drivers on Windows, and until VLC developer get access to some Intel® hardware supporting GPU decoding.

Extensions
New add-ons and script framework so one can personalize its vlc.

• Written in lua
• 2 main types of scripts:
• content add-ons, integrated in the playlist
• functionnalities extensions, like metadata searching on the web, or subtitles look-ups
• Very Simple

Web improvements

• Support for WebM decoding and encoding
• Improved web plugins
• Better streaming capabilities

Better Audio experience

• Integrated playlist in the Qt4 interface
• Multiple views (like album art) in the playlist in the Qt4 interface
• Support for AMR-NB, Mpeg-4 ALS, Vorbis 6.1/7.1, FLAC 6.1/7.1 and WMAS
• CDDB and CD-Text works now on the Windows port when listening to CD-Audio
• Support for DVD-Audio files (.aob)
• Improved meta-data and album-art support

Faster, Lighter

• Faster decoding, with up to 40% speed-ups, in HD resolutions
• First part of the Video Output core rewrite
• Removal or rewrite of dozens of modules, code simplification and tens of thousands of lines of code removed
• Some functionalities that are less used are now moved to extensions
• More assembly optimizatinons, especially SSSE3/SSE4 and ARM Neon
• Fewer threads used

Better for developers

• Simplified and improved libVLC, removal of exceptions for better C integration
• New phonon-backend for Qt applications, on all platforms
• New C++ bindings