Popular open source media player VLC has almost hit version 1.0. The developers are in the process of pushing out a release candidate for version 1.0 of the cross-platform media player. There's little information about the latest version on the main VLC web site, but you can download the Windows version from FileHippo.

Here are just a few of the latest features:

• Instantaneous pausing
• Frame by frame playback
• Finer speed control
• New and fixed audio and video decoders
• On they fly zip file decompression and browsing
• On the fly gzip and bzip2 file decompression (ecept for on WIndows)
• Support for DVB-S and ATSC cards on Windows
• Experimental Blu-Ray disc and AVCHD folder support

There are also a number of interface improvements and other tweaks. And as always, VLC can open and play almost any multimedia file you care to throw at it.

VLC is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.