One of the best things about owning a modern, powerful computer is its ability to play audio and video on demand. Going to the cinema is fun, but it can also be a hassle, and prices seem to climb by the day. With a media player installed on your computer, movie nights with family and friends are as easy as picking a movie everyone can enjoy (which is sometimes the hardest part of the whole endeavor!). One very popular media player is VLC, and particularly for those who like to be on the extreme edge of technological advancement, the VLC Media Player (Nightly).

VLC Nightly is so called because it is a "nightly build" - a new one comes out every night, tweaked and fixed and honed based on user input and feedback. Think of it as an extreme form of beta testing. Some features remain locked in, though; not everything is open to alteration.

As it stands, VLC Media Player Nightly can play all modern, routine audio & video formats (such as MPEG, QuickTime, AVI, MOV, Real, and more), and do so in high definition. One very big step in a positive direction is VLC Nightly's ability to play Blu-Ray discs, something previous builds were unable to support. Even so, this new feature is only partially operational, since various legalities prohibit the support of fully decoded Blu-Rays.

To counter this, the VLC Nightly Windows build has added audio output to Android devices, as well as iOS devices if the Mac equivalent is used.

The fact remains, however, that VLC Nightly has both pros and cons. You can read more about both below:

Pros

This program supports just about any audio or video format you could want, it is compatible with both Mac and Windows (this review is Windows-only, however), and best of all, it's free!

Cons

Blu-Ray support is only partial, and due to the extreme beta nature of the program, this build is very unstable at times.

Whether or not to use this program is a decision the end user must make for themselves, but with this review in hand, they'll have all the information necessary to make that choice an informed and easy one.