For most people, VLC media player is just that orange traffic cone you double-click when Windows Media Player refuses to open a file. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but for me, VLC has graduated from "backup video player" to an absolutely non-negotiable piece of infrastructure on every device years ago.

It's the app I fall back on for a lot more than just watching videos. Do I use every single VLC feature? No, nobody does. But there are ones I genuinely touch once or twice every week, either for convenience or out of necessity. And when I do end up having to use these nifty features, I couldn't be happier that they exist.

Streaming content to my TV

It's called VideoLAN Project for a reason

This one started rather innocently. My retired mom has recently started revisiting decades' worth of family backup videos — old camcorder clips, phone recordings from five devices ago, and family events from years ago. Naturally, she wanted to watch them on the TV, and God knows, I tried to help her through the USB drives and using the TV's built-in media player.

Finding the path of least resistance becomes the only way out when dealing with technologically-challenged parents, so that's what I had to do, ultimately. I opened VLC on the laptop with the videos, put on the playlist she wanted to watch, and pushed them all straight to the TV. You could do that just by right-clicking on the video, selecting Playback, and then hovering over Renderer. After a few seconds of scanning, VLC will show you all the display devices on the same network, and you can go ahead and pick which one you need.

Now, whenever she wants to watch something, she just asks, and I stream it. There are no files to copy or format errors to contend with, and most importantly, no "this media is unsupported" popups from the TV's OS. VLC becomes this quiet little control center for anything that lives on your local network. I might only use it occasionally, but the one time a week when I don't have to upload a new movie to my Plex server and can instead just stream it straight to the living room is when I'm grateful for the streaming feature in VLC.

VLC's built-in conversion tool really comes in handy

It's not often I need it, but when I do, VLC is always there

Does anyone remember AVC? That free video converter that almost all of us had installed at some point? Video converters were integral to any system in the 2000s and early 2010s. You constantly had to keep converting videos into different formats if you wanted them played on your non-smart TVs or just transferred from one phone to another. Then came online converters, and for the most part, they still do the job before you run into paywalls, upload limits, watermarks, and file-size caps.

In an ideal world, no video would ever need to be converted to another format again, but until we reach that day, VLC's built-in conversion tool serves as a highly reliable fallback. It's not flashy and doesn't advertise itself, but it works. Different TVs in my house support different formats. The two Google TVs rarely complain, but the one 2014 non-smart model consistently requires special attention.

Sometimes, something refuses to play, and instead of hunting for sketchy freeware or waiting for an upload to finish, all I have to do is open VLC, convert the video into the preferred file format locally, and move on with my life — no internet required, no artificial limits, and no ads. This is the kind of quietly powerful feature that feels almost old-school. It's software that does useful things without requiring a monthly fee or building its entire model around it.

Network streaming is helpful once in a while

Because TV browsers are awful every day of the week

This is a criminally underrated feature that, I'll admit, has very little real-world usability, but it does come in handy in the right use case. VLC lets you stream almost any online video directly via Open Media > Network. Sure, it doesn't work with YouTube, but the YouTube app never leaves any room for complaints on the telly, either.

Beyond that, if you have a direct stream URL, VLC will handle it. I'll admit that there's very little real-world usability for this feature with most users, but for me, there's plenty to be gained by using the network streaming feature and using it in tandem with something like a DailyMotion link.

On days when I don't have the patience to contend with online browsers made for TV (even the best ones aren't frictionless), I just open VLC and enter a quick DailyMotion URL. A minute later, I'm watching Stone Cold Steve Austin pass out as Bret Hart has him in the Sharpshooter at WrestleMania 13, without jumping through all the hoops of a TV browser, or downloading it on my PC to stream it first. This usefulness extends beyond home videos, as well. This same setup works beautifully for network-connected cameras with quick playback and zero friction.

AV1 support in VLC is a life-saver

It's not a feature per se, but it sure helps

My partner works with short-form video and streaming clips, and before anything is released publicly, I like to run a quick quality check on the big screen. VLC's AV1 support makes that a trivial affair, thankfully. I can preview compressed exports, check motion artifacts, spot audio issues if any crop up, and make sure nothing weird slipped through encoding. AV1 encoding for streaming has been gaining traction over the past couple of years, and rightly so. Compared to other video codecs such as H.264 and HEVC, AV1 offers better compression and higher quality at lower bitrates. Given the right GPU, it's almost become the go-to choice, especially when you throw in 4K or UHD outputs into the mix.

AV1 is becoming almost synonymous with modern streaming workflows, and VLC already handles it like it's no big deal. That's invaluable when you're sanity-checking content before it goes live. This feature is not particularly glamorous, but it does save time and prevents mistakes. Talk about real utility, because you'd be surprised just how many visual glitches or problems hide on a tiny preview monitor only to scream for attention on a large TV screen.

VLC is quietly doing half my digital housekeeping

Playing videos feels like the least interesting thing that VLC does.

I don't think anyone ever set out from the start to rely on VLC. However, it almost always happens anyway, with one problem solved at a time. Somewhere along the way, VLC stopped being a media player and became an invisible backbone of my home setup. It resolves compatibility issues and serves as a bridge between devices.

And I love that it does all of this without nagging, without subscriptions, and without pretending to be anything other than what it is: practical software built by people who actually care about playback. VLC still plays videos, but these days it feels like the least interesting thing it does.