VideoLAN is a project
initially started by a
group of students at
the Ecole Centrale Paris.
Its main goals
are MPEG and DVD playing and
broadcasting on the campus, but it
has grown into an almost full-featured
standalone multimedia player
that can read DVDs and MPEG1 and MPEG2
files. It currently runs on
most Unix platforms (including
Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris)
and BeOS.
According to their web site, it
will also eventually support streams
from a satellite or from an MPEG2
compression card.
The best part is, VideoLAN is
free software, and is released under
the GNU General Public License,
opening up for
the possibility of others to
contribute to the codebase.
The project's official web site
is: http://www.videolan.org/