Amazon Acquires MX Player

An anonymous reader shared a report: Amazon has agreed to acquire key assets of Indian video streaming service MX Player from the local media powerhouse Times Internet, the latest step by the e-commerce giant to make its services and brand popular in smaller cities and towns in the key overseas market.

[...] Times Internet acquired MX Player in 2018 for $140 million. The app, which originated in South Korea, gained immense popularity in India due to its unique local video playback feature. This functionality allows the app to support a wide range of video file formats, making it highly compatible with affordable Android smartphones that are prevalent in developing markets.

Why not VLC?

[imcdona]

It's curious that MX player, touted as a media player capable of playing local media encoded in various formats, is being used over VLC. I wonder what it is about MX player that people prefer over VLC.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Streaming service. Story even comes with a handy chart to show market shares: https://techcrunch.com/wp-cont... [techcrunch.com]

Re:

[Ingenium13]

On Android, at least at one time (not sure anymore), MX Player supported things that VLC didn't. I don't remember whether it was hardware decode of some formats, or if it was just AC3 audio. But basically you can/could download patent encumbered codecs from the forums and such, and the player could use them.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

VLC receives a lot of state funding these days so it can't be acquired.

(also hilarious since VLC faced enemy action from those same states in the past)

Probably Amazon sees selling ads in India as a huge opportunity. VLC wouldn't do that deal.

VLC's interface is kinda frustrating too.

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[aitikin]

The few times I used MX Player on Android, I found it as frustrating or moreso than VLC's at the time. Granted this was 5-7 years or so ago, but still.

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[nicubunu]

VLC receives a lot of state funding these days so it can't be acquired.

VLC is an F/OSS project so it can't be acquired. A corporate takeover would immediately result in a fork.

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[ArchieBunker]

I used to use VLC exclusively (especially for the audio compressor effect) but it had problems with my GPU doing hardware decoding. Switched to MPC-BE which worked better.

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[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... people prefer over VLC.

The main reason is, VLC is new to the Android ecosystem while MX Player has been on the market for 20 years. A second reason is, it installs its own codecs instead of depending on the codecs built-in to the (limited updates) Android OS. Plus, at the start, streaming services were not popular and while today's children have grown-up with always-on streaming, it seems a lot of people still want their movie to be in local storage (IE. download fees, or slow data transfer, or internet unreliability).

... agreed to acquire ...

This usua

Re:

[nicubunu]

The main reason is, VLC is new to the Android ecosystem while MX Player has been on the market for 20 years.

VLC released an Android version in 2011, so the "new" project is 13 years old and yes, it started with a not very friendly. But, if you ask me, the main reason is MX, as a commercial product, actively does advertising, while VLC, as a F/OSS project, relies on word of mouth.

Ugh, take what "works" and make it gross

[theendlessnow]

Why do we keep doing things like this? (money, I guess)

Re: Ugh, take what "works" and make it gross

[wgoodman]

It went downhill fast when it got bought last time, haven't used it since.

Might be a dumb move by Amazon

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

This may be a dumb move by Amazon. I say this because Disney somewhat recently bailed on the Indian market, taking a huge charge that I think reports in their next quarter. Disney poured billions of dollars into the market to capture marketshare, only to find that the marketplace is controlled by video streaming services who give away videos for free in exchange for people watching ads. That didn't work for Disney and they sold the majority of their Indian company to the Indian company that was their partner in the market, retaining only a minority share. Giving away videos for free in exchange for watching ads isn't how Amazon does it in other places.

Don't agree to terms

[JThundley]

MX Player was one of the first apps I bought (with gifted store credits) when I first got an Android phone. I think it was better than VLC at the time, it's very possible that VLC is better now. I rarely use it anymore but when I did recently, I was asked to agree to new terms of service. I exited the app and then found that it still plays video when opening a video through a file manager without forcing me to agree to new terms. I've never seen any streaming stuff in it, MX Player had always been a simple

Beginnig of the end?

[Bu11etmagnet]

Is this going to be the start of the enshittification [wikipedia.org] of MX Player ? (the media player, I don't care about streaming)

I bought MX Player Pro...

[SeaFox]

And then regretted it when I found out soon afterwards mpv was available on Android, and free, too.