I stopped using Jellyfin for everything after discovering what VLC can actually do

Published Sep 9, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT Gaming has been Samarveer’s greatest passion, and the Literature graduate in him takes immense joy in dissecting games for their themes, messages, and impact. Samarveer holds a deep appreciation of gaming, and considers the platform to be the most immersive and impactful across all media. He can be found engaging with gaming communities online, always ready to debate the finer points of ray tracing or itching to write an 8-page collegiate thesis on any game that impacts him emotionally. I've been using VLC for years now, and despite the occasional flings with other media players like PotPlayer and mpv, I've always found myself coming back to VLC, all for the right reasons. After a decade of constant use, I'd been under the impression that I knew all it was capable of. And yet, I'd somehow overlooked one of its most interesting tricks: VLC can stream media, too. It's not particularly surprising, though; I did get caught off guard by just how much control VLC let me have once I stopped treating it like a simple media player. Over the past week, I've used VLC to send media across my network, transcode on the fly, and even exposed streaming options that feel way too sophisticated for something buried inside a media player that hasn't changed its interface in over a decade. The "Stream" button has been a game-changer VLC's Media > Stream option makes things much more interesting than just playing a regular local video. Instead of simply opening a local video and decoding it on your PC, VLC can take that media and send it somewhere else on your local network. Sure, I can just add a new movie to my Jellyfin library any time, but when a new video comes up from my Google Drive, or when I connect my external HDD for the occasional home video watch party, it's much easier to stream the videos straight from VLC to the living room TV. VLC acts as the source, which lets my PC do all the heavy lifting while the TVs in the den or the living room just receive the resulting stream with no added loads, which bypasses the whole media-server commitment. It's been particularly useful when streaming from my laptop to my TV during watch parties, since I can select exactly which video to play on the big screen at a moment's notice without my guests having to navigate the Wholphin app on the TV. Plus, this way, I don't have to remember deleting the home video library from my Jellyfin server, either. If you just need one computer to serve one piece of media to another device, VLC can get remarkably close to the point before "simple" starts becoming a technical project. Then I found VLC could do even more So much more than just a media player Once I started looking beyond VLC's basic streaming setup, I realized that VLC can actually transcode the media while I share it over my network. It allows me to change the format, codec, bitrate, resolution, and other parameters before the receiving device gets it. That's how I've made my old laptop effectively become a tiny, somewhat overqualified broadcast station. There's no guarantee that the device receiving the stream will understand the file you started with. I don't have to convert my entire library beforehand, since VLC can perform that conversion as the stream is produced. A video that refuses to play natively on the destination can therefore become something considerably more agreeable, without creating another copy of the original file. It's not every day I can say I've been learning new things about a software I've been using for years now, but VLC's Profile Editor has had me doing exactly that. Its options have revealed just how much more flexible the streaming engine can be. Users can define inputs, outputs, transcoding parameters, network destinations, and other settings in a way that can be saved and repeated. It's considerably more useful than just clicking through the same wizard every time. The Profile Editor makes it easy to experiment with different codecs, containers, protocols, and output configurations, all without installing an entirely new media stack. As someone with a properly configured streaming server for every job, it's tough to justify using this feature every single time, and VLC isn't replacing that server any time soon, but that's still beyond the point. Quick watch parties are genuinely so much easier with VLC and its Profile Editor options, which is where it genuinely shines brighter than Jellyfin or Plex when the stars align. VLC has limits, and that's the point It gets less impressive when you ask it to run your whole setup It's clear that VLC's streaming tools are pretty capable, but they're certainly not a substitute for a proper media server. I can't possibly expect Plex- or Jellyfin-style behavior, because that's when the cracks appear quickly. For starters, VLC doesn't maintain a persistent library, remember where everyone stopped watching, or present a polished interface for multiple users. It is still, fundamentally, a player that happens to know how to send media elsewhere. VLC can also stream videos from the internet using its Network Stream feature, but it is finicky at best and plagued by version compatibility issues. There's also the small matter of persistence. The computer running VLC needs to stay awake and connected for the stream to exist. Plus, every single video has to be played manually by operating the source computer. If you end up closing VLC, or shutting the laptop lid, or letting the machine go into Sleep Mode, the stream will disappear with it. This is wonderfully simple right up until you expect it to behave like infrastructure. That's why I'd use VLC for specific streaming jobs, not as the foundation of a household media setup. It's quick, flexible, and surprisingly powerful when you need it. Just don’t mistake a very good tool for an entire server. VLC VLC is free to download and use. All that power without another server to maintain VLC doesn't need another dashboard, account system, background service, or elaborate setup to justify its existence. It simply has these capabilities tucked away, waiting for you to stop treating it like the thing you open when Windows refuses to play a video. That makes VLC's streaming tools feel less like a hidden replacement for dedicated media software and more like a genuinely useful extra weapon in the toolbox. You may not need them every day, and you probably shouldn't build your entire home-media setup around them. But when the problem is oddly specific, VLC has an annoying habit of already knowing how to solve it. Sometimes the old software really does know a few tricks.