The popular open source media player VLC could get Chromecast support soon: VLC developers recently confirmed on the official VideoLAN forum that they're currently working on bringing Chromecast support to the media player (hat tip to Reddit user badgerflower). Lead OSX and iOS developer Felix Paul Kühne wrote:
"In addition to the iOS variant, we are also working on a Windows / Linux / Mac implementation, which will take a bit longer because it's harder."
Enabling casting from the desktop app is likely harder because Google (S GOOG) hasn't released an SDK for native apps on Windows, Mac or Linux yet. This means that the VLC team would either have to reverse engineer the functionality -- which could lead to updates breaking it -- or have VLC work in concert with the Chrome browser.
VLC is an open source video player application that's popular because it's capable of playing close to every video format available online. Adding Chromecast capabilities to the desktop version of VLC could make it easier for users to cast video files from their computer's hard drive to the TV screen.