I worked in this space on the CDN non-pirate side and it's basically the same thing but everyone (including the major ones you know) distribute all of their content like that over various cdns and they're all essentially pitted cost/error-rate/latency wise against one another to the bottom. If you're interested in some of the tools used that essentially re-compiles, allows you to interject interstitial ads based... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago

To download VLC Media Player, you'll first need to visit the official website- videolan.org Once you're on the website, click on the "Download VLC" button . Source: about 1 year ago

Just get VLC from videolan.org (not some other download site). Source: about 1 year ago

Did you install from https://videolan.org? Source: over 1 year ago

If you want to play media files you already have, then that's a different story. When I started driving, my TV could play x264 .mp4 video files off of a USB memory stick, and that's what I used. From there, I went to a Raspberry Pi playing the files with VLC (videolan.org). Now, I have a Plex server at home, and I download the shows when I have decent Internet to watch on the nights I don't. Source: over 1 year ago

So it should be fine to use as long as you get it from a good source, VLC's website(videolan.org) or the Microsoft store(on Windows). The attack that was facilitated through VLC could have been used on any program really, VLC is just popular and well known, so it's more reliable to choose as a target. Source: over 1 year ago