One of the most popular cross-platform video players, VLC, is now available on Apple TV, giving users the ability to watch their collection of videos without the need to convert or transcode them.

VLC has been in the works for Apple TV since September, and entered internal testing in November. According to the VideoLan team, VLC for Apple TV is now ready for public use, and it supports the same huge range of formats that you'd expect from the popular video player app.

The VLC app for Apple TV supports playback from a variety of network sources, including SMB, UPnP, Plex and FTP. The app also includes a way to send files to the Apple TV for local playback through a feature called 'casting', which works by dragging and dropping videos through a web interface.

You'll need to own a fourth-generation Apple TV from 2015 if you want to run VLC, and it should be available in the tvOS App Store shortly. Future updates will include the ability to play content from cloud services such as Dropbox and OneDrive.