I think people need to realize and keep in mind that VLC for Windows 8 is still in Beta
This is an initial release.
I will agree that after a year of Dev, one would expect a much more polished release.
Yes and that's why I'm so surprised, surely they would have tested it to a much higher degree than what's been released to the store.
And as to the point of Win 8 v 8.1 have tried it on an non updated win 8 laptop i use for messing around and it does the same things, you have to ask what were the beta testers reporting back?
there seem to be some really strange omissions like not being able to point it to folders except the standard music and video libraries.
Regards
Aquatarkus
You can play any file from anywhere, there is an icon at the upper right, click and it will say Open File
Click that and you can navigate anywhere to open any compatible file.
There is a lot of refining needed, but if they are committed, it will get done.