I'm surprised that I can't find any mention of the fact that this behavior is simply illegal, beyond the blatant technical stupidity. The Magnuson-Moss warranty act in the US prohibits voiding a warranty simply due to the use of third-party parts, unless those parts can actually be demonstrated to be the cause of the problem. The mere presence of a part is not enough. They'd have to show that your use of VLC actually caused this failure, and since I doubt they're keeping the sort of logs that can show that, they have no case.

Companies like to talk about "voiding the warranty" for all kinds of stupid stuff, and consumers don't know their rights so they often get away with it, but what the law allows is considerably more constrained.