[jimconley]

BS Player 2.0 reminds me a great deal of WinAmp 3.0. This is not meant as a compliment.

Specifically, a compact tight program is turning into bloatware as a 'corporate mindset' starts driving the product. If a camel is a horse designed by committee then BSPlayer 2 seems a media player designed by a bank manager. Much as many WinAmp users stuck with 2.x releases, I suspect BSplayer enthusiasts will keep a copy of the 1.x binary until BSPlayer decides what it's going to be when it grows up. WinAmp 3 annoyed so many people off that Nullsoft skipped a version number. Lacking AOL and Justin Frankel, I doubt BSPlayer will have the time or opportunity to try again.

This isn't to disparage ambition but BSPlayer has always excelled at video playback and not much else. It is a mediocre audio player (compared with Winamp) and, based on the initial relase of 2.0, is a fairly shoddy media library. That isn't too say there isn't room for improvement but, other than a deepset hatred for Microsoft, what would prompt an end-user to use BSPlayer 2.0 over Windows Media Player 10? Of course BSPlayer with FFDShow is much more powerful with a much smaller footprint but we're talking about the whole media package here. By introducing a media library, especially a half-cooked one, BSPlayer is now subject to comparison against full-featured and mature products such as Nero, BeyondTV, WMP instead of the relatively tight and safe video playback market. BSPlayer vs. VLC? No contest. BSPlayer vs Windows Media Center? Let's be serious.

As a tale of cautionary warning for users, let's not forget what just happened to the Meedio team who left a whole bunch of licensed users dangling after their buy-out by Yahoo. Webteh openly admits they need to make money and that historical users (you know - the real supporters) can kiss their upgrades goodbye. MusicMatch pulled the same stunt about four years ago but also introduced some genuinely valuable and feature-complete changes that justified the licensing reversal. The upshoot of all this? Why would users buy a product from a company 'on the verge', especially when the product is (politely) still a bit beta buggy?

Anyhow, enough ranting. I've promoted BSPlayer to a lot of friends and clients over the years and more than a few have plunked honest too goodness cash for the pro version. Clearly the BSPlayer team has a plan and I wish them the best.

But I doubt they'll make it through the year.

PS - the BSPlayer forum admin who responded to the poor soul having problems removing SaveU with the comment to use a spyware/adware remover really needs to step back and think about how ironic this is. Why not just have your uninstaller overwrite the boot sector?