Aside from playing everything I can throw at it up to and including the wretched RealVideo, it's free and more full-featured than the competition like MPlayer. Both apps have weaknesses, but MPlayer's seem to be more numerous and more egregious. For instance, MPlayer actually seems to have problems with some MPEG-2 files, garbling the picture. VLC and even Quicktime Player have no problems with the same files. As well, MPlayer doesn't have anything near as many features as VLC. No way to adjust audio or subtitle sync, for instance. The only thing MPlayer has that I wish VLC did is a Yadif option for deinterlacing. I keep both apps around since there is the very rare video file that one of them won't play but the other will.

That said, while 1.0.1 is a huge improvement, it's still missing a few features that the Windows version has had for quite some time. Slow and fast motion still doesn't work. I wish the preferences were a bit more descriptive than "very short jump," "short jump," "long jump" and the like. Why not just tell us it's 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 1 minute or whatever they are? Don't make us guess! One thing I really like about the new version is that if you're watching a multi-file playlist (say, an old TV show in 3 parts downloaded from YouTube thanks to MacTubes), it now preserves the window size (if you're not watching full-screen) and plays them continuously with not even a hint of stutter while switching files. If not for the onscreen display telling you a new file is being played, you'd never even know it.

VLC has been my preferred video player app for years, and with continuing improvements, I think it will retain that position for the foreseeable future. I've donated $15 to Videolan.org and maybe I'll give them another few next year. It's worth it. (Just make sure you enter a comma for the decimal point or don't specify pennies. Trying to use a period on the European PayPal site will get you nothing but grief, especially if you don't read French.)