[ZetaVu]

"but I think they do need to work on ways to get a little more money out of us consumers." Well, I disagree with Dave. I've always ben of the mind of fair pay for a fair product. BTV sells for a price and that price includes guide updates and keeping it up to date (new capture cards, update with OS changes, etc). Additional tweaks are perks, I agree, but the basics of keeping the product functional are part of why the price is where it is, which is pretty high considering there are free alternatives as you've mentioned.

Now, if SS wanted to do a subscription service, that's a different story and definitely a different price point. Then we're talking about $10-20/year (packaging in free 1 yr plans with hardware cards, etc) which would get you guide, updated programs, etc. I would not be interested or buy that kind of product, I prefer to pay once and be done.

What I do agree with is what SS was doing with added features, if they make a new (revolution vs evolution) feature, then charge to add that. They did this with beyond media, dvd plugin, in fact 4.0 (which gave us hi def). When they make a major change to the platform or add something big, then incrementally charge. The important thing is that when 4.0 came out, SS continued to support 3.x, meaning you had the option to stay where you were. I prefer what they did with the dvd plugin, since then you could opt out of the upgrade and the base product is still supported.

Sadly, that is where they are going to miss the opportunity with btv 5.0. Change the viewscape to alow plugins, and they've opened up not only new revenue streams (selling plugins to current users) but also increase overall sales by becoming competitive against alternative htpcs.

As I see it SS consumer needs to get more sales (new users) without losing their existing user base, which is what they've been doing. There are a lot of people with btv licenses who are using other programs, so even though SS got paid once for that idle license (which might find its way to ebay, thus negating a new sale) they are not getting the potential for add on sales.

Remember when BM came out? The community was writing plugins like crazy. Well, that is all dead now, no excitement, very little loyalty base. They have managed to alienate the most dedicated of users quite effectively.

So, all that said, I am planning to stick with btv as long as it keeps doing what its supposed to do, since I see no reason to walk away from the security of the system (guide updates, support) for a free system or pay again for a possibly better system when I'm happy with btv. If I was forced to pay again for btv to keep it running or updated, well that's a game changer, now I'm motivated to evaluate the competition, better to pay a little more upfront than to throw good money after bad because SS decides to go a different direction than the consumer end.