I get how that can seem very jarring. On the other hand, VLC has single handedly solved the "how do I play all the world's weird ass video/audio files" for free

I get how that can seem very jarring. On the other hand, VLC has single handedly solved the "how do I play all the world's weird ass video/audio files" for free with no gotcha's for years now. I think they're more than entitled to try and advertise a little bit. It's not like they're doing anything evil asking for some money. You can still go download all the code yourself and build it manually for free if you want.