Edit: tried it out with some streaming media. Buffering seems to be more intelligent that VLC (saner default). It is really pretty UI too. Great start for a project.
Is there anything in particular that you'd have them change?
I'm no UI/UX expect, but here's my impression of deficiencies (as a fairly heavy VLC user)
- Media player default window is super busy. I rarely use any of those options. - Audio/subtitle sync is tricky. There are keybindings but I can never remember them. - Open dialog is really complex for what you are usually wanting to do - Preferences is just crazy. It used to be tough to configure caching, but that seems to be fixed now (cool!)
The VLC UI is a lot better than it used to be in fairness, but it still has a ways to go before I'd consider it to be modern and clean.
I like the idea of a cleaner interface, but if the choice turns out to be between a cleaner interface and the number of options in the software, I'll stick with the version with the ugly UI until it stops working.
And that's really what I'm afraid of. Most things that get labeled "modern and clean" are programs that I think of as "insufficient and featureless", and they're the ones that I abandon. I don't want to abandon VLC; it's been my good friend for 10 or 11 years, at this point.
In my experience, VLC on MacOS feels rather unpolished compared to the Windows/Linux variants (maybe because they're using Qt and MacOS presumably isn't) but I've generally always have had a smoother experience with VLC on Windows and Linux as opposed to Mac from everything from playing local files to streaming over the network.