Seriously, if your computer isn't very powerful, you can watch full HD movies without any stuttering, barely any CPU load, and has half of the load on the GPU compared to VLC. Instant skips to any part of a huge file (I just tested on an 18GB mkv, VLC takes like 30 sec to skip to the middle).
Not free, Windows only.
Regardless, even if VLC is free, I just like Splash better for basic playback. I realize VLC is extremely complex and full of all kinds of features, but I don't use 99% of them. I recently tried streaming using the VLC browser plugin, and it failed spectacularly, it doesn't buffer properly.
VLC is collecting money to port to a platform with which the current codebase and toolchain are completely incompatible (see jbk's comment above), and that money is solely collected from people who want to support the port (or VLC itself), using VLC or hacking on it costs $0.
I think VLC has sort of a similar 3rd party add-on for that, but I'm not even sure if it's supported anymore, and I don't think it worked that well anyway. And I also found it pretty hard to set-up. It's not a one-click install.
If VLC was as good at subtitles as BSPlayer, I'd use only that and recommend it to all my friends, too. Now you have me intrigued with Splash Pro, though. I'll have to give that a try, especially on older PC's.
Also, I think VLC doesn't support localizations that well. Some letters in other languages look very weird, while the same subtitles work well in BSPlayer. Just something to look into.