So I have a video file I’d like to play. I start it up on VLC, and I get a splash that says I must have **lunaplayer **to play this video. I find a free download of lunaplayer, and begin the install. Only to discover that “free” is used here in a very narrow, technical sense: yes, it’s free to download, but they want $4.95 to install it.
Why do I need another player? Will one of the more standard players work? Is lunaplayer worth five bucks? Is this a scam?
I have never heard of Lunaplayer before, but the skirting-the-edges-of-honesty behaviour you describe has ‘scam’ written all over it.
Googling ‘lunaplayer’ was surprisingly unhelpful. Most of the results were “download here!” links and the others were posts on various messageboards basically asking ‘WTF?’
It sounds as if someone associated with Lunaplayer uploaded a video for ppl to find for the express intent to get them to buy Lunaplayer.
If I found such a thing on Usenet, I’d erase it so very, very hard, and get used to life without the video.
Liking to live dangerously (but I do keep my antivirus and antispyware up to date :D), I went over to the lunaplayer website (anti . lunaplayer . com) and when I click “download” it says
Since I have no interest in it I didn’t carry through with the download, but it looks like if you get it from their site they are honest about the cost. I assume wherever you got it from didn’t mention that “gotcha”.