OK the easiest answer would be because of the different taste. But I want a bit more in-depth explanation.
This is the list of multimedia apps that I know:
Amarok; plays MP3-like music formats and CDs (in 1.4)
JuK; Have no idea why it exists and how it's different from Amarok
KsCD; a weird CD player which I can't get to work right...
Dragon; A simple video player which has a audio CD playing ability (It uses phonon)
Kaffeine; still a KDE3 version we're all waiting for KDE4 version
K3B; a burner and CD riper
SoundKonverter; a CD riper.

Maybe it's a strange mixture of Ubuntu and Windows philosophy but I think that having one app is a good thing. That brings me to a really good mock-up (that you probably know) from KDE-Look. I would really like to see this implemented.

So what do you think?
I know that some might not be fans of one in all apps, but I with plasma the app could theoretically show only a part that you would need.
I personally think that, that would be a great thing.

Primoz wrote:Amarok; plays MP3-like music formats and CDs (in 1.4)

I think Amarok is more like a music manager application, similar to iTunes.

JuK; Have no idea why it exists and how it's different from Amarok

JuK resembles WinAmp to a certain extent. It's supposed to be a jukebox like application with limited management

KsCD; a weird CD player which I can't get to work right...

Never used that one, but it might be a handy application if you just want to play a CD, but Amarok might do that as well.

Dragon; A simple video player which has a audio CD playing ability (It uses phonon)
Kaffeine; still a KDE3 version we're all waiting for KDE4 version

From what I've heard Kaffeine is pretty good, but the lack of a KDE 4 version is holding me off to install it. When the Qt 4 port is finished I believe DragonPlayer will be a bit obsolete.

K3B; a burner and CD riper
SoundKonverter; a CD riper.

Ripping a CD in K3B is just an added extra I think, while SoundKonverter is specifically designed to rip CDs.

What I miss is a stadalone DVD player though, something along the lines of the DVD player in OS X. That mockup from KDE-look looks great as well.

mensch wrote:

Dragon; A simple video player which has a audio CD playing ability (It uses phonon)
Kaffeine; still a KDE3 version we're all waiting for KDE4 version

From what I've heard Kaffeine is pretty good, but the lack of a KDE 4 version is holding me off to install it. When the Qt 4 port is finished I believe DragonPlayer will be a bit obsolete.

Kaffeine is really cool. It's also possible to watch TV with Kaffeine (and of course a TV card). The current KDE4 state is RC1.

The difference between DragonPlayer and Kaffeine is a bit like JuK and Amarok, I think. You don't want to shoot birds with cannons.

I occasionally use KAudioCreator which isn't mentioned but I don't use K3B for multimedia - just as a burner.

I use Kaffeine because the interface is unfussy and it plays pretty well everything once the codecs are installed. It's a bit like my hi-fi; it has the minimum of knobs and buttons but the sound is good.

Rettich wrote:You don't want to shoot birds with cannons.

You might not...

Why so many apps? Why not? This is free/open source software. Anyone's free to create their own apps. Besides, only a few of those apps are actually shipped by/with KDE itself. That distros decide to use others as default is their choice. Also, they are not all the same.

Amarok - Not shipped by KDE. But because of it's popularity it has become a de facto music player.

Juk - Shipped by KDE. A music manager (tagger, organizer) that happens to play music. In other words, it's primary purpose is to manage music. Playing them is only secondary. Also, it doesn't streaming audio.

KsCD - Shipped by KDE. There's no other "standalone" Audio CD player in KDE's Multimedia selection.

Dragon Player - Shipped by KDE. The default KDE video player.

Kaffeine - Not shipped by KDE. In KDE 3, in the absence of a better video player, it became sort of the standard. As you mentioned, it's missing a KDE 4 version.

K3b - Not shipped by KDE. But seriously, this is the only burning tool that KDE has. Or at least the most famous (there might be others in kde-apps.org)

Soundkonverter - Not shipped by KDE. Not even developed in KDE (all of the above are in KDE SVN). This is considered a 3rd-party/community app.

Is there any reason why having choice is a bad thing? As far as KDE is concerned, Juk is the default audio player, KsCD the default audio cd player (Juk doesn't do that), and Dragon Player the default video player. That distros install Amarok, Kaffeine, etc. instead of or besides these is the choice of the distro, partly based on popularity or their own preferences. It's like Windows having a core set of default application while vendors will have a selection of preferred apps pre-installed.

I still can't see why this is a bad thing...

If you are using not very stable distro/OS/platform (in my case current/FreeBSD/amd64) usually after next upgrade some of your apps become broken. So I keep audacious/amarok, when amarok dies I can always fall back to audacious before fixing amarok or waiting next patchset. The above is quite possible even with Kubuntu(my second machine), so large number of apps gives me place for maneuver.

I find myself using Smplayer because it can take screenshots which is an essentia feature for me and is just a simple player that can play anything, not a ripper (I have no need for this ATM) or a burner (K3B) or a manager (Amarok).

Rettich wrote:Kaffeine is really cool. [...] The current KDE4 state is RC1.

Any source on that? I'm eagerly waiting for a KDE4 version of Kaffeine, but the homepage and forum seems close to "dead" and there isn't exactly very much happening at the Kaffeine SVN as far as I can tell: Very few commits on DVB, not really anything else. Or is there a different SVN/branch for the KDE4 port?

Cheers

Martin

The KDE 4 version is in Playground I believe.

ripper17 wrote:Or is there a different SVN/branch for the KDE4 port?

Look in trunk/extragear/multimedia/kaffeine.

pinotree wrote:Look in trunk/extragear/multimedia/kaffeine.

Ah, that's it, thanks a lot. OK, quite a lot of activity in there

Not wanting to bring up a new thread, so I'll just post this here:

Kaffeine 1.0 pre1 has been published - see http://kaffeine.kde.org/?q=node/22
If anyone with a better knowledge of linux would be willing to test and share some comments / screenshots, that'd be awesome

Cheers!