I'm not even a huge fan of Cyberlink either. PowerDVD was fine back in the day, but it's always seemed a little bloated to me and that doesn't seem to have improved.

Video editing software is the last piece of the "decent, inexpensive alternative" puzzle, IMO. There are decent cheap or free alternatives to pretty much every other type of program out there, but not video editing. I'm sure it's no easy feat, but I've been waiting for something to come along for years, and still the only thing that's come along has been stuff with Cyberlink, Pinnacle, Ulead, and other company names that instantly scare me off.

I just checked AlternativeTo.net, and there don't seem to be a whole lot of options, as I suspected. I was, however, surprised to see "VideoLAN Movie Creator." I don't have any expectations on that one, but it's free and VLC is one of my favorite applications of all time, so I'm going to give it a try...

*edit*
Ouch, looks like VLMC is a 0.1.0 release. No wonder I hadn't heard of it yet. Still, I appreciate the effort they're putting forth, and I think these are the folks to do it...

*edit 2*
Just tried it out, and just like the warning when you start it states, it's extremely pre-alpha. It really doesn't work right now. I simply tried importing several clips, dragging them to the timeline, and playing them. That made it crash hard.

Still, I'm excited for that project to get somewhere. I'll have to keep an eye on this one.