Hi,
I’m sorry to hear you find Lite version “barely usable”, it wasn’t developed having this in mind. We don’t try to make Lite version perform poorly in order to promote PRO version or use it to brand Lite sliders in any way.
Lite version offers an easy way to create sliders from posts and pages and publish them into your blog by widget, shortcode, php code or above the page loop. You can even create your own slider themes if you want to.
It’s true that PRO version offers more features like more slider themes, custom post type slides, custom slides implemented by the plugin, a slider theme editor, video slides and more, but in order to be able to maintain Lite we need the PRO version and the users that upgrade to a PRO license are important contributors to this plugin.
Anyway, I’m sorry that you feel that we tried to cheat in any way. We’ll try to make it more clear that the video is about PRO version, thank you for poiting this out. If there’s anything else I can help you with just drop us a line here or on our forums, thank you.