30 June 2026
An important message to all OtsAV users.
When OtsJuke DJ (later OtsAV) was first released in 1999, almost 27 years ago as of this writing, we could not have anticipated the journey to come. It's been a wild ride and so much has changed, both in the world in general, and within the somewhat more narrow world of audio/video software! Our successes have been great, as have those of our customers, but really we're just getting started and sometimes some house cleaning is in order.
For several years from 1999 Ots Labs sold a license type which included "free upgrades to 2.0". At the time these were sold, the version number was lower, but today these licenses show up in your OtsZone profile as OtsAV DJ Pro-Classic+ 1.85 [with free upgrades to 2.0].
On our website at the time, the "upcoming" 2.0 version was promoted as having several features, most of which have been added long ago (eg. automated beat mixing, looping, improved time-scaling algorithm, etc).
However, a couple of the initially promoted features have still not been added — effectively blocking a 2.0 release — simply because things moved along in the meantime and they were not priorities for our customers (based on all received feedback) and therefore not justifiable for us to commit time and other precious resources to.
In the same span of time we have added several major and very significant new features that were never promoted as coming and yet completely super-charged what our customers could now accomplish with our software (eg. the entirety of video and karaoke and all that entails).
Therefore we've had a situation whereby a couple of features promoted more than 20 years ago that no one particularly cares about — or were never clearly defined anyway as to what they would entail (eg. lighting control) and therefore have been prone to misunderstanding/overestimation of potential implementation — have been effectively holding us back from moving forward to version 2.0. Otherwise we risk being perceived as going back on our word in a narrow technical definition sense even if it's a moot point at this stage.
So this is where the reboot, or reset, comes in. This year, in the latter half of 2026, we are going to address this situation in its entirety.
We are going to release OtsAV 2.0 and that will satisfy the "free upgrades to 2.0" commitment for all of those very early license holders, however, we will also provide entitlements to OtsAV 2.0 for free to every OtsAV 1.94 license holder.
We believe this is the fairest way to address this situation. The legacy license holders with "free upgrades to 2.0" have been enjoying free updates forever, while newer customers (or those who didn't take advantage of that offer when it was available) have occasionally had to pay for upgrades (in actuality, Ots Labs has very rarely had paid upgrades — the main ones being 1.85 [2007], 1.90 [2012] and 1.94 [2017], which is really nothing across 27 years!)
So after this, almost all licenses will effectively be 2.0 licenses — the only exceptions being those who have intentionally stayed back at the 1.85 or 1.90 versions (and who also didn't purchase a Legacy Upgrade Token last November when offered in response to the OtsAV 1.85 End-of-Life).
It's also important we resolve this now to make way for the exciting OtsAV 3 'NextGen' full re-write that we've been working on since 2022. We highly recommend you read about this and buy tokens appropriately while still available — it won't be for long — so you save hundreds or thousands (depending on how many licenses you hold) just like all the "free upgrades to 2.0" people all those years ago!
We haven't finalised everything that will be in the 2.0 release (its primary purpose right now is the licensing situation "reset" as per above), but for one thing, you will definitely need it if you will be using DJcloud as this will only function with 2.0 and OtsAV 3 'NextGen'.
Also bear in mind that OtsAV 2.0 is not merely a single release, but a series, ie. 2.0.x, just like OtsAV 1.94 is really all of 1.94.x. Therefore, what is released in the initial 2.0 version is not the end of the line, but just the first of that series.
If you already have an OtsAV 1.94 license (or OtsAV DJ Pro-Classic+ 1.85 [with free upgrades to 2.0]) you don't need to do anything special. You can simply download and install the update as usual once it's available.
If you don't yet have a 1.94 license, but you did purchase a Legacy Upgrade Token last year as part of our OtsAV 1.85 End-of-Life offer, then you can redeem this token and have your older license upgraded to 1.94 (which will effectively become 2.0) by contacting customer support, as instructed at the time you purchased the token.
If you have a 1.90 license (and did not purchase a Legacy Upgrade Token last year), you can still upgrade to 1.94 the regular way.
Announcing OtsAV 3 'NextGen'.