As far as I can tell, what you're missing is the massive ease-of-use and approachability, especially for non-technical users, of a web-based graphical "convert X to Y" interface vs. facing command line ffmpeg, which they probably haven't heard of.
I feel this is easier than those solutions in a lot of cases - mainly because you don't need to install anything. Just open website, drag and drop a file, pick target format, done.
All of that. A couple more thoughts. As a project it brings together
energy to a task/configuration: namely that of making sure all those
disparate command-line tools or bits of lib code are brought together
for the specific purpose of serving file translations from some spot
in a transactional fashion. So that's some value.
Why on the front page? That question might also have a non-technical
answer. What's going on in news and events? Who's been setting up file
translators and then "Dude I have over 4,000 soundfiles, pictures,
address-books..." ... "Whoah? Like. howdy manage that one?"
... "People just submitted it. Zuck fucks"
