When I learned about mandcon's rig using angle control bones for elbows and knees (here), I tried to use angle control bones for shoulders and hips, too. I wasn't able to find a very good solution, but then I saw ponysmasher's workaround to deal with gaps in lines (here) and thought these two techniques combined could make a really nice rig. What I'm after is a rig that can be moved around cleanly without correcting points and lines at all the joints.
These shoulders are the best I could come up with. I've got this praying mantis-looking set up controlling the rotating point on the joint. It provides a smooth joint for about 150 degrees counter clockwise from that straight out position. But I wonder if there is a way to get a larger angle?
The hips shown here don't use any special technique, but I have tried the praying mantis on the far side of the body and fanning bones on the near side of the body with some success.
Another thing! For hands, I've found that binding points and switching are both important to me so the best solution I could come up with was not to put the hands in switch layers and to manually switch them by turning layer visibility on and off.
So basically, I want to compare notes and get a sense of how others are dealing with shoulders and hips (and hand switching). Or see if there is an adjustment to this rig that could improve it.