More > JRiver Media Center 21 for Mac
The Answer to Theater View for OSX Is JRemote for AppleTV?
mwillems:
--- Quote from: blgentry on September 10, 2015, 09:52:13 am ---You've said this twice, about people not connecting Macs to TVs. Aside from the gaming aspect, which I don't think is super applicable to a home theater environment, why do you say this? I don't have much direct experience with this, so this really is an open question. My gut feeling is that lots of people either have Macs connected in their home theaters, or really WANT to have them connected there.
--- End quote ---
I had the same question actually, but I demurred because other than one friend, I don't really interact with anyone who owns a mac IRL (so my knowledge of mac user habits is lacking). My sense is that lots of people have computers in general hooked up to TVs, but then I'm on a forum where virtually everyone has a computer hooked up to a TV, so I assumed I was looking in the wrong end of the funnel ;D
There do seem to be lots of folks with minis on the forum, but they may just be a vocal minority.
FWIW, jremote (for android anyway) makes a pretty capable video player. I've been using it on a single-board computer running android as a front-end on a spare tv and it works pretty well as an "end-point." I keep hoping that JRemote will just become a universal cross-platform interface so I can use it as a linux front-end too. I can see why it would tempting to get it on as many interfaces as possible.
glynor:
--- Quote from: blgentry on September 10, 2015, 09:52:13 am ---My gut feeling is that lots of people either have Macs connected in their home theaters, or really WANT to have them connected there.
--- End quote ---
I strongly doubt this. I've never been to anyone's house, outside of a handful of nerds who work in IT departments, who have computers of any kind connected to their TVs. Almost no one I talk to about it has a HTPC connected to their TV (and I'm the guy at work that people talk to about stuff like that). I'm not saying that because it is only true of Macs. I think it is just true of computers.
I don't have polling data, but I do have some evidence: Microsoft's various Home Theater PC programs failed and have been discontinued. AMD tried very hard to push HTPCs a few years back (the Vivo-active marketing thing) and failed/discontinued it. Apple discontinued their own 10-foot UI years ago. According to Paul Thurrott (who has very good sources at Microsoft) one of the reasons they discontinued Media Center Edition was that they had telemetry that something like 99.9% of all users who ever launched Windows Media Center did so by accident, and immediately closed it (and this was among the something-like 0.001% of all Windows users who had actually launched Media Center).
I'm not saying no one does it, but I think getting MC onto a box like an AppleTV or a Roku is much, much, much more "mass audience" than convincing people to buy a Mac specifically for their TV and hook it up to the home theater system.
Again, nerds aside, but there's like 12 of us.
If there is a huge market of people who "want to" do this, then why have all of these products failed?
Now, I'm not saying MC doesn't need to play in the space. But I do think that the people from Plex have purchased the AppleTV Developer box and are furiously coding right this very second. If JRiver wants to be serious about supporting people using MC as a video management solution, they need to have some way for people to get the content onto their TVs without requiring a wireless mouse and keyboard in the living room. Even if MC itself doesn't require one (and Theater View does not), having the PC in the living room certainly DOES require a mouse and keyboard.
I have one. But lots of people, even those in the market for MC, won't do it.
glynor:
For the record:
Personally, I'd absolutely prefer to have Theater View for OSX. If I could have that, my next HTPC would probably be a Mac Mini (it would be even better if Apple would go back to using good CPUs in the Minis, but that's another story for another time).
I do love having a HTPC, and I have NO intention of giving it up.
I'm more looking at it from a "bang for the buck" perspective. But, I was interested in hearing other viewpoints. If a whole bunch of actual JRiver customers feel about it more like I do personally, then maybe it does make more sense to focus on the "big project". But porting Theater View is a massive, likely multi-year, undertaking. We're talking a huge amount of effort (Theater View is Direct3D, which is Microsoft only, so pretty much everything has to be thrown away and started from scratch).
I think porting JRemote to AppleTV, assuming Xamarin does support this, is probably a much more modest (as-in, could be done by one guy in a few months) project.
gvanbrunt:
I agree that I think Pretty Face could (should?) be the replacement for theater view. At least eventually. If they design it with skinning and flexibility in mind it could eventually surpass what is available in Theater View currently.
glynor:
Pretty Face would definitely need to be designed with very limited (remote-only-style) input devices in mind to accomplish this. Would that limit its utility otherwise?
Just wondering if that is what they're targeting. One of the big problems is that touch or mouse "designed" UIs are completely useless on a TV with a remote control in your hand. Whereas a design that goes for that (like Theater View) is not ideal for using with touch or a mouse. Theater View itself does "split the difference" fairly well, but... Well, we've all seen the threads complaining about how it isn't perfect for use case X or Y (or is generically "ugly").
Jack of all trades, master of none.
Though... It could be done. I don't know what the focus is going to be.
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