Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JimH]

While I don't agree, what leads you to the statement that the user experience is the same?

Concerning startup.  Please re-read what I said.

[RD James]

The user experience of starting Panel is identical to that of starting JRemote.  Only the name has been changed.

Not on my devices. I have to log in and set my zone every time I open it, and the non-native scrolling doesn't behave nicely (no momentum) or breaks entirely.
I've only been testing locally, since there's no easy way to connect remotely if your IP isn't fixed.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FYn5S_zkr3U
 

Panel is simpler than JRemote  for someone who just wants to play albums or playlists.

I don't agree that less information is always simpler.

[Vocalpoint]

We have automated my wife's movie watching in a different way. She picks out a DVD or Blu Ray - you know, an actual disk -  I press a button to open the drawer on the player, she puts it in,  I close the drawer, and I start and stop the movie as she requests.

Amazing how this always works. Still love my discs as well.

VP

[TheShoe]

this is a fascinating thread. 

we have a bunch of customers arguing jremote is preferred interface to MC but no indication of what the future holds for jremote.

ultimately i think all anyone wants to know is whether or not jremote will see any updates outside of recompiling to support the next version of ios.  panel for sure has its uses.  but not in my family. 

we all use jremote on our iphones and ipads.  we have several.  we love what it does

i use it in my car as well.   in fact the only reason i came across jriver is because an audiophile friend of mine introduced me to jremote and streaming from mc to his dac (ps audio).  loved the ui and features.  from there you had my money

[JimH]

In conclusion...

JRemote is great.  It won't be abandoned.

JRemote won't be free.

Panel isn't meant as a replacement for JRemote.  It has a different purpose.  If you're interested, you could read about the beginning of this work here:  Pretty Face

We will focus more on web apps.  You may not get what you want.

I will let this thread run overnight and then close it tomorrow.

[DJLegba]

My conclusion is that your customers love JRemote and would love to see more resources devoted to fixing current bugs and making it better, but your focus is on other things right now. Not giving customers what they want is a risky business strategy.

[JimH]

Thanks for letting me know that.  We do what we can.

Part of my responsibility is to look further into the future and guess what you might want 5 years from now.

JRemote uses our Web Services interface.
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DevZone

You could always take a crack at building something better, or convincing someone else to do so.  For now, it's pretty exceptional.

[drmimosa]

Lots of people seem to be making a straw man out of Panel here, probably because they like JRemote and don't want to see it neglected. I like JRemote too, it is a great app with an interesting history.

Put that concern aside and take another look at what Panel achieves.

Over the past six years, many threads appear saying JRiver is too complex for beginners. Panel solves that problem. It's a game changer in the JRiver ecosystem.

Here is JRiver's Id Panel, posted a few weeks ago by JimH.

http://idtest.jriver.com:52199 (login: first password: second)

Share the link, click, and you have complete control of the JRiver library playback. Setup is all behind the scenes. Many advanced features of JRiver (transcoding, zoneswitch, power up, view customization, smartlists, etc) can be set up behind the scenes to be accessed by Panel.

No explaining views, simple universal search results, very little options. Click and it works.
Send the link via email or SMS, easy one click share.

From an iPhone, you can click "Add to home screen" on a browser. Single click from this point forward. This means direct access to your JRiver library on every iPhone, included in the purchase price of JRiver.

[DJLegba]

This means direct access to your JRiver library on every iPhone, included in the purchase price of JRiver.

JRemote could be included in the purchase price of JRiver, or, if you want to go that way, Panel could be sold for $10 in the app store. Here is a comparison of the "playing now" screens in Panel and JRemote.

Panel


Panel never did manage to indicate the track that was actually playing or the time left to play. Sure, these things can be fixed, but why put in the effort on a no-charge item when a better alternative that actually generates revenue already exists?

JRemote

[JimH]

I think you may be using an older version of Panel.  Mine shows cover art.

[Vocalpoint]

I think you may be using an older version of Panel.  Mine shows cover art.

I just tried Panel. Shows none of my MKV videos? All I got is 4 test rips I did in MP4 a few months ago?

Am I missing a setting or something?

VP

[DJLegba]

I think you may be using an older version of Panel.  Mine shows cover art.

I'm using the "stable" release, 23.0.73. There are other bugs, which I reported in the Panel thread. If the album sort is random, clicking on an album produces a randomly sorted track list, which no one would ever want. I know you can fix this, but it's going to take a huge amount of effort on your part before I'd recommend Panel to anyone.

[RD James]

Lots of people seem to be making a straw man out of Panel here, probably because they like JRemote and don't want to see it neglected. I like JRemote too, it is a great app with an interesting history.

From an iPhone, you can click "Add to home screen" on a browser. Single click from this point forward. This means direct access to your JRiver library on every iPhone, included in the purchase price of JRiver.

Unfortunately I don't have time to write out a full response to this right now, but I do plan on writing out something more tomorrow if I have the opportunity.
I don't dislike Panel because it's not JRemote. I dislike it because I've yet to find a case where a web app has offered an experience comparable to a native app, and Panel is no exception.
I do dislike that JRemote has been neglected, and even if it's not intended to be a replacement, that's where the development resources are going rather than improving JRemote. JRemote is certainly not perfect either.
 
Panel needs to get native scrolling implemented, and fix whatever allows the whole UI to be dragged around when scrolling.
That immediately leaves a bad impression when using it.
 
You're right about its simplicity, but that also includes the interface in ways which are not positive.
Presentation is an issue. Information density and richness is poor.
I need to go more in-depth about this, but in half the size, the JRemote status bar displays the same amount of information, the current track's artwork, progress, and both pause and skip controls.
Conversely, when listing tracks Panel condenses Name, Artist, and Duration into a single line rather than displaying it over multiple lines like JRemote does, and does not display any album art.
Attached is an image that shows five different tracks but I have no way to identify them in Panel.

[marko]

There's much Panel comparison going on in this thread, and many times I've read that's so simple to get into, and that the browser will remember you, and so on and so on... but this is not my experience???

The login prompt for user/password pops up on top of the page. The Browser does not offer to remember the details, and during the session, I get multiple login prompts. For the record, I am only interested in using it externally, so all testing is carried out on an iPhone 6s+ using Safari and a 4G data connection.

As for JRemote, the 'Playing Now rotation' bug is still ever present, and ever so annoying

[tij]

Only JRiver knows % of users that purchase JRemote (I will eventually purchase it ... I am not big fan of interfacing through browsers ... one of first thing I looked when choosing media management is integration with smart phone). I think most ppl who purchase JRemote don't mind paying something that continues JRemote development ... suggestions of making it free were just proposals for different business models that can get JRiver more funds from us (the users). I think JRemote is an important part of JRiver mission ... particularly "anywhere" part

[JimH]

I'm using the "stable" release, 23.0.73. There are other bugs, which I reported in the Panel thread.

Of course there are bugs.  It's under development.

[JimH]

I don't dislike Panel because it's not JRemote. I dislike it because I've yet to find a case where a web app has offered an experience comparable to a native app, and Panel is no exception.

Five years ago, I would have been on your side about web apps.  That's no longer the case.  A good developer can do almost anything with a web app now.  There is a performance gap, but that is closing as devices get faster.

Google, one of the most successful companies on this planet, began many years ago to replace OS specific applications with web applications.  I think they have done a pretty good job of that.

A web app lets us do things once instead of once for each OS.

It's not a replacement for JRemote or Gizmo.  It's just an additional, always present, easy to understand, interface.  You can give it to a child and know it will work.

[greynolds]

A web app lets us do things once instead of once for each OS.

Well, sort of.  Instead of OS specific differences, you have to deal with browser specific differences which include different versions of the "same" browser.  I'd agree that this is probably still less work overall than native apps for each OS, but it's not always trivial either.

[RoderickGI]

Simple if you are me. But to my wife this would look like like she is being asked to write code before listening to an album etc

This is true. Jim, how about a free App on iTunes/Google Play that only installs an icon/link to access Panel, and just asks for the JRiver Access Key to make the connection? I guess it would need a User ID and Password as well. But most users understand and could handle that, as they do it on their phones for all sorts of Apps.

The Access Key can be looked up reasonably easily in MC, and for someone who has no clue, it could be set by SMS to their phone by whoever runs MC at home, for a simple cut and paste into the icon setup, along with the User ID and Password. It could probably even be simplified more with some extra thought. Perhaps set up a "Share Panel" function in Panel itself, which an Administrator could use to send a structured SMS to a new user, and the icon setup could automatically read the SMS and set up the icon for them. I have been setting up a new Android phone and lots of Apps can now send or read an SMS to automate stuff.

I for one, having just switched to Android on my phone, would pay for JRemote if it matched the functionality of the iOS version, and there was a demonstrable commitment to maintenance and development of it.

But on the other hand, while Panel may be a lite product now, HTML5 can be used to make some amazing applications. If Panel was developed to match JRemote features I would pay a little extra for the JRiver ecosystem to always have a current version available.