In no particular order:
1) Theater View - Functionally I think is good. It is easy to use and fairly easily customizable once you figure out that it is customizable. Performance could use a little boost. I know my machine is aging but I can play UHD video without problems I would like to click through the view without button delay. (I'm talking about when using an IR remote so maybe it is my setup but it always feels laggy at first.) As far as the look of it definitely dated. I personally don't care but can see how others want it to look more like the other players out there. I just looked and it doesn't seem that changing the Theater View skin is possible from theater view. People may be more likely to try different things if it was easier and more obvious. As far as I can tell I need to go into Standard View Tools->Options ->Theater View change the skin then switch to back to Theater View. I just looked at all the Skins and none looks "modern." I think that 3rd party skins are available if that is true I don't know where to find them.
2) I really like that I can interact with MC in so many ways. I use MO4Media as my remote and love the fact that a third party developer can do so much with my MC collection. It is great that you make this possible.
3) Standard View is complicated. There are a lot of options. This is not a complaint. I have done things like setup zones and zoneswitch but know that I haven't used nearly all of the options available to me. I'm not shy so if I don't figure something out I want to do fairly quickly I jump on the forum and ask. I don't think everyone has that mentality. This is where all the documentation threads come from.
Right now as I browse around Standard View there are a lot of options that I will never use such as getting artwork from a scanner. Is there are way to customize this view like I can Theater View? I don't see it. There are a lot of things I would get rid of for my views. This makes me wonder why not have a Simple View? Have only the features most people use and cut out all the rest of it? I don't know what the basics are but a guess would be importing, ripping, tagging, playback and playlists. I'm sure I'm missing a few key points but in this view there could be many fewer options which could be less intimidating to new users. A right click on a song would have just the basics not a list so long I have to push my glasses up on my nose to read it. It would by no means be a replacement for Standard View just an additional simplified version of it.
I don't do much tagging. Just the basics for me but a dockable tagging window sounds like a nice idea.
4) The homepage for JRiver could definitely use an update. Just look at the artwork on it. Home theater = a couch. Overall it looks very dated and I don't know that it says "This is the most complete and advanced media player out there" to a potential user. It doesn't need to be flashy but just a bit more up to date. And please don't ask for specifics. We all know what websites used to look like and what they look like now.
5) Form does follow function but functional things do not need to look bland. No real insight here but I own some very functional things that look beautiful.
