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[Dan20002]

"Play Anything" by Matthew P. Graven.
PC Magazine - February 4, 2003.

Yesterday (Jan. 14, 2003) I received February's edition of PC magazine. An article which reviews the following media players caught my attention: Media Jukebox 8.0, MusicMatch Jukebox 7.5, QuickTime 6, RealOne Player 2.0, Winamp 3 and Windows Media Player 9. I was displeased to see my favorite media player, Media Jukebox, received an unimpressive 3/5 bullets, while RealOne and MusicMatch tied for editor's choice with 4/5 bullets.

In 1996, my first MP3 player was Winamp; I was always looking for a more full-featured application so I moved to Real Jukebox Plus version 1 when it was released and then upgraded to version 2. Once Real discontinued Real Jukebox, I research all the players on the market, even looking at Winamp again and settled on the best one I found - Media Jukebox.

Looking at the two players that beat out Media Jukebox in the PC Magazine article, it is so easy to dismiss MusicMatch. MusicMatch has the most difficult to use interface of any player out there, after two days of trial use I could not get it to do what I intended. For instance, I found it impossible to organize my large music library by Genre/Artist/Album.

RealOne v2 is a good product, if you could stop the marketing blitz that comes along with it. If anyone experimented with RealOne v1, you will remember that Real wanted to charge you $10 a month to use the product. I am glad they have changed their 'tune' and sell the product outright for $20. Even with this correction, Real is a company which I have a distain for because of their questionable and possibly unethical previous marketing methods.

In conclusion, Matthew P. Graven does not know the first thing about judging media players. A high level of functionality coupled with ease of use is the two most important criteria. The only competition for Media Jukebox is iTunes, and that cost about $1600 (including hardware).

[PeterS]

Dan20002

Thanks for the vote of confidence. We don't like to see MJ get poor marks, but it is just one review out of many, and we don't worry about it too much.

It is unfortunate when we get an unflattering review  from a well respected publication like PC magazine. That is one nut we don't seem to be able to crack, but we will continue trying. If you feel that you want to help us address this issue you can post a comment on their Website: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,804996,00.asp

Thanks for the supportive message and keep spreading the word--one day it will get through.


PeterS
JRiver

[zevele10]

First ,if you test a player with only few hundred songs ,most of them look fine.
Now try to import 20-30 thousands songs a once and ............
After that ,try to do anything with the player and it is a great PAIN.
I have MusicMatch and i use it a lot.After fw days you really get use to the interface.
I try to import to MediaJukebox only 'finished songs'
With tags and sleeves  ,lyrics after having checked for quality ,problems and so on.
I speak about songs i got from internet ,not cds i rip.

And ,in the case of songs like the ones from MP3.com  to put album one if there is one  ,or to put something for not having few thousands songs 'incomplete albums or no tags' in Media Jukebox.I do this with MM because of 'Super tag'.
Not having more that 1000+ songs at once ,MM works ok.
Yesterday evening ,i imported 38.000 songs in MM===with so much songs in it ,you just cannot use it. Only to open the player takes AGES and any task you want to do is just a mess.
So MM is a good AVERAGE player. But no more.

Media Jukebox is million light  years ahead of any other  jukebox

Look like your Matthew P. Graven is even less that AVERAGE .
Death ,blind and not better than some posters on cnet.com...................

The so much loved by some on this forum WindowsMediaPlayer just CANNOT import ONLY my songs from MP3.com songs -38.000 songs to this day

[zevele10]

PeterS
Will use the link you give to post

[KingSparta]

I think Sometimes rags like PC magazine somtimes will give a high review to a program or programer they are connected to.

it happens all the times.

Car companies own some of the car mags that are on the shelf, and they always promote there own cars over the others.

not one of the players you listed have as many options as MJ.

[zevele10]

not one of the players you listed have as many options as MJ.
TRUE

[grahamk]

When I was trying out different programs I first settled on MusicMatch because it was easier to use.  Media Jukebox takes some getting used to. That is probably as far as the reviewer went.

When testing MP3 jukeboxes the tester should play side 2 of the Beatles Abbey Road, then go see what the software can do to fix gap the problem. That alone makes MusicMatch a "1" out of "5" in my book because it has *no* facility to fix gaps. Then the reviewer should load up the software with over 15,000 songs, do sorts, do searches, etc. That makes MusicMatch a "1" out of "5" too.

In short, I do not think the reviewer did a very good job, and pretty much did a diservice to his/her readers.

Graham