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[proton32060]

I have been using JRiver for over 10 years and most of the improvements are things I don't need or care about.
To many,  JRiver is a program to simply watch movies and listen to songs.
That's it.

All the little technical things that have been added over the last 5 years have no use for most users.
In fact, I have upgraded every year just to support the company but the truth is I could go back to 28 and not miss anything from the newer versions.
You are running out of things to make us upgrade except loyalty.
Most of the improvements we have no use for.

So what would make me want to upgrade?

Many here may disagree but the vast majority of any programs users ( especially those for entertainment)  are not technical geeks that want a bunch of esoteric functions they would never use or have any interest in.
They want improvements they can readily see and appreciate the minute they upgrade.

The point, is your improvements are  continuing to narrow your user base to a smaller and smaller segment of techies.

Most of your users are not that interested in the little technical things it can do.
They just want a better experience and more interesting upgrades.

I would try adding things a much wider- non-geek- audience would appreciate and not have to dig around under the hood to find.

Adding more  interesting visualizers for music and the ability to rip DVD's and Blu-Rays would be a great improvement.
That would be worth an upgrade and you could probably charge JRiver users more to upgrade and they would be happy to pay it.

The problem is all the little upgrades you have added over at least the last 5 years none of your casual users are interested in or even noticed.
And MOST of your customers are non-technical users.

If it were me,  I would add features the average user would easily notice and readily appreciate.
In other words, try making improvements that would be appreciated by a much wider audience.

These are some of my suggestions because in some ways JRiver  has become like a car that looks, drives, and does the same things the last 5 generations did from the point of view of the average driver.

They might have added little things that might be useful to very few but an average driver would not care about or even know of unless they started doing a lot of research since the changes are nothing the average user would ever notice or care about.

Simply, add more pizazz to the program that average people would easily recognize and appreciate.
Try going back to appealing to a wider, non-technical, audience.
That is who most of your users are anyway.
And those kind of users don't Post on these forums.
If they stop seeing value in upgrades because the old version works just like the old version from their point of view why would they upgrade?

[mattlovell]

Adding more  interesting visualizers for music and the ability to rip DVD's and Blu-Rays would be a great improvement.

The ability to decrypt and rip blu-rays would indeed be interesting, but I don't know what the licensing would cost.

More visualizers would be fun, but I'd welcome even more some easy ways to modify the visual look of MC (e.g., newlines, horizontal dividers, other HTML/CSS-like control of album presentation) and any creative (yet straightforward) ways to view one's collection in some new or interesting ways.  Analysis of the library's contents, without having to export to Excel or CSV and use some external program, would also be interesting.

Continuing to give JRiver love and attention is also greatly appreciated!

These suggestions are all presentation related, I'll admit, which is perhaps less intriguing to work on.  Perhaps the HTML/CSS elements I suggest are already possible, just somewhat involved to create?

I do still greatly appreciate JRiver's ability to handle larger collections and an incredibly wide format of media types.  It's amazing how poorly some commercial products perform when presented with a large directory of media!  That's why I continue to buy the annual upgrade.

[Edit: typos]

[badger]

All the little technical things that have been added over the last 5 years have no use for most users.
Most of the improvements we have no use for.
The point, is your improvements are  continuing to narrow your user base to a smaller and smaller segment of techies.

Most of your users are not that interested in the little technical things it can do.
They just want a better experience and more interesting upgrades.

And MOST of your customers are non-technical users.

Try going back to appealing to a wider, non-technical, audience.
That is who most of your users are anyway.

I would think JRiver understands a bit about their market/user base.  Do you guys think any of this is true?

[Awesome Donkey]

That's some mighty big assumptions about the user base. Yikes.

[BryanC]

JRVR alone was worth 5 generations of upgrades even if you just casually watch videos.

[Richard Martin]

Who elected @proton32060 as spokesman for all the users and when did he canvas us for our opinions?
I must have missed the email.

[JimH]

I would think JRiver understands a bit about their market/user base.  Do you guys think any of this is true?

1/3 North America, 1/3 Europe, 1/3 everywhere else, lots of Aussies

1/3 Audio, 1/3 Video, 1/3 everything

1/3 Average, 1/3 Above Average, 1/3 brilliant

95% men

80% older than 40, most with a little spare cash

Maybe 1/2 come with good technical skills, some great.

1 in 20 don't want to read or search or ask a question on the forum, creating some friction and discontent on both sides.

[thecrow]

Having worked my way through the rambling post by proton32060, I don't understand his point of view at all, nor where he is getting his assumptions from.
By all means make some personal requests but don't claim to represent the majority of the user base when doing so.
I find every years upgrades useful and recently there have been many significant improvements especially in the area of video playback.

[Manfred]

95% men

A # to improve  ->more women!

I am also a 10 years customer of JRiver. Going back to original post:

They want improvements they can readily see and appreciate the minute they upgrade.

I thought about it and I think its a hard topic. A colleague of mine never wanted a project again with end user involvement (End less discussion about UI Design) ?

In the past ten years I tested also other software:
- (Kodi, Plex - uninstalled it after one week),
- roon purchased with my Devialet HW Upgrade (rarely use it - MC sounds in my environment much better and my self build views for classical music are a much way better from a usability PoV),
- Infuse for video ( I liked the user interface from the look and feel more than MC Theater View, also  the Apple TV remote but I decided against it  - Apple TV ->HDMI ->TV->Optical sounded so much worse compared to MC Media Renderer with audiophile USB card connected to my Devialet. Also Media organisation capabilities are hard to beat in MC.)

What I would like from a usability PoV:
- Choose of templates for organizing classical music. Then you run it through your library and Wow!: Everything its all tagged consistently, complete, correct, reflects local language (I search for Wagner and not for Richard), keeps the Album as central piece etc. ( I spend a lot of time to do it by my self).
- Update of Theater View - a little bit more like Infuse (as I understand an upgrade is coming with MC32) and an Apple like remote
- I personally like my Album and Artist view for Audio (I personally don't need the roon style of doing it - but that's a very personal PoV)
- Whats so hard to find out: Network & Performance Issues (sometimes JRemote is so slow and has connection issues).
- Better integration and tagging of concerts e.g specific for classical music (you don't have all the audio fields for concerts (video))

Looking back to the upgrades over the past years: There were always 1-2 features which make it for me a no brain-er.

[thorsten]

As a user back to MC18, I also update all year. 60% home cinema with (a really difficult setup of) theatre view and 40% stereo and multichannel audio with jremote only.

The main improvement for me was the video integration with theatre view and JRVR by far. Audiowise, convolution and sox.

And I also agree with proton, that some improvements (mainly the live tv stuff) interests me nothing at all. But, as there is always something interesting for me with the new releases, I normally go for it. I think I left only 1 or 2 versions out over the years.

Regarding the users: what I‘ve learned over the years: MC is used in a crazy number of different environments! Cars, Boats, multiroom, stereo only, Linux…. One can’t speak for THE users and that is ok.

Therefore, it‘s up to everyone to go with the new version or wait a year. (That is a very fine business model, that all older versions are capable of a direct jump to the newest purchased one, thank you!)

[SPM]

- Choose of templates for organizing classical music. Then you run it through your library and Wow!: Everything its all tagged consistently, complete, correct, reflects local language (I search for Wagner and not for Richard), keeps the Album as central piece etc. ( I spend a lot of time to do it by my self).

Agreed. I never search for composers or artists by first name either. First names are not used in academic publications either (try to find papers on "Richard" when you are looking for analyses of Wagner's works).
Additional templates defaulting to last names would be highly appropriate.

- Better integration and tagging of concerts e.g specific for classical music (you don't have all the audio fields for concerts (video))

Yes! A given piece of music may be available, e.g., as a studio recording on CD, a DVD of a concert or opera performance, a bootleg tape as a FLAC file, a digitized vinyl record, etc. Although a recording centric view historically was required due to player technology, today a more work centric perspective would be preferable (for me), e.g. I often want to browse for a given composition, chose an ensemble or performer, maybe pick a certain recording, and listen to whatever format I have in my collection.
Consistency of tagging across media formats would support this much better.

[eve]

1/3 North America, 1/3 Europe, 1/3 everywhere else, lots of Aussies

1/3 Audio, 1/3 Video, 1/3 everything

1/3 Average, 1/3 Above Average, 1/3 brilliant

95% men

80% older than 40, most with a little spare cash

Maybe 1/2 come with good technical skills, some great.

1 in 20 don't want to read or search or ask a question on the forum, creating some friction and discontent on both sides.

Thanks for the breakdown Jim. Pretty much aligns with my assumptions

[eve]

- Choose of templates for organizing classical music. Then you run it through your library and Wow!: Everything its all tagged consistently, complete, correct, reflects local language (I search for Wagner and not for Richard), keeps the Album as central piece etc. ( I spend a lot of time to do it by my self).

This one is an insane ask IMO.
Classical tagging is very difficult and if you want it somewhat automated with metadata... oof.

From what I've been doing, the logic I've settled on is in an ideal world, you get your 'work', your 'performance' of said work (and the performance as a whole), and then a work represented by a performance may only be a portion of said work (I guess you could broadly call it a movement but that's not really the correct terminology) so you need to handle that (being able to go 'up' to the parent work is essential). You want to be able to 'find' the different performances of a work, whether it's the complete work or just a section (and obviously, you want to be able to find those sections too)

[Mike...]

Having worked my way through the rambling post by proton32060, I don't understand his point of view at all, nor where he is getting his assumptions from. By all means make some personal requests but don't claim to represent the majority of the user base when doing so.
I find every years upgrades useful and recently there have been many significant improvements especially in the area of video playback.

I understand and share his point of view. While all the little technical things do make the program more complete, other aspects have been neglected. The visual department, look and feel, skinning, visualizers. Product documentation/help files.

[geoptin2]

Totally agree! For my German friends, "Ich bin kein Fachidiot".

Make the program more COLORFUL, ATTRACTIVE TO THE EYE!
George

[EnglishTiger]

@ Mike..... & geopitin2 - Take a look in the Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins forum - https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/board,5.0.html

There are loads of Skins in there that are not available from inside MC.

[antenna]

OK, I've read through this thread, but the one thing that stands out for me is...

It is not the details of how you get to the media you want to view or listen to.

It is about the quality with which that media are presented to you.

In that quality of presentation aspect, imo, MC excels.

[JimH]

Please use this thread for requests:

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