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[JimH]

Walter Mossberger of The Wall Street Journal just took a look at Roxio's Media Creator, a program not unlike JRiver Media Center.   Below are a couple of excerpts.

Jim

"Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from a reader that said: 'As a PC user who juggles multiple applications to complete multimedia projects, I'm jealous of the integrated approach' of Apple's iLife programs. 'Is there any product on the PC that comes close to the integrated solution you've discussed so many times for the Mac platform?'"

......

"All of these functions have been available on Windows from various companies, but not in a truly integrated suite that has a unified user interface and works together well. And the individual Windows applications for doing these things have tended to be harder to use than Apple's."

......

"Overall, I found Media Creator to be significantly inferior to the Apple suite. It's harder to use, less consistent in the way it works, less well integrated, and it fails to display the same delicate balance between power and simplicity that is the real strength of the Apple software."

Walter S. Mossberg
mossberg @ wsj.com

[Omni]

Hmmmm....  from these three quotes, it sounds like document handling is the wave of the future.

Feature Request:  Can MC 11 start handling my documents, too, along with all my other media files?  Please?  Pretty please???

 

[LonWar]

Hmmmm....  from these three quotes, it sounds like document handling is the wave of the future.

Feature Request:  Can MC 11 start handling my documents, too, along with all my other media files?  Please?  Pretty please???

 

It does handle documents...

[KingSparta]

Roxio's Media Creator dont it also copy cd's?

something that has been lacking within media jukebox\media center.

Maybe this will be added within Media Center 11?

rip DVD to AVI?

AVI edit frame by frame and section

[JimH]

Hmmmm....  from these three quotes, it sounds like document handling is the wave of the future.

Feature Request:  Can MC 11 start handling my documents, too, along with all my other media files?  Please?  Pretty please???

 

It does handle documents...

I think he was kidding.  

[elpaolo]

Wow, Jim - if only you could get Walt to review MC..and positively, at that.  There was a piece I saw w/in the last few months about how anything he reviews and gives the thumbs up to turns into gold.  I think one of the main examples was satellite radio (XM radio?).  His first pas was negative.  Not until they revamped their interface did he give an approving review...and therefafter, it seems their business took off...or at last saw increased success.

[salsbst1]

I'm convinced that Mossberg will never like an application or operating system that has all of the features it needs.  It needs to be stripped of all advanced features and have a nice little bow wrapped around it.

[Omni]

Hmmmm....  from these three quotes, it sounds like document handling is the wave of the future.

Feature Request:  Can MC 11 start handling my documents, too, along with all my other media files?  Please?  Pretty please???

 

It does handle documents...

[JimH]

if only you could get Walt to review MC.

He knows we're here, but he's never taken a look as far as I know.  For years, he talked mostly about MusicMatch, but now I think he likes iTunes.

[TimB]

Second only to Microsoft I've never seen a company that invites so much hatred in newsgroups as Roxio.  There are people out there who truly hate and loath them (and I don't use the phrase "hate and loath" lightly).  I don't use it but I don't understand the depth of feeling.

-=Tim=-

[LonWar]

Hmmmm....  from these three quotes, it sounds like document handling is the wave of the future.

Feature Request:  Can MC 11 start handling my documents, too, along with all my other media files?  Please?  Pretty please???

 

It does handle documents...

Sorry man.... Long night, no sleep makes for a person that doesn't clue in quickly....

 

[KingSparta]

Second only to Microsoft I've never seen a company that invites so much hatred in newsgroups as Roxio.

Real Networks is another I think.

the top 3

[hit_ny]

Heh yes, those 3 also have this "popular" thing in common. Meaning they have more than 10% of the market in what they make.

It's the more clued in users that want and will pay for the alternatives.

Does Mossberg review any thing that has less than 10% market share regardless of how good it is ?

[kiwi]

Does Mossberg review any thing that has less than 10% market share regardless of how good it is ?

Wouldn't anything from Apple qualify?   {edit: with the exception of the iPod}

[hit_ny]

Wouldn't anything from Apple qualify?  {edit: with the exception of the iPod}

Media loves Apple. Their products look so much nicer.  Ever notice the disproportinate amount of ppl that seem to be on an Apple OS in the "movies" when reality is anything but.

{EDIT}
Apple does have more users for its OS nowadays, so i'd say its closer to 10% than 5 years ago. Its a nice system that does not suffer (as much) from virus/adware/spware problems that plague PCs.


Does anyone have a link of Mossberger's articles ? Last i recall WSJ was a payee only site.

[Sam]

Mossberg's articles are free.
http://ptech.wsj.com/

I actually emailed him a couple of years ago.  He replied that he'd tried MJ, but didn't like it.  Version 8, I think.  The UI wasn't very pretty back then.


When I read his latest article, my first thought was that MC10 could fill out someone's multimedia suite.  Roxio's Napster app is awful.  And Adobe's got everything but music and movie organization.

The alternative is MC adding photo editing, video editing, and DVD authoring in v.11...

[hit_ny]

Thanks for the link

Roxio's Napster app is awful.  And Adobe's got everything but music and movie organization.

I wonder if he reviewed iTunes. If so MC has a good chance if not v8 then at least now or maybe v11.

The alternative is MC adding photo editing, video editing, and DVD authoring in v.11...

I doubt that will happen, each of those categories has apps that are very specialised at doing these things. Kind of going back to that age old debate of all in one hi-fi vs separate units. Besides on could always SendTO from MC to either of these apps now.

I'm hoping MC improves on it core strenghts instead, organisation & management.

[kaiynne]

Second only to Microsoft I've never seen a company that invites so much hatred in newsgroups as Roxio.  There are people out there who truly hate and loath them (and I don't use the phrase "hate and loath" lightly).  I don't use it but I don't understand the depth of feeling.

-=Tim=-

I both hate and loath Roxio, their products are simply bloatware, you install anything from them and then reboot the computer and just watch icons in the toolbar popup one by one.  Not only that but to uninstall is a nightmare, cd drives magically go missing, drivers get corrupted.  I know this from working in tech support for a large computer retailer for longer than I would have liked.  If you need more convincing the engine that XP uses for burning is a roxio product, compare it to nero which is just more powerful, more streamlined, and more uh.. better.

[Sam]

I wonder if he reviewed iTunes. If so MC has a good chance if not v8 then at least now or maybe v11.

Mossberg loves iTunes.     I doubt he's even installed MC since v.8.

I'm hoping MC improves on it core strenghts instead, organisation & management.

I think J River is still trying to figure out what it wants to be.  I don't know why we haven't seen any new partnerships lately.  There must be dozens of companies trying to get into the PC/living room convergence thing that need a media management capability.

The question is, what does a "media center" have to do to generate more sales?  It looks like v11 is heading towards knowledge management.  Both Longhorn and Gmail seem to acknowledge that this a real need.  But I think tag-editing for documents needs to be done in the primary apps, rather than in a separate media management application.

[gundan]

Walt's reviews are targetted at people who are not hard core techies or atleast semi hard core techies.

Most of the folks who use MC are quite savvy users, and MC10 can get quite complicated too.  The help feature is woefully inadequate IMO.  I have never been able to use the help feature in MC to get anything done.  For most of my questions, I post something in these boards and I get an answer and that is not an option for most average users.

In a certain sense I agree with Walt's rationale about how technology ought to be simple and easy for most people, and Apple works in that way.  I have a Mac along with a PC and I just love their simplicity.  Further if I do want to get geeky, there is so much more 1 can do.