It's interesting to reminisce. This past summer I was getting ready to format all our household computers like I do every summer. I was desperately searching for an iTunes alternative because I was sick of how iTunes handled everything. I have to trick it to find the database so each user account uses their own database.
Unfortunately, all I saw was the standard, crappy players I've normally seen. So I reformatted and setup iTunes--yuck. A few weeks later, I came up with this brilliant idea since I had so much free time that I should re-rip to FLAC. So, I went to the flac site and was trying to figure out what I needed to do it. I viewed their list of players, etc., and holy goodness. MEDIA CENTER. I saw it was not free but went to it anyway.
I was quite impressed upon first impression. Ever since then, I have always used MC. I reformatted a few weeks ago once more and didn't even bother installing iTunes. If I need iTunes, I'll run it in a virtual PC installation because I don't want to deal with its stupidity.
The one worry I had upon working with MC was that it would not store its preferences in the database for songs. And my worry was true--it doesn't store very many settings. So that is still my biggest request because then, after pointing a computer to the library, the settings would be set.
I did create a .reg file with my settings, though, and I can open that. It will update most settings I need so that's not too bad. Overall, I'm very happy I've found MC. Funny how I found it through a free program: FLAC.