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[overzeetop]

I've got a new HT computer on order. My current rig has some ghosts in it, and the family (and I) are at the end of our patience. We currently use Vista Media Center, but it's really not very good, so I'm considering alternatives. Now, sure, I could download the demo, set it up, and try it out...but let's just say that I only have time to set up the MC once, so if J River doesn't do it for us, well, I'm in trouble.

Here's what we use the MC for, in order of importance:

1. Movies: DVD (vob rips), Divx, Mkv, and soon-to-be BR rips on the new machine.  We use the MyMovies plugin and like it a lot. And I currently have a database of all 350+ movies we own and have ripped to an unRaid server all ready complete.  I could enter them again. If I really, really had to.
2. On line content - Hulu mostly. Pandora would be awesome if I could get to it in an easy to access way.
3. Music - I've got 100G I ripped from my CD collection, about 80% is FLAC. There are a few albums in APE, and there's about 20% mp3 content on there as well.  We rarely listen because I have to have a separate folder in MP3 format just to get VMC to recognize the metadata, and I haven't really spent much effort scrubbing the converted files to make them easy to search. I also have no playlists in that format. I use media monkey as the core library manager...but I'm not really wedded to it.
Last. We don't have a tuner. I don't plan on getting a tuner. I use DirecTv and that stuff is separate. It's not a priority \. I might be convinced otherwise, but our D* units are RF, not IR - I'd have to give up one unit to the computer alone, or lease another unit and dedicate it for the HTPC to use in IR mode.

How easy is JR to use? Since the video jukebox is king in our house, is it Kaleidescope-easy? Mkv and BD rips out of the box, even if the mkvs hav multiple audio streams? Can it really do hulu and pandora from a standard WinMC remote? can I actually bring my music collection back to usefulness without doing backflips to get the !#@$ codecs installed and working?

So, is it worth it? If I were stuck with it, could I survive?

[fitbrit]

Hi there

I can't speak for Hulu, but I use MC exclusively for my video files. It plays avi, mkv and m2ts (bd rip) just fine. You just set up the directshow filters (I and others can help) and off you go. I too have an unraid server (soon to be 17 TB) and MC and unRAID play so well together it's heavenly. FLAC  and other lossless formats are supported very well, as is on-the-fly transocding to lossy formats when copying to an mp3 player for example.
I've got MC set up with my Harmony remote so it's easy enough to use, although I could tweak the settings a little to really take advantage of the most often used features. Hope this helps.

[galahad1974]

I personally think you can waste alot of time looking and not do as well as MC For most of your media needs.

I use it for All the Video file you mentioned, Allthough now i convert my BR to MKV for consistancy and storage space reasons. I used to use unraid and as fitbrit said, they work very well together. APE, FLAC, And MP# all coexist nicely and metadata management is what MC excells at (in my opinion)..i dont have any experience with online media so i can't comment there.

I also have Directv, but for that i still use Sagetv, Although someday id like to move to MC for that also, their TV support has made great advances recently.

best of all, you can dl it and try it for 30 days free. Its really a great package and the support through this site works very well in most cases, as the community here is very active, and some of the senior folk are very generous with their time.

[benn600]

Speaking from literally years of searching and talking with others, Media Center is truly about the most customizable and powerful solution out there.  I've recently discovered some alternatives for theater-view only applications but MC is the best when it comes to doing it all.  I use it for a strict library of exclusively FLAC, VOB Rips, and JPGs.  I have collections of other file types but don't add them to our HTPC system because I like to keep it professional and high quality.  The best part is that they keep improving MC.  Since I started back with MC 11.1, they have had two new major versions and a third (v14) will be out in a few months.  You will buy a v14 license now I believe...so you're at the beginning of a version purchase life cycle.

MC offers a development system that seems to be the best in any software I've purchased.  The upgrade price is utterly inexpensive.

[hit_ny]

We currently use Vista Media Center, but it's really not very good, so I'm considering alternatives.

Could you tell us why you are not happy with Vista MC ?

We use the MyMovies plugin and like it a lot. And I currently have a database of all 350+ movies we own and have ripped to an unRaid server all ready complete.  I could enter them again. If I really, really had to.

May not be necessary, there is already a plugin to import mymovies data into MC.

3. Music - I've got 100G I ripped from my CD collection, about 80% is FLAC. There are a few albums in APE, and there's about 20% mp3 content on there as well.  We rarely listen because I have to have a separate folder in MP3 format just to get VMC to recognize the metadata, and I haven't really spent much effort scrubbing the converted files to make them easy to search. I also have no playlists in that format. I use another program as the core library manager...but I'm not really wedded to it.

This part MC will do better than most. Which other program do you curently use ?

How easy is JR to use?

There is a learning curve but its worth it to get more out of the program. The big factor here is whether you have grown out of your current apps. Vista's MC is prolly easier to use for the avg user, so its mostly when you feel constrained with your current apps that MC can prove a better alternative hence my first question.

You can always post here for help. In reality its the preferred way when interacting with JRiver as well as its many users. This place is their helpline

Since the video jukebox is king in our house, is it Kaleidescope-easy?

What is  kaleidoscope ?

So, is it worth it?

The app is free to try for a month, you are the best judge

v13 is complete, v14 has just begun so will be rough around the edges.

[Peter_T]

My 2 cents: an HTPC should house media (or stream it from some sort of NAS if you can't put the PC somewhere out of ear-shot and out of sight) and play that media, nothing else.  No updates, no antivirus, no bells, no whistles - basically behaving as a stand-alone device. 

And it should be beautiful.  It's all about the media, right?  It should be very visual, sexy and simple while doing exactly what you want with excellent sound and HD picture. 

But what I run on my HTPC doesn't manage media well, hardly at all.  So I run MC on a separate machine that manipulates (as needed) the networked files that reside on my HTPC.  It almost works better this way because I don't have to take the HTPC offline (i.e. interrupt someone's movie or something) to add new content.

edit: haha was my post ever censored.    I came back to the thread and thought, "That's not what I said!"  Oh well.

[overzeetop]

This is great.  After years on various forums, I knew there would be folks who had the answers at their fingertips.

In answer to some questions: Vista Media Center is nice, and somewhat easy to use, but very non-intutitive. There are  three or four places to find "videos", horrible media management, no built in FLAC support, third part FLAC/APE/MP4 support is incomplete, setup and control options are either non-existent or horribly limited.  It's like balancing a ball on top of a stick - you're constantly hoping that nothing happens to foul up the balance. Even with updates turned off, any minor change can throw the whole system out of whack.  In fact, part of the impetus to change was a recent problem where the AC3 codec started playing the director's commentary on all MKVs, and there was no way to tell it otherwise. VMC won't let you select a track; AC3decode won't let you define a default track. I had to replace it with ffmpeg for audio. IT was only an hour to troubleshoot and fix it, but it was an hour I shouldn't have had to spend.  

Peter_T - I'm already streaming from a separate fileserver (5TB unraid), and my media backups are performed by a separate machine. The HT computer does very little other than HT - it has picasa on it (with a second monitor at a desk) and firefox for occasional surfing. The system (vista/MC) is so unstable once it's set up to play more than dvr-ms, avi, and mp3 I'm paranoid about installing anything, including updates.

[Alex B]

Audio stream selection with MKV and MP4 videos should work fine if the Haali media splitter is installed.

With AVI files that contain multiple audio streams you may need to use the FFDShow audio decoder.

More info is here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51010