I guess gfloeng would like to know if the player controls would work also in the standard view or if the remote controller is completely disabled when MC is displaying the Standard View. When Playing Now is already populated, the commands like Play, Pause, Next, Previous, Fast Forward, Rewind, Volume Up, Volume Down, etc would be useful even without any display (at least during music playback). I don't have the JRiver remote so I can't try this.
Personally I have used for years a setup that has a small standard LCD monitor on a coffee table near my sofa for fully controlling MC from the standard view. I use the big television screen mostly only as an output device during playback. However, it might be nice to be able to use a remote controller in addition to my "control center".