Very frustrating. This is the sort of experience I'd expect to have with beta open-source software - not a commercial product. Does anybody actually test this stuff?
I understand your frustration if this was your first experience with the product. I'll take a moment to explain something, though...
J River is a very small, private, software development company. They're not owned by a large corporation with massive resources, and they aren't playing (as far as I know) the venture capital game where you burn through other people's money taking a loss hoping to be bought out by one of those big corporations to get the big check. Those facts have some downsides... They don't have a massive, distributed system to test a wide variety of hardware and software configurations all across the world, for example, so they rely on their users for feedback and assistance.
But, this also has some massive upsides. If you take the time to participate, you won't find a software development company out there more willing to bend over backwards to listen to and help their customers. Seriously. They amaze me on a weekly basis. You literally have direct access to the people writing the code on these forums, and to the CEO of the company, not just to dedicated "support specialists" who manage the public. If you want something, you can ask, and if you have a good point (and don't aggravate people constantly) they will almost always listen.
They largely develop Media Center "in the open" with the user community. There is a small closed beta group (a relatively recent development, spurred by issues like this one), of which I'm a volunteer. We're not a paid or managed group in any way. Just a few more experienced users who are interested in participating in the development of one of our favorite software applications. Under normal circumstances, we generally get new builds every weekday. We test them throughout the week, and usually they release a new "latest" build on this board once per week (almost always on Mondays, after a weekend with the current build). These builds are not considered "stable". They do contain the latest developments, and they post them here to draw a larger audience for additional feedback which enables refinement. The assumption is that users who participate in these forums are at least a slight-bit more technically competent, and if they're using the "latest" builds, they're willing to help track down problems and assist them to improve the product for us all.
The builds currently considered "stable" are posted on
the Download Page here. This happens with far less frequency. I'd estimate roughly once a month, but honestly I don't follow it that closely because I'm almost always on the latest daily build. These are usually the most thoroughly vetted versions simply because they've been available to a wider audience for longer, and they pick and choose builds with low amounts of reported issues for "stable" release (no software, even what runs on embedded secure systems that is heavily vetted by formalized review processes is really ever "bug free", and certainly no consumer software).
It is a little like something "in between" what you see with many rapidly developing open source projects, and a more traditional software development cycle. The benefit though is that they actually do have people who are staffed,
paid, and for whom developing MC is their full-time job, so it doesn't die on the vine or fracture or stall like so many other promising open source projects. There is a consistent focus and design, and I imagine their code looks a lot better than your average open source hobbyist project, too.
For the last two or three weeks, they've been trying to build a new video playback system called "Red October". You can read all about it if you look around on these forums. This system has a LOT of promise. It will allow MC to handle a wide variety of different video formats without requiring the user to manage external third-party DirectShow filters that often cause substantial issues for novice users. And it will allow them to do so in a controlled way that can provide a very high level of quality (far more so than you'd achieve with most of the junk "filter packs" out there). A number of very dedicated third-party developers of those very filters are participating in the development, and are working with the J River developers to improve the availability of high quality, free, decoding systems. It isn't done yet, but it is well on its way.
In their enthusiasm over the new developments, and with the goal of gathering additional feedback from a wider community than the beta group can provide, they "jumped the gun" a bit and released the Red October builds probably a bit before they were ready. This caused a fair bit of problems, but it also gathered tons of valuable feedback that we weren't previously getting (it is hard to find what doesn't work, if it all works for you). I'm honestly not sure why they recently moved build 105 to the "stable" download page, it isn't for me to say, but I don't think build 103 ever made it there. Right now, because of the initial issues with the new Red October system, we haven't been getting ANY private beta builds to speak of at all. They've been pushing all of the newest builds directly out to the public channels in order to get the fixes to users as quickly as possible. I have no idea if this new system, still under active development on a daily basis, has anything to do with the issues you're reporting, though it is certainly possible. Only yesterday, I helped them track down an issue with broken TS files being generated by my HD-PVR device (due to a long-standing hardware bug, apparently), and they released a build today that fixed the issue for me. But, this trouble certainly won't last. The new system is improving with each build, every day, and once it is working well they will (happily, I expect) move on to other battles and go back to the more "typical" cycle. Any additional lingering problems with the system will be cleaned up as users report issues and they're able to track them down and come up with solutions.
So... I guess I would say this: If you want a product from a company that will continually grow, listen to their customers, respond to feedback quickly, is focused on high-end quality and flexibility, and that has an amazing amount of power, you've come to the right place. Pitch in, and let us know what you need, and what doesn't work. There certainly isn't a huge community of Australian users with AverMedia DVB-T cards here (though there might certainly be a few, I know we have a number of well-loved Australians here). We will help though, if you come with a positive attitude and are willing to help make the product better for everyone.
If you are looking for a typical, slow software development cycle where new builds are hidden away and tested for months and years behind closed doors before being released to the public, and where ambition and features are removed or never tried because they might ruffle a few feathers, or occasionally fail... Then head over to Microsoft or Apple, as you probably won't be satisfied here.
With all that said... If you are still interested, try build 105, as some additional improvements to the system have been made. I don't use MC as my DVR application, so I can't comment directly on the current state of tuner support, and certainly not on DVB-T support since I'm in the US... So I can't really say if your problems might be related to "playback" and possibly caused by the new DirectShow system, or something else about the DVB-T hardware. If it doesn't work, come back and explain and we'll work to help you.
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Topic: My First Experience with J River - Major Issues (Read 1912 times)