I should add...
I used to say that Option 1 described above (using iTunes as a "handheld" in MC) would be the best possible plan. It is still a good option, and would be something they could implement completely from within MC itself. And it has minimal risk. It is possible, of course, that Apple could change the API of iTunes with some future version and kill off some part of the functionality. But the API has been static for a LONG time, and there are plenty of other iTunes "script" applications that do essentially this exact thing. iTLU is what I use, and the same exact version of iTLU has worked on iTunes without modification since iTunes 7, I think (and we're on 10.x now, many years later). I really doubt that Apple is going to notice little-old JRiver and decide to quash them for no good reason, especially if JRiver was playing by the rules and using a published API.
But... Lately I've been thinking that Option 2 discussed above would be a
much better choice, if it is financially viable for Jim.
Why?
Well... Think about how awesome you could make that App.
Imagine:
[Mode=Dreaming]
The fictional JRiver iOS App (we'll call it iOS Gizmo for short) could plug-in to your copy of MC running at home, via the same Media Network system that Android Gizmo uses, and use THAT for syncing. In MC's Options, we have a new panel that allows you to set conversion settings for Gizmo Sync (they'd have good defaults for iPhones and popular Android devices). When you launch Gizmo, it asks you to enter the Media
Network Access Key for the library you'd like to connect it to (with alternate options for directly entering an IP address and port).
So, you'd be able to browse and stream your entire MC library from home, or remotely if you have your router set up properly, and access ALL of your content on the device.
BUT (and here's where it gets cool), we'd also have a new default Smartlist called "Gizmo Sync" or something like that. Then, whenever the Gizmo app is running on the device and able to contact the server, it will
also sync any files in the Gizmo Sync Smartlist over to the local storage on the device. The Gizmo app would have a special Local Storage mode or section where you could browse all of the files that you have locally, for when you want to just use it to listen to some tunes or watch a video when you don't have an active Internet connection (or for if your MC Server at home is not available).
This Smartlist could be set up to be dynamically updating, so you could set up rules (using the existing power of Smartlists) to add a randomly rotating selection of music, images, and videos to the local storage on your device.
Even better? If you CAN connect to your MC Server, in addition to browsing and streaming files directly from the server, you could have a "Download" button. Say you're away on a trip. MC is at home recording your TV Shows for you. You really want to watch that latest episode of Boardwalk Empire that MC recorded for you while you were away, but you want to watch it on the plane with no Internet access?
Open Gizmo before you get on the plane while you have Internet access, browse and find the episode, tap Download. MC uses Red October to convert the file, on the fly, to an appropriate H.264 640x360 MP4 file (or whatever), and downloads it to your device. You get on the plane, switch Gizmo to "offline mode", and get your Boardwalk Empire on.
It could do other awesome stuff too... In addition to the Remote Server/Local Storage modes, you could have a Remote Control mode (I'm envisioning the same exact UI, with a three-way mode switch of some kind). Then, the App would act like the current WebRemote to actually control playback on your copy of MC.
The pieces are all there to build something amazing. My podcast downloader app does a lot of this kind of stuff. It can download podcast episodes (even big, video ones) over both WiFi and 3G. And, of course, AirVideo does all of the video streaming over 3G, with on-the-fly transcoding, quite well. I have other Media Player apps that can do local-storage sync much like what I described, but none have a back-end as rich or robust as what JRiver has ALREADY built with MC.
[/Mode]
I don't know if this is something that JRiver could pull off... But if so, I think it could open up a whole new market for them. I hear people complain about the limited features of iTunes on the Apple podcasts I listen to all the time, and specifically say that they wish there was something more like THIS. I'd love to be able to write to them and say "Check out JRiver Media Center and their iOS/Android Gizmo App".
