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[bil1010105]

I disagree, I donīt find it to be apples and oranges at all. In fact the only reason i see for not using MC for the things XBMC and MP does is that MC does a worse job at it in some respects.  MC should works as HTPC-software as well.

Yeah, but why would that be? Is it because the developers of XBMC and MP are more talented than Matt/Jim/etc? I doubt it.

I look at MC as being a media player / organiser with HTPC elements. We all know what it's capable of - that's why we bought it.

The others though are full-blown HTPC softwares, dedicated to the task. Quite different IMO.

[Daydream]

Hmmm...... as predicted - it has degenerated into a bit of playground sniping.

I'm not sure why did you brought it over to our attention then. Somebody starts that thread with a famous claim that MC is years ahead of XBMC, and you call our attention. To what purpose? To go and and reinforce it if the gentlemen in question gets overrun with adverse opinions? Why would anybody care? With claims like that - serious or not - you can have a war at 'home', you don't have to look elsewhere.

In my opinion this is the problem: people commenting know one program, one side of the story, but venture opinions about how bad the other programs is or how superior their choice is, after giving the other side a first try. Anybody really knowing the other program will dismantle the complains.

A really good discussion would be between people knowing both - to discuss concepts, of what works best and why, but nobody wants to have that or, probably more accurate, spend time, energy and ultimately development resources and money. Nobody wants to level the field with an implementation that would silence most complains and make the point moot. It's much easier to spend resources on equalizing a convoluted sine wave (this is a transparent shot across the bow but it's made in good humor, I assure you).

It seems to me that, probably because of a cosmic plan, both dev teams, of MC and XBMC, they do what they do, find something else to develop towards, and do not tread on each other's grounds.

[bil1010105]

A really good discussion would be between people knowing both - to discuss concepts, of what works best and why, but nobody wants to have that or, probably more accurate, spend time, energy and ultimately development resources and money. Nobody wants to level the field with an implementation that would silence most complains and make the point moot.

I agree completely, and I tried (as StockportJambo in that thread), to offer a balanced view of both sides... since I use both MediaPortal and MC extensively.

I would love someone to create a piece of software which took the best of both worlds, but that's a frequent complaint I have with any pieces of software I use a lot. I'm a software developer myself, and would love to take a crack at it, but I'm too busy with the day job.

[preproman]

Yeah, but why would that be? Is it because the developers of XBMC and MP are more talented than Matt/Jim/etc? I doubt it.

I look at MC as being a media player / organiser with HTPC elements. We all know what it's capable of - that's why we bought it.

The others though are full-blown HTPC softwares, dedicated to the task. Quite different IMO.

I'm curious to know your definition of "full-blown HTPC softwares" and why MC does not fall in that category?  At the end of the day all the above are software that serve us our MEDIA.  All be it in different ways, so I think the only difference is the way our media is served up or presented to us.  

[bil1010105]

I'm curious to know your definition of "full-blown HTPC softwares" and why MC does not fall in that category?  At the end of the day all the above are software that serve us our MEDIA.  All be it in different ways, so I think the only difference is the way our media is served up or presented to us.  

You are in some ways correct, but I think the key distinction here is that MC treats the playback & organisation of different media types as a priority, and the presentation of that data as secondary.

With "full blown" HTPC software, that situation is reversed.

An oversimplification of course, but I don't want to get into a discussion on what MediaPortal (and the like) offer which MC doesn't on here. Both have their good and bad elements - the point I'm making is about design focus.

[lbstyling]

The whole apples and oranges arguement is a misnomer.

 For any 2 competing forces, equal ground is a dream. The fact that they both compete in the same field means they can be directly compaired. If they were more equal, there would be no point in the comparrison.

There is no answer only a probability. For instance I would wager the probability is that a  group of AV receiver users will prefer JRiver over all others, and the cost would be of no concern again a receiver.

[flac.rules]

Yeah, but why would that be? Is it because the developers of XBMC and MP are more talented than Matt/Jim/etc? I doubt it.

I look at MC as being a media player / organiser with HTPC elements. We all know what it's capable of - that's why we bought it.

The others though are full-blown HTPC softwares, dedicated to the task. Quite different IMO.

Why is that important? MC is worse at the presentation, whatever the reson for that may be. I wish it wasnīt and if it wasnīt i would see no reason to use both MC and a frontend like XBMC in union. I know the programs are different, however the weak points of MC is just the reality, not a wished situation IMHO. Everytime i can replace som software with MC I am a bit happier.

[bil1010105]

Why is that important? MC is worse at the presentation, whatever the reson for that may be. I wish it wasnīt and if it wasnīt i would see no reason to use both MC and a frontend like XBMC in union. I know the programs are different, however the weak points of MC is just the reality, not a wished situation IMHO. Everytime i can replace som software with MC I am a bit happier.

Exactly. You're in more or less the same place as me and many others. Except another way to look at it might be, MC makes no attempt to be a competitor to XBMC or MediaPortal in the presentation stakes... instead focussing development on other areas. In that situation, MC isn't weak, it's just deliberately not trying very hard.

It may be that come MC20 Theatre View will be rewritten / revamped into something approaching what the current generation of HTPC softwares offer, and that might be on the long-term roadmap at JRiver, I've no idea. In that case, we will all get what we want - the best of both worlds. I somehow doubt it, but I'll happily be proven wrong.

But having followed this software for a few years now, and upgrading since MC12, my impression is that it's just not a priority for the JRiver guys. Plus, they are hamstrung by being commercial - it limits what they can do in terms of metadata scraping & integration with other systems etc (look at the Spotify thread as an example). Also, as a commercial product, they have to pay the developers - which limits things even further as every feature has a cost & needs a business case, rather than just doing something because it's cool no matter how long it ties up the developer's time.

[nwboater]

......But having followed this software for a few years now, and upgrading since MC12, my impression is that it's just not a priority for the JRiver guys. Plus, they are hamstrung by being commercial - it limits what they can do in terms of metadata scraping & integration with other systems etc (look at the Spotify thread as an example). Also, as a commercial product, they have to pay the developers - which limits things even further as every feature has a cost & needs a business case, rather than just doing something because it's cool no matter how long it ties up the developer's time.

The only HTPC/PVR software I have used besides MC is BeyondTV and SageTV. Sage somehow got a huge user developer community that wrote plugins and addons for Sage that solved some of the issues you are discussing. In their last version, V7, they made addons a core part of the setup interface. That allowed very simple selection and use of these addons. The quality and usefulness of many of them was quite impressive.

In comparison to Sage I see very little of this here. Not sure if it's difficult to develop for MC, the program is too tightly controlled to allow it, or there just aren't the same kind of user/developers here. It's really a shame because we could end up with a great combination of Commercial and User Developed HTPC sotware

Rod

[JustinChase]

Also, as a commercial product, they have to pay the developers - which limits things even further as every feature has a cost & needs a business case, rather than just doing something because it's cool no matter how long it ties up the developer's time.

Yeah, kind of, but not to the degree you may think...

Christmas is past us and my biggest wish remains unfullfilled - a high quality convolution engine with tight integration with JRiver MC. In my experience there is no such solution available today.

2 business days later...

I got a little smarter about convolution today.

I sketched together a partitioning, frequency-based convolution system. 

We have some other higher priorities than convolution right now, so I can't say when we might put this work into a real build.

2 business days later...

I have the internals of a native convolution engine working.

That's less than a week, no way a thorough cost/benefit analysis was done on that.

I get your point, but I just wanted to point out that MC operates VERY MUCH like open source in the speed of change and ability to change direction as wanted by the authors.  You KNOW Matt wants this in his shed, so it's happening FAST.

I'm sure there is hope it will bring additional business, but it's "cool" first and foremost

[bil1010105]

It's a fair point... Matt sometimes has the shoes in his mouth rather than the dog's. That's why we love him. 

The release schedule and pace of development of MC has always been it's strong point - you can see that in the sheer number of things that have been added / fixed in a single month, when there is around 6 months between MediaPortal releases (and MediaPortal 2 has been in development for 5+ years and hasn't even been released as alpha yet!  )

I've also seen Jim veto things on this forum as well because there isn't enough business need for it, or it would take too long to implement... so it's swings and roundabouts.