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[Chasoscar]

I am hoping I am missing something! I have seen threads discussing this before and know that I am not the only one frustrated with this feature. I realize that JRiver’s position is that “Play Doctor” is here to stay and for some reason, an option to disable it is NOT going to happen. It may be a great feature, and I suspect that I have just not found a way to implement and appreciate its intended purpose. So far for me, it has been a thorn in my side and I just don’t or cant understand it or why I am forced to deal with it every time I want to listen to a song. Every time I open MC........ there it is, instead of my last viewed playlist(which is what I previously saw). The only way I know to get rid of it is to hit play...... then it takes me somewhere I don’t even want to go....... then I have to re-find the playlist that I originally wanted. Like I said....... I can only hope that I am missing some very simple solution to help me avoid having to deal with this feature every time I open MC........
Please enlighten me.  Thank you for your help and understanding~~~

[JimH]

You can tell MC to start up in "Last Location".

This isn't going to change.

[Chasoscar]

Jim....... Ive tried that.......... Play Doctor still comes up

[Scolex]

If you are saying that you are using "Last Location" but when you close MC you have something like b4.jpg below and when you restart you have something like after.jpg below then you are just misunderstanding what is happening. You are at the location that you left and the Doctor is only visible because the player is in a Stop state.
Is this different than what you are experiencing? If it is could you give more detail so I can try to replicate it.

[Chasoscar]

Thanks for the reply Scolex.....
That is the behavior that I am seeing exactly, but when I exit MC it doesnt matter if the playlist is playing, stopped or paused....... when I restart MC, Play Doctor is in the display instead of, say, the album art for the current track for example. Now, to get out of this view all I have to do is click Playing Now in the tree and things are as they should be. Not a big deal and I would not find it annoying at all if I could just find something useful about PD, but I remain honestly curious ...... what is it about this feature that other users find so useful that it makes even mentioning a simple “disable option" seem like such a taboo suggestion? Please tell me what I am missing !!

[Scolex]

I use it all the time, if there isn't a particular song, artist, etc that I want to hear and instead just want to here a certain genre or mood I can just type it real quick and select the level of difference I want and hit play for a auto playlist. I always have Media Network running so very often I don't even open the MC interface and just hit a quick key that launches an auto playlist which uses Play Doctor.
Then again I don't use static playlists very much at all as I find that they become stale so PD/auto playlists/Smartlists work great for me.
I only have one complaint about PD and that is if I use it and then manually add a song it breaks the cycle of MC adding a track every time a track plays.

The easiest way to never see PD when you open MC and have tracks in Playing Now is to invoke the start playing current playlist on startup in options.
The caveat to that is if MC starts with both Media Server and the GUI at Windows start up MC will start playing as soon as the computer boots.

[Scolex]

Thanks for the reply Scolex.....
That is the behavior that I am seeing exactly, but when I exit MC it doesnt matter if the playlist is playing, stopped or paused.

The play state when you close MC doesn't matter it always starts in the Stop state unless you use the above referenced option.

[Chasoscar]

Sean....
As you can see..... I do have the Start Playing Current Playlist enabled along with Last Location/Last Exit View, but the PD still comes up with every program restart.......... From what I gather from your post, it shouldnt do this(and it didnt used to with these settings)...... maybe it is just a Glitch and a reinstall or update to the latest version will fix...... Can you confirm

17.0.173

[Chasoscar]

Sean,
Maybe the reason I do not find PD useful is that I have, in a way, already created my own PD using the Navigation Dropdown and added my favorites ratings/genre playlists there. The playlists never get "stale" because I just reshuffle them now and then.

[Scolex]

I was not using the "Start Playing current playlist" but I just enabled that setting and when I closed MC and reopened it PD displayed for a second and then the current playlist started and PD disappeared so you are correct you are not seeing normal behavior. Before trying a re-install try disabling the "Start Plating..." option shut down MC and then re-enable it with another restart to see if you see normal behavior.
I ask that you use that routine first because I have had settings become switched without reflecting it in options before and a simple cycle of the setting solved the issue.
No clue what causes it so I chalk it up as a flipped byte (0 instead of 1 or vise versa) which is not out of the realm of possibility.
A Library restore of settings only has worked for me before also when something wasn't working as expected or as it used to.

[Chasoscar]

Sean....
I tried your suggestions....... unchecked "Start Playing current playlist", closed the program, restarted, rechecked "Start Playing current playlist", closed the program, restarted.......... PD is still coming up. Tried 17.0.178....... same problem.
I just wish I could either find a use for PD or disable it, because it does nothing for me. Like Teats on a Boar Hog. It seems for now, my only option is to deal with it on every startup. Thanks for your suggestions!

[Scolex]

I suggest creating a new post "Start Playing current playlist on start-up not working" and see if anyone else has seen similar behavior or if the devs can find the issue.

[rick.ca]

Not a big deal and I would not find it annoying at all if I could just find something useful about PD, but I remain honestly curious ...... what is it about this feature that other users find so useful that it makes even mentioning a simple “disable option" seem like such a taboo suggestion? Please tell me what I am missing !!

I think your question answers itself if you can see it cuts both ways. What is so abhorrent about PD appearing in a space that's otherwise unused? I don't know why you can't get a playlist playing automatically on start-up, but that's beside the point. If something is playing, the space is used for a cover or visualization. If nothing is playing, neither of those are relevant and there's no reason why it should not be used for PD.

If the playlists are not ones where the order is important (i.e., they're shuffled anyway), you can also us PD to play them. Just use Set rules for files that can be included to select the playlist (or playlist group), and play without entering anything (unless you want to restrict the selection further).

[marko]

Play Doctor is brilliant. And I never see it!!

I have assigned Ctrl+Alt+R as a global keyboard shortcut to "play Radio". I use library server on this PC, so the shortcut works, even if the main MC program is not running.

The saved Play Doctor playlists are superb in Theater View. If you switched your lists to saved Play Doctor lists, you would never need to manually shuffle them now and then, MC would take care of that for you.

In theory, a Play Doctor list should never end. It will start off with 100 tracks pulled from the search rules, and as each track finishes, Play Doctor will add another to the list.

I've tested, and can say that for me, when last location is Playing Now, and start playing current playlist is set as "Yes", when I close and restart MC, it opens in Playing Now, showing Play Doctor, then about two seconds later, playback begins and cover art is displayed instead.

Note that if your "Last Location" was Playing Now, and you were playing a Play Doctor list, when you restart, it is no longer a Play Doctor list. It reverts to being a static list that will stop when it reaches the last file. It remembers the list location, and there will be 100 files to play before the list ends.

Do you have a last.fm subscription? If you do, you can include last.fm tracks in your Play Doctor lists too, which is neat.

-marko

[Chasoscar]

Thanks Marko........ very informative, I think I just need to learn more about PD to appreciate it and your post really helped me be aware of some of the things I might do with it. Now, if I can just figure out how to do them(I am still not very good with rules)!