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2. The first thing that happens after launching the program for the first time is that it starts importing everything it can find. Maybe most people won't mind this, but I do. I have several hard drives with a few terabytes of data and I don't want to have to wait for it to scan all of it when all I want to manage is music and photos in specific locations. Please change this so the user gets prompted whether or not they run a full scan. People have iTunes if they want to not have control. Come on, this is supposed to be the alternative.

It runs after a 45 second timer - which you probably didn't notice since you were new to the program.
I think this is a mistake, and the program should ask the user if they want to scan their drives for media, rather than doing it automatically.

6. Either some options were taken out of General>Behavior>Double-click, or this is something I've always wanted. I would like to be able to combine Replace Playing Now (single) with Add To Playing Now (play now). Meaning, I want to double click one file and have that one file play without clearing the file list in Playing Now.

Unless I am misunderstanding things, the "Add to playing now (play now)" option does what you want.

9. Hate how child windows such as the options menu have an always on top setting, so if I try to switch to another window like a web browser, the thing is blocking. Child windows shouldn't be forcibly visible if another program is in focus.

They are modal dialogs inside Media Center, but should not appear on top of other applications.

13. I had already had a folder with all the cover art that my copy of MC13 used. Despite setting MC20 to the cover art location, instead of using the files there (and being able to configure cover art file recognition rules as "[Artist] - [Album].jpg") it downloaded new versions of cover art for everything into a sub-directory called Albums, many of which have lower resolution and quality or even the wrong art altogether. I would like to go back to the days when something that's a bit more obscure, I could scan the cover art, give it the right name and drop it into the cover art directory and MC would just find it whenever I would tag something that matched. I ended up selecting all the images in the root directory and dragging them into the new Albums directory and going through the overwrite prompt one by one to compare thumbnails and file attributes. There are 373 albums in my library, so it was a pain in the ass.

You can disable the "Get cover art" option in Tools → Import → Configure Auto-Import
 

14. For a lot of files I don't have cover art for, MC keeps downloading images that aren't right. An album by a band called Kara's Flowers keeps downloading some Modest Mouse cover. Even if I click on remove cover art as well as permanently delete the image, it just downloads again after a few seconds. I don't know how to correct this behavior, besides manually associating each of these files with an empty text file named blank.jpg. There should be a way to configure this. Maybe a pop-up prompt that has a none of the above option that also prevents MC from re-prompting you unless you try to find cover art manually.

Again, you can prevent Media Center from automatically grabbing cover art.
Right-click an album and select Cover Art → Get From Internet… to be presented with a choice of artwork to use.
Personally I find that most of the results Media Center finds are too low quality or too low resolution, and do it all manually. (note: MC still only uses JPG artwork, not PNG)

16. At first, I missed the three Audio/Video/Images tabs, but I like the new tab system that can be stored into favorites. I just wish there was to make some tabs a bit more permanent. A way to lock the tabs and prevent navigating away from them. I know it's just as easy to click on the new tab button to avoid it, but my instincts keep making me forget and I always navigate away from a tab that I was using. The back/forward buttons are very useful in undoing this, though. Being able to drag and drop the tabs would be nice too.

If you use a split view, you can lock one of the views. I like to have a view with all my zones ("Playing Now") in the left pane, and all my media views in the right.
You can also open new tabs by clicking the middle mouse button on items in the tree, which opens them to the right of the current tab.
I agree that it would be nice if we could drag to re-order the tabs though.
 
Tools → Options → Startup → Location: Last Location will preserve your current layout when you quit and restart Media Center.

That's all I got for now. I hope these issues get resolved eventually. Someone let me know if the portable install issues are an easy upcoming fix or if I'll have to switch to a normal install if I want things to work. Thanks.

A lot of your issues do seem related to the portable install. I would try using a normal install first.
Portable installs have always been a bit troublesome, so I just do a regular install and backup my library to a portable drive.

[TigerNightmare]

If you have a problem, please post it in a thread with a subject that describes it.

This is just a wall of text.

Sorry you feel that way, but while I can compile maybe four of these things into one issue (portable installs), I just honestly wanted to express what I saw, what I liked and what I didn't like. If you just want bug reports and not genuine feedback, I'm not exactly sure where to draw the line, except to eliminate any praise. I could post 15 different topics, but wouldn't that take even longer to read?

Unless I am misunderstanding things, the "Add to playing now (play now)" option does what you want.

I was talking about double-click behavior. The action you're talking about is only available through a series of menus from right clicking.

They are modal dialogs inside Media Center, but should not appear on top of other applications.

Well, they do...

You can disable the "Get cover art" option in Tools → Import → Configure Auto-Import
Right-click an album and select Cover Art → Get From Internet… to be presented with a choice of artwork to use.

Personally, I would prefer user choice/input for this. I don't mind the automatic aspect so much as the inaccuracy. I think the way it used to be, MC would show you the different images it would find and you would have to choose which. I suppose disabling it is a good solution, though, since I won't have to add cover art for my entire library anymore.

If you use a split view, you can lock one of the views. I like to have a view with all my zones ("Playing Now") in the left pane, and all my media views in the right.

I've messed with the split views and they don't really operate the way I want them to and I don't like losing that much of the screen to each tab. The way it is, I can have tabs open for the player, for panes and for a smartlist I'm working on. And I can close MC and open it again and they'll still be there because I have it set that way. But if I switch libraries, then switch back, then I get one tab open to the player and the other tabs are just the Start home pages.

[JimH]

Please use a single subject thread.

There is a thread on "Feature requests" where you can post things you want.