Just bought the JRiver software and am loving it. Had been looking for a way to play my 600GB music library via my Bose Lifestyle V35 system for the past 12 months or so, when time permitted. Ran accross the new word HTPC. So I turned my laptop into an HTPC, after replacing the dvd drive with a second hard drive of 1 TB. Moved all my music onto it, and installed JRiver onto the original hard drive of the laptop. Connected HDMI cable from laptop to Bose unit, and all works. If your computer does not have an HDMI output, you can also use the headphone jack. I did that for a day to test, and it worked very good. Of course, there will be no video. You need a headphone jack on one side of the cable, and a composite out on the other end. No problem! I did this setup for a day because my old laptop had a hard time doing BOTH audio and video with HDMI, so I figured I do not need video, I just try the headphone jack. And it worked good. If using the headphone jack, you will need to use the ipad to control JRiver. The bose remote ws still able to control volume and select next/previous song, pause, stop (depending on which theatre view I chose; if I chose a wrong theathre view the remote buttons would start acting up). Finally able to shuffle all my music at once, even able to use the Bose Remote for everything I want to do! I can even rate songs with the bose remote, access all my playlists, change display options, it is just great! Of course my laptop did already have remote with it from the factory, which is a rare thing. But I know that there are other options to make any other remote work with your laptop. I just do not remember the name of the one that impressed me the most; I do not need it.
Got rid of Itunes! The cover art works great in JRiver. Of the 1000's of cd's I imported, only 1 or 2 did not get cover art. I see that I can submit my coverart to the internet library as well, and it is in fact automatically done unless you deselect a checkbox in the options panel. So I think that is a great thing as well! I used to spend HOURS with Itunes getting the cover art. With JRiver it was fully automatic!
Furthermore very glad to see that I can sync my ipods and iphone and any other mp3 devices! Very impressive! It was also important for me to be able to rate using just the ipod, and that those ratings would than be synced to my PC library after connecting my Ipod...JRiver once again came through and it worked like a charm!
So just wanted to share my experiences in case someone else has a bose lifestyle system and is pondering on how to connect their Itunes library to it. I could not find anything online, so hope that google will find this post and help someone else. And of course, to the reader with the bose system, get rid of Itunes! JRiver is like stepping into another dimension!