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[paul1970]

I'm a new user and I'm still in my trial period.
I wanted to say, first of all, that I think this is a great product in many ways; it's extremely flexible, it does everything I think I will ever need it to and I'm impressed at the development work that continues to go into it. The areas which I think have been neglected though are ease-of-use and user documentation.

('imo' is implicit in anything I post so I leave them out. Please don't take offence). I'll try and set out my issues in an organised way or I'll ramble (warning - I might anyway):
1. Impressive number of options and customisations, but the truth is that the Tools->Options menu is an out-of-control monster. The very fact that there is a 'search' option there is a tacit admission that it's confusing and un-navigable. It needs to be streamlined and rationalised. I'm not saying that options should be lost, just that it should be more organised. As a software developer this looks to me like a structure that was in place early on in the tool's lifetime and it worked well when there was less in it, but has never been properly rethought as it has just bloated.

2. Documentation: What, there isn't any help? Oh, but there's a Wiki! Well that's all right then. Oh...
The Wiki is in a sad state. It is incomplete in many areas and sadly out of date in others. Many of the sections show the classic signs of having been written by engineers rather than anyone with technical authoring experience. And not in a good way. No-one (NO-ONE) can figure out how to use this software properly, troubleshoot their setup and optimise their experience by relying on this Wiki and, since it is the only documentation available, that's pretty unforgivable. As a case in point (just one example) I present this recent thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81595.0;topicseen. Seriously: this isn't documented anywhere guys? Come on!
It should be a point of much discomfort and embarrassment to JRiver that the XBMC Wiki is comprehensively more complete, useful and professionally presented than the Wiki for MC.

3. The Interact fora are very good and I have no problem with the fact that 'This Is Support'. If you know how to go about finding it and you know how to filter out the poorer quality info and less well-informed responses there's an awful lot of good info. But this shouldn't be a replacement for documentation, or rather it's not an adequate alternative to proper documentation for anyone and for many less savvy users will be of no use at all in trying to learn how to use this software. There's a lot of stuff here though (and much of it not from devs) that could and should be distilled, properly organised, illustrated and added to the Wiki. Why is no-one doing that (at a minimum)?

To close out I'll re-iterate: it's a great application and it more than meets my needs and meets most of my wants. For that reason (despite the above) I'll shortly be forking out for my license. But I have a number of friends and family who have shown an interest in my home theatre and the changes I've been making to it recently, including the use of MC. Some have asked if I would recommend this software and, in good conscience, I can't. Because I know they aren't techie enough to set it up how they want or to fix the problems that they are bound to encounter on their own or with the resources available. And I do enough unpaid tech-support as it is.

Please take this in the spirit it's intended: I'm not slating what you've done, just pointing out an area that's been neglected that would greatly benefit from improvement.

[rlebrette]

I think that we can't expect a lot on the documentation subject from the dev team which is already doing so many things.
The user's documentation is always the thing that's kept aside when the company is not a big company (I don't say that big companies do better docs... but they usually have people that are focused on that)
Most of the french users that have failed with MC have just given up due to the lack of documentation (even in english).  

I think that If we want to change that, it's up to the users' community to build something that will fill the gap between MC and XBMC.
"The best media player" needs that. I don't know if the existing Wiki can be the source of such community effort, but there's a ton of tools that can be used if people wants to be involved.

[paul1970]

I think that If we want to change that, it's up to the users' community to build something

Well, of course that can be done. I'd suggest though that for commercial software that people are paying money for that's not good enough. I'd be shocked if that was the official attitude of the devs. A professional approach would be that the software is not ready for release until the user documentation is updated and complete. A ramshackle and out-of-date Wiki (with links to forum threads!) doesn't cut it.

[struct]

Following is pure conjecture...
I think the company has made the choice to spend time develpping and not writing manuals/wikis etc.  This makes the learning curve annoying for some and unforgivable for others. For some it means the most improvement possible by the staff available. Where you fit in varies with your familiarity of the program and will change significantly in two months.   It is what it is for all its positives and negatives.

I hope you get through the learning hump as the annoyance of lack of documentation fades very quickly (I was plenty upset for a while).

Craig

PS JRiver can you please make some visible ackowledgement of your philosophy on the sticky to save these repeated posts??

[paul1970]

JRiver can you please make some visible ackowledgement of your philosophy on the sticky to save these repeated posts??

It could be done at the same time as updating this sticky: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=10029.0
Doesn't look good.

[Matt]

I'm sorry you've had trouble getting MC working for you.

I agree better documentation would be better.  So would a lot of other things.  

That's why we're still here, working to improve things

(I'm going to close this now to avoid a piling on.  Your point was well made.)