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[David Duxbury]

Hi,

I've had JRiver on my PC for quite some time but I've never been able to make any sense of it. I'm not sure if I'm being stupid or that the program just doesn't support what I want to do. Here are some of the things I'm struggling with and I'd appreciate any help in sorting them out.

1. I've never found a way of changing the interface to be how I want it. For example, the play controls are in the top left but I want them bottom center. Is it possible to move them?
2. JR 19 seems to have options to view images/photos. I would NEVER want to do this in JR but I can't seem to find an option to remove everything about images.
3. JR 19 seems to open Internet pages in the main display. I've spent ages configuring my browser to work the way I want it, so I never want to display websites in JR. How do I stop it doing this? If it must display a web page, and I don't know why a media player would want to, then I want it to be displayed in the browser I have spent ages customizing. Is it possible to open all websites externally?
4. I find the fonts JR uses to be really hard to read. How do I change them? There is an option to change font but it seems to have almost no impact. I get a message telling me that JR has been designed to work with small fonts and that changing them will not look so nice. But, to me, the fonts JR uses are terrible. The options are really hard to read and it doesn't help that there is an endless list of them, most of which are of no interest to me at all.
5. There is an "action center" in the lower left. How do I get rid of it? I'm not sure what it is there for, but so far I've found it to be completely useless.

In fact, I'd really like to change the entire look & feel of JR. All the reviews I have read seem to think it is one of the best media players on the market, and this may be true, but I find everything is badly organized. It seems like a program designed for use 15 years ago. I'm sure there must be some way of changing it, but so far I've failed to find it.

My big problem with the program is that it includes loads of things that I think other programs do better. I use dbPoweramp to rip CD's so I never want to see a ripping option in JR. I use Lightroom to manage photo's so I never want to see image options in JR. The same for videos and the list goes on. In fact, I just want JR to play my ripped music and watch satellite TV. The rest is just a nuisance to me. Foobar 2000 provides loads of ways of customizing it, and given that it is free, I'm assuming that JR must have at least that level of capability. Am I wrong? I find XBMC's interface to be way superior to JR and so as a theater interface I would never use JR. In fact, I only want it for use on my PC in my study to play music and watch TV.

If my views on JR are somewhat negative then I guess you might be wondering why I'm trying yet again to use it. The only reason is that I understand Ponomusic will be making use of it so I thought I'd give it another try since I have a Pono on order.

Any help would be most welcome,

Regards,

DLD

[6233638]

1. I've never found a way of changing the interface to be how I want it. For example, the play controls are in the top left but I want them bottom center. Is it possible to move them?

Not possible.

2. JR 19 seems to have options to view images/photos. I would NEVER want to do this in JR but I can't seem to find an option to remove everything about images.

Search for "features" in the options window. Disable Image Support.

3. JR 19 seems to open Internet pages in the main display. I've spent ages configuring my browser to work the way I want it, so I never want to display websites in JR. How do I stop it doing this? If it must display a web page, and I don't know why a media player would want to, then I want it to be displayed in the browser I have spent ages customizing. Is it possible to open all websites externally?

Right-click, and select "manage links".
You can set the action to "open in external browser".

4. I find the fonts JR uses to be really hard to read. How do I change them? There is an option to change font but it seems to have almost no impact. I get a message telling me that JR has been designed to work with small fonts and that changing them will not look so nice. But, to me, the fonts JR uses are terrible. The options are really hard to read and it doesn't help that there is an endless list of them, most of which are of no interest to me at all.

Search for "font" in the options window, and choose a font in the "Tree & View" section.
The program lists all the fonts you currently have installed on your system.
By default it uses the standard Windows system fonts. (SegoeUI or Tahoma)
 
The font rendering could be improved though, a lot of custom fonts just look terrible in Media Center - I find it best to stick with the system fonts.

5. There is an "action center" in the lower left. How do I get rid of it? I'm not sure what it is there for, but so far I've found it to be completely useless.

Search for "action window" and disable the "show action window" option in the Startup settings.
The best you can do is to minimize it, you cannot disable it.

In fact, I'd really like to change the entire look & feel of JR. All the reviews I have read seem to think it is one of the best media players on the market, and this may be true, but I find everything is badly organized. It seems like a program designed for use 15 years ago. I'm sure there must be some way of changing it, but so far I've failed to find it.

It is always helpful to provide examples instead of saying "make it better".
I agree that the program does not give a  great first impression, but the more time you spend with it, the more you will come to appreciate what it is capable of.

My big problem with the program is that it includes loads of things that I think other programs do better. I use dbPoweramp to rip CD's so I never want to see a ripping option in JR. I use Lightroom to manage photo's so I never want to see image options in JR. The same for videos and the list goes on. In fact, I just want JR to play my ripped music and watch satellite TV. The rest is just a nuisance to me.

Again, you can disable a lot of what you suggest via the "features" options.

[David Duxbury]

Thanks for the response.

I agree with your comment "It is always helpful to provide examples instead of saying make it better". The trouble is that there is very little I like about the interface design of JR. Just a quick look through the examples of how people have customized Foobar2000 and you see how people want an interface to look. XBMC may not be perfect, but it is pretty darn good. JR is probably the worst media application, that I have yet tried, in terms of interface design. And I got an email telling me about JR 20, but I've failed so far to find any comprehensive information on what is actually in it. To me that speaks volumes!

Anyway, here are some examples of what I think should be changed.

1. When I installed the application it didn't ask me any questions about how I want to use it. It has decided where my files are, where to store it's cache etc. I don't know why it does that or whether I have some option to change it during the install, but it got everything wrong. I don't store any of my music files in the locations where Windows thinks they should be and I don't know anyone who does. And I certainly don't want it writing cache files to my SSD boot drive, which is what it does by default. I then have to read through a mass of options to find all these things and change them. A "set-up" wizard could be developed to resolve that. Most programs have had them for years.

2. The first screen I see appears to be a webpage. It has a getting started option that takes me to a wiki. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that feels this way, but I don't want to wade through a wiki. I want it to ask me questions and let me answer them. I never want to see a webpage or a wiki in an application. To me that is programmers being lazy and designers not being employed. I certainly don't want to see a web page as the start page for any application. To me, that is just plain wrong. I want it to go straight to my media. The first time I want it to run a wizard.

3. I don't want an application to import media to it's library that I haven't told it to do. I'm not actually sure whether it has imported this information to a database, or is just reading files, but I don't want it to read anything that I haven't explicitly told it to. At the moment it is displaying loads of videos that I don't consider relevant and I'm not sure how I'm meant to deal with it. They should never have been displayed. Again, a set-up wizard would solve that.

4. I want to be able to choose the layout of the application. I'm right-handed and I'm mostly typing on my computer. As I'm typing this the text is going from left to right and lower down the page. I don't want play controls on the top left. My cursor/mouse spends almost NO time at the top left so every time I interact with the application I'm being forced to move the mouse all the way to the top left of the screen and I have a very large screen. So, I want to be able to select the "panels" that the application displays, choose where on the screen they are displayed, choose whether they are docked to the application or free standing, and choose what content they display. All of that should be set-up in an installation wizard and be performed by drag & drop. Most development IDE's have worked that way for years, so this is not rocket science or anything new.

5. Where this application really falls down is how it is interfaces with the user and this is most apparent in setting up TV. TV appears under drives and devices. That was a major shock! But way worse was trying to configure it. So far I have failed. Having found the option in a place where I did not expect to find it, I then expected to right-click to configure it. But right-clicking did nothing. So, I went into options, found Television and it displayed my satellite cards. If it knew my satellite cards why were they not displayed under TV in "Drives & Devices". For some reason the application assumed I was in the US which it could have found was not the case by just asking Windows. Changing this and asking it to scan for channels resulted in a blank display that sat there for ages, told me nothing, and then just closed. No error messages or anything. But no channels. Trying to get EPG data resulted in the same thing. At least this time I got an error telling me it couldn't import the data, but no explanation as to why not.

To me, that is probably the best example of how the user interface design is so bad. With an option that says "Drives and Devices" I expected to see my satellite cards, but they are not displayed. I expected it to query Windows to find my location and I expected it to tell me what it was doing/finding when it scanned for channels. Better still, I'd prefer an installation wizard to scan my system for drives and devices and ask me which devices I would like the application to use. JR is the only TV program I have used that has so far failed to display any TV channels and I still have no idea what I am doing wrong. All of the other applications also automatically loaded EPG data without me having to tell it anything.

6. If the application had queried Windows to find my location it could also have not shown me things that I can't get in my country, such as Hulu.

Anyway, I hope that explains what I find difficult about JR, but to be honest, every other media application I've see does it better, so just look at any of them! It seems to me that the developers have obsessed with sound quality and not even bothered about the user. But I guess other people are managing to use it so maybe other people like reading wikis

Regards,

DLD

[6233638]

Just a quick look through the examples of how people have customized Foobar2000 and you see how people want an interface to look. XBMC may not be perfect, but it is pretty darn good. JR is probably the worst media application, that I have yet tried, in terms of interface design.

I disagree.
Most Foobar setups are a disorganized mess.
Most XBMC setups I have seen look amateurish.
With a little customization, Media Center works very well for my needs.
 

1. When I installed the application it didn't ask me any questions about how I want to use it. It has decided where my files are, where to store it's cache etc. I don't know why it does that or whether I have some option to change it during the install, but it got everything wrong. I don't store any of my music files in the locations where Windows thinks they should be and I don't know anyone who does. And I certainly don't want it writing cache files to my SSD boot drive, which is what it does by default. I then have to read through a mass of options to find all these things and change them. A "set-up" wizard could be developed to resolve that. Most programs have had them for years.

Most people want the program to manage this for them. The options are there if you need them.

2. The first screen I see appears to be a webpage. It has a getting started option that takes me to a wiki. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that feels this way, but I don't want to wade through a wiki. I want it to ask me questions and let me answer them. I never want to see a webpage or a wiki in an application. To me that is programmers being lazy and designers not being employed. I certainly don't want to see a web page as the start page for any application. To me, that is just plain wrong. I want it to go straight to my media. The first time I want it to run a wizard.

Tools → Options → Startup → Location

3. I don't want an application to import media to it's library that I haven't told it to do. I'm not actually sure whether it has imported this information to a database, or is just reading files, but I don't want it to read anything that I haven't explicitly told it to. At the moment it is displaying loads of videos that I don't consider relevant and I'm not sure how I'm meant to deal with it. They should never have been displayed. Again, a set-up wizard would solve that.

There is a 45 second timer on the first-run auto-import. It appears in the lower-left corner.
I have repeatedly complained about this too - it is bad design. The program should never start automatically scanning every drive on the system for media. It should prompt the user.
 
You can run: File → Library → Clear Library to start over. Or create a new library instead.

4. I want to be able to choose the layout of the application. I'm right-handed and I'm mostly typing on my computer. As I'm typing this the text is going from left to right and lower down the page. I don't want play controls on the top left. My cursor/mouse spends almost NO time at the top left so every time I interact with the application I'm being forced to move the mouse all the way to the top left of the screen and I have a very large screen. So, I want to be able to select the "panels" that the application displays, choose where on the screen they are displayed, choose whether they are docked to the application or free standing, and choose what content they display. All of that should be set-up in an installation wizard and be performed by drag & drop. Most development IDE's have worked that way for years, so this is not rocket science or anything new.

This is not Foobar or a development IDE.
Most Media Players use the same layout.

6. If the application had queried Windows to find my location it could also have not shown me things that I can't get in my country, such as Hulu.

Some people use proxies. It takes only a few seconds to disable these things, so I don't consider it to be a big deal.

Anyway, I hope that explains what I find difficult about JR, but to be honest, every other media application I've see does it better, so just look at any of them! It seems to me that the developers have obsessed with sound quality and not even bothered about the user. But I guess other people are managing to use it so maybe other people like reading wikis

Again, I agree with you that the program does not make a great first impression, but I would suggest that you stick with it and learn the program.

I skipped over your TV questions as I don't use that feature at all.

[Listener]

Thanks for the response.

You might acknowledge that 6233638 provided solutions for some of the problems you cited.  Instead you launched another round of complaints.

I agree with your comment "It is always helpful to provide examples instead of saying make it better". The trouble is that there is very little I like about the interface design of JR. Just a quick look through the examples of how people have customized Foobar2000 and you see how people want an interface to look. XBMC may not be perfect, but it is pretty darn good. JR is probably the worst media application, that I have yet tried, in terms of interface design. And I got an email telling me about JR 20, but I've failed so far to find any comprehensive information on what is actually in it. To me that speaks volumes!

Anyway, here are some examples of what I think should be changed.

1. When I installed the application it didn't ask me any questions about how I want to use it. It has decided where my files are, where to store it's cache etc. I don't know why it does that or whether I have some option to change it during the install, but it got everything wrong. I don't store any of my music files in the locations where Windows thinks they should be and I don't know anyone who does. And I certainly don't want it writing cache files to my SSD boot drive, which is what it does by default. I then have to read through a mass of options to find all these things and change them. A "set-up" wizard could be developed to resolve that. Most programs have had them for years.

You can control where MC looks for files, (when you set up auto-import), where it caches files  and where it stores files when it rips CDs or DVDs (Tools/Options/File Location) and where it places the database with library information (when you create a new library.)

 
2. The first screen I see appears to be a webpage. It has a getting started option that takes me to a wiki. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that feels this way, but I don't want to wade through a wiki. I want it to ask me questions and let me answer them. I never want to see a webpage or a wiki in an application. To me that is programmers being lazy and designers not being employed. I certainly don't want to see a web page as the start page for any application. To me, that is just plain wrong. I want it to go straight to my media. The first time I want it to run a wizard.

As 6233638 said, you can specify what MC displays when it starts up.  (Tools/Options/Startup - Location.)  I use "Last location" as do a lot of other people.  You could have solved this problem quite easily if you tried.

3. I don't want an application to import media to it's library that I haven't told it to do. I'm not actually sure whether it has imported this information to a database, or is just reading files, but I don't want it to read anything that I haven't explicitly told it to. At the moment it is displaying loads of videos that I don't consider relevant and I'm not sure how I'm meant to deal with it. They should never have been displayed. Again, a set-up wizard would solve that.

MC will post a warning that it will start searching your computer to import files. It counts down down the search starts.  If you know the search is about to start, you can cancel it.  Some MC users have been vocal about their dislike for this automatic scanning of your computer's storage when you first install MC.  However, JRiver has been unwilling to give up the feature, so for now, it is something you are annoyed by when you install MC the first time or when you create a new library.

Once that initial search and auto-import process has finished, you can remove the files from the library (without deleting them from your hard drive.  Then you can set up the auto-import process so that MC searches the locations you specify.  If you prefer, you can just import files manually with no auto-import activity at only all.  I use MC that way.

4. I want to be able to choose the layout of the application. I'm right-handed and I'm mostly typing on my computer. As I'm typing this the text is going from left to right and lower down the page. I don't want play controls on the top left. My cursor/mouse spends almost NO time at the top left so every time I interact with the application I'm being forced to move the mouse all the way to the top left of the screen and I have a very large screen. So, I want to be able to select the "panels" that the application displays, choose where on the screen they are displayed, choose whether they are docked to the application or free standing, and choose what content they display. All of that should be set-up in an installation wizard and be performed by drag & drop. Most development IDE's have worked that way for years, so this is not rocket science or anything new.

You can customize a lot about MC.  If you come to MC with a rigid idea about layout, you may be disappointed.  If you are unwilling to surf the menus and dialogs to see what options are available, you will certainly be frustrated.  However, if you identify specific things you want to improve and look for a practical solution, you will often find a way to customize MC to reduce or eliminate the problem.

You may not need to use the playback control buttons very often.

MC has many thousands of users.  It has lots of capabilities and a lot of customization.  People choose MC for the benefits it provides. Most people realize that not everything will work exactly the way they want it to.  What seems right for you may be wrong for others or just unnecessary complication.
 

5. Where this application really falls down is how it is interfaces with the user and this is most apparent in setting up TV. TV appears under drives and devices. That was a major shock! But way worse was trying to configure it. So far I have failed. Having found the option in a place where I did not expect to find it, I then expected to right-click to configure it. But right-clicking did nothing. So, I went into options, found Television and it displayed my satellite cards. If it knew my satellite cards why were they not displayed under TV in "Drives & Devices". For some reason the application assumed I was in the US which it could have found was not the case by just asking Windows. Changing this and asking it to scan for channels resulted in a blank display that sat there for ages, told me nothing, and then just closed. No error messages or anything. But no channels. Trying to get EPG data resulted in the same thing. At least this time I got an error telling me it couldn't import the data, but no explanation as to why not.

To me, that is probably the best example of how the user interface design is so bad. With an option that says "Drives and Devices" I expected to see my satellite cards, but they are not displayed. I expected it to query Windows to find my location and I expected it to tell me what it was doing/finding when it scanned for channels. Better still, I'd prefer an installation wizard to scan my system for drives and devices and ask me which devices I would like the application to use. JR is the only TV program I have used that has so far failed to display any TV channels and I still have no idea what I am doing wrong. All of the other applications also automatically loaded EPG data without me having to tell it anything.

I don't use TV on MC so I can't comment on details of this point.

6. If the application had queried Windows to find my location it could also have not shown me things that I can't get in my country, such as Hulu.

Was your day ruined by the presence of the Hulu option?

Anyway, I hope that explains what I find difficult about JR, but to be honest, every other media application I've see does it better, so just look at any of them! It seems to me that the developers have obsessed with sound quality and not even bothered about the user. But I guess other people are managing to use it so maybe other people like reading wikis

Here's some advice to you: when you start to use a new software program, have an open mind.  Learn to use the program before you decide that  "every other media application I've see does it better".  Put a little effort into surfing menus and dialogs.  Read the Wiki.  If you are still stumped, ask practical questions.  You'll have more success with new software and less trouble.

Why did you start this thread?  Did you sincerely want help or did you just want to rant?

[bblue]

You guys are not listening!

DLD-UK has made some very good points (and a few that aren't too relevant).  I had similar complaints when first exposed to Media Center, as have many others.  It's not that the program itself is inadequate, it's the lack of documentation.

Yes, there's a large wiki, which is a mix of out of date and current information, written by different people.  Most of it is very terse and assumes you already know your way around MC.  There are also many great threads that describe in more detail how to do this and that which may eventually be found, but there is no orientation documentation for a new user coming from the world of 'other' media software to learn the basics of MC.  Many operations of MC are eccentric to say the least, and show that they were probably squeezed into some existing code format to avoid a rework of the command structure.  That's ok, as long as it is explained!

An overview of where things are, and some clear non-confusing steps to set it up correctly the first time (and WHY to do it that way) is absolute at the beginning.  Most users that don't get it right off, rely on this forum for complaints and questions.  Complaints are answered often very defensively, and answers are also often very terse and not clear to the user since he's had no orientation.

It really takes some persistence to stick with MC initially, weeding through the forum and various wiki entries for little tidbits that might answer a question or provide some understand about how something is suppose to work.

If you get that far, you will realize that the program does SO much for you that much of the piddly configuration that has to be done with other software is mostly not necessary.  It's so feature rich that it blows the others away, but you'd never know that from the introduction as it is now.  So how can that be conveyed?  Good Documentation.

JRiver does a generally pretty good job of listening and responding to users needs and suggestions, but from what I've seen, not to new users.

Just my opinion. 

Hire a good writer for a time to get things in order.  It will go such a long way, and reduce redundancy in the forum.

--Bill

[JimH]

I'm locking this now.  Original poster, if you have questions please post them with a subject that describes the question.