My understanding was that JRiver purchased JRemote and hired the developer, but then they disappeared and JRiver have been left with code that they didn't write, and I guess is complex to manage.
That's part of the reason why they're building Panel now, but it really seems like they either don't have the resources or aren't committed to developing something that is as powerful as JRemote and updated with more features / improvements.
I'm not opposed to a web-based UI if it works well, but Panel is a much worse experience than a native app on iOS.
And JRemote has become a very unstable app - often crashing the first time I open it, sometimes crashing Media Center on my PC when it connects, and video streaming in it is far from being a good experience on iOS now.
It doesn't help that iOS / Apple products are a low priority for JRiver. It's understandable that they don't like the more closed-off and proprietary nature of Apple, but at the same time iOS is where people actually pay for apps even if they have a smaller market share.
I'd much rather stick with JRiver, but it's getting to the point that I'm starting to investigate what other options there are for streaming media from my own servers to mobile devices.
I've already started to move away from Media Center for local video playback on my PC because their subtitle engine only really handles PGS and Vobsub subtitles properly, with no option to use an external subtitle renderer.
