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[lockdown571]

I currently have a server-client setup in my house. I have MC installed on my WHS machine acting as a media server, and all the HTPC's in the house are acting as clients, connecting to the server's media library. Unfortunately, I'm having serious issues getting my HTPCs to behave in a stable, appliance-like manner. The main problem is that any sort of disconnection from the server causes clients to either crash or exit out of theater mode, displaying a message about being disconnected from the server's media library. This might happen for instance if I have to reboot my WHS server and one of the clients happens to be awake, or if I lose power (the clients boot up much faster than the server). This ultimately makes using Media Center as my primary HTPC front end untenable.

So my suggestion is to make it so disconnections from the media server do not cause serious interruptions on the clients. Obviously, the files aren't going to play if the server isn't available, but there could simply be a dialog that pops up saying "the media server is unavailable, try again." Really, I just don't want to be kicked out of theater view. Plex, which I was using before, made this very simple. If the server wasn't available, the libraries simply didn't show up until the server came back online.

Another related issue is that Media Center does not allow for a startup delay. This is a serious, serious issue! If I have to reboot a client, Media Center loads before a network connection can be established, so I get the dialog about the library not being found. I then have to get the keyboard and mouse out and try connecting again. I can work around this issue using task scheduler, but this is less than ideal, and it doesn't allow you customize the delay much (you can only chose between 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes. etc.).

[Matt]

For now you really need a reliable server for the system to work well.

The clients themselves can be flaky, but the server must be stable.

I agree that it'd be better to gracefully handle flaky servers, but it's a technically challenging issue.  Hopefully we can make some progress on this front in a future version.

For the delay, would it help to be able to launch with something like "MC17.exe /StartAfterDelay xxxx"?

[lockdown571]

For now you really need a reliable server for the system to work well.

The clients themselves can be flaky, but the server must be stable.

I agree that it'd be better to gracefully handle flaky servers, but it's a technically challenging issue.  Hopefully we can make some progress on this front in a future version.

For the delay, would it help to be able to launch with something like "MC17.exe /StartAfterDelay xxxx"?

Thank you for the response Matt. Plex has definitely spoiled me in a lot of ways! The great thing about JRiver is its rapid development and the fact that developers actually listen to their customers. I look forward to any improvement in server-client functionality!

As for your suggestion, how exactly do I implement that expression? Do I do it in task scheduler, or can I do it with a bat file or in the Windows startup menu?

[Matt]

Well if you want to run a batch file on startup, you can do it with a delay now.

For example, make this file 'MC17.bat' and launch it on Windows startup:
MC17.exe /Sleep 2500
MC17.exe