Sometime during the lifespan of MC25 a change was made to how the remote control play button is handled in theater view, specifically with music. Previously, play caused the current selection as indicated by the user interface to start playing. Now, play functions like the pause button, regardless of the current state of the UI, breaking a long standing and fundamental workflow for anyone who uses Theater View. Because of this I have reverted to version 24.
The justification for the change, apparently, was a user's comment that the current standard for media center applications is for play to behave like pause. But is this really true? For one thing, my HTPC remote is the only remote I own that has a play button. My TV remote doesn't have one. With respect to the PC, the only current media player apps I know of that are designed to be controlled with a remote, other than MC, are Plex and Kodi. I haven't tried Kodi, but I can confirm that today's Plex always plays the UI selection when the user presses play when browsing the library. It actually uses a hybrid approach with some smarts. If on the playing now screen, play on Plex functions like pause. MC 24 and earlier would restart the current track, which probably isn't what most would expect.
Is there any reason why MC can't behave with a little bit more intelligence in this regard? When at Playing Now, play should work like pause. But when the user is browsing for something different to play, play should stop the current track and start the new playlist. It seems like such a trivial thing to do, that I can't understand why J River is willing to risk alienating long time users by breaking a workflow that has been in place for so long.
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Topic: Breaking long standing workflow (Read 411 times)