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[DougHamm]

Firstly, this is a great program.  It'll be the heart of my new HTPC.

Now that the kudos are out of the way I'd like to put some suggestions out.  Take'em or leave'em, but they're important enough to me to bring them up.

There was a thread a while back about the direction of MC9.  I was too late for that thread so here's my $.02: I believe that if you want to compete with RealOne, WMP9 and WinAMP, you'll have to provide this basic functionality:

- Play audio (duh!) and all the burning and ripping we love.
- Play video; support WMP9 in as many ways as possible.  By video though, I don't necessarily mean DVDs, VCDs, TV, etc.  because none of the competition listed above does this very well at all.  You'd be competing with very mature apps like WinDVD Recorder, PowerDVD, TheaterTek and the like.  You don't necessarily want more competition, particularly if the cycles involved in getting DVDs working smoothly could be better funneled towards other features and stability.
- Show images - because, well, your program is perfectly made for it!  RealOne can do this, sort of, because you can type a local path into the integrated web browser and it'll view it Explorer-style.  You can thereby leverage WinXP's own integrated file viewer.

Again, dump the TV/DVD stuff, really...if it means more available cycles to improve the other aspects.

Instead, how about making the UI flexible enough to allow other applications to launch from the toolbar?  Like, what if I'd be able to create a custom WinDVD Recorder icon that minimizes MC9, launches WinDVD Recorder, and brings MC9 back when WinDVD exits?

On to UI enhancements:

I can't understate the need to see the current playlist with duration in all views.  Perhaps it could be an either-or between the properties pane and a simple playlist pane?

Support better web integration.  Expand the web media tree to allow the user to save web pages.  Even let the user change the Start url if he/she chooses.  Frankly I like windowsmedia.com and other major media portals and seeing as how MC can play most of their content, I'd like the option to get to them easily.

In the web media screen and start screen, provide a simple address bar/back/forward/home, and the ability to integrate web pages into the Favourites list.  Really, check out the UI of the new RealOne player.  

For all its simplicity, Real got two things right: the UI and the Helix engine.  All their video formats are supported internally and without the need for installing Quicktime, etc.  If MC9 can at least harness some of the power of the Helix engine through an SDK, you could use it as the exclusive engine for essentially every video format moving forward.

Anyway, that's it for me.  Thanks for lending an ear!

-Doug

[JimH]

- Play audio (duh!) and all the burning and ripping we love.
- Play video; support WMP9 in as many ways as possible.  By video though, I don't necessarily mean DVDs, VCDs, TV, etc.  because none of the competition listed above does this very well at all.  You'd be competing with very mature apps like WinDVD Recorder, PowerDVD, TheaterTek and the like.  You don't necessarily want more competition, particularly if the cycles involved in getting DVDs working smoothly could be better funneled towards other features and stability.
- Show images - because, well, your program is perfectly made for it!  RealOne can do this, sort of, because you can type a local path into the integrated web browser and it'll view it Explorer-style.  You can thereby leverage WinXP's own integrated file viewer.

Hi Doug,
Thanks for the kind words.  I'm going to answer these above first.

MC plays audio and video, and shows images.  Did you try the View option called "toggle list style" for images?

Sometimes we support codecs internally.  Sometimes we use other playback engines.  The reason for this is that sometimes the formats are protected or the SDK's are hard to get.

It would help if you can elaborate on what you find missing.

[DougHamm]

Howdy Jim!  Wow, quick response.  

What's missing?  Certainly not features!  But I think what risks being jeopardized at the expense of features is stability (albeit beta, we all know), focused direction, and the meriad of UI changes that would be needed to consolodate all the functionality of MC9 into one cohesive application.

The point of my paragraph you've responded to, is that if you're shooting at being the best at something, my suggestion is to be the best at audio, video files, images, and at the jukebox/UI that keeps them all together.  Little else.  Don't spread yourselves too thin by going into uncharted territory of PVR/TV, DVD playback, etc. unless you're sure that this development won't impact other, more important aspects.

Take care,

-Doug