Topic: Where MC is going in the next few years (Read 10764 times)

JimH · « **on:** March 18, 2005, 10:30:58 am »

I'd like to ask for your thoughts on how we can broadly define our goals for Media Center in the next few years. We're in our 7th year now with this class of software and in our 25th year as a software publisher -- time flies!

Here's my view of it. Please add to it if you can:

Our goals:
Organize, Tag, and Play any media
Connect any device
Serve any file securely
Host any digital media service

To do this, we will:
Convert formats and DRM's as needed
Offer multiple interfaces and support third party front ends
Simplify whenever possible

We've got a couple of prototype web sites we're working on that talk about aspects of the above:

www.plasteeq.com
and
www.oneremote.com

Both are at the conceptual stage. They're more of a target than a reality at this point.

LonWar · « **Reply #1 on:** March 18, 2005, 12:24:20 pm »

Hi Jim,

Recently I was watching Call For Help, on G4 Tech TV,
Someone called in asking questions about a good Media Player.
They said that there was a player that they used to use Called Media Jukebox.
A few min, later he pulled up your website. He said that this was one of the BEST players he has used, but the Name was to generic to stick in people's minds. He also said that there wasn't alot of advertising for It.

I agree with him on both fronts. You need a catchier name Then Media Center or Media Jukebox.... Winamp was VERY catchy....
Some web promoting, advertising on Google that type of thing couldn't hurt as well.

tlongacre · « **Reply #2 on:** March 18, 2005, 12:41:10 pm »

I looked at that OneRemote site the first time you posted it. My idea of total bliss. That would be so awesome.

If I could use MC for everything that would be so great. For me, that would mean a) being able to dump iTunes altogether (so, I'd need a way to sync photos to my iPod Photo and album covers, a way to connect to my Airport Express, and a way to buy iTMS music) b) being able to dump Audible (but we have that now don't we, yeah!) and c) much better and faster handling of photos (cf Picasa or Adobe Photo Manager).

I think your plans are great, though I hate the idea that it'll take five years to get there.

tlongacre · « **Reply #3 on:** March 18, 2005, 12:46:05 pm »

Oh, and a way to download podcasts. Yea, that too.

risingdamp · « **Reply #4 on:** March 18, 2005, 02:05:23 pm »

Your goals seem nice and simple though not exactly ground breaking. That's not a criticism BTW because you have a small company and have to be realistic. I would have thought that your success (like most smallish companies) depends on providing first class service and letting the word get around. That's why I'm surprised that there's nothing in your goals about customer satisfaction and product excellence as this is surely the kick-start to big success. What are your thoughts on this?

Whatever happens you have a great product and a great team and I wish you all well.

BlueGlow · « **Reply #5 on:** March 18, 2005, 02:07:33 pm »

I pm'd you a fun name suggestion (domains currently available) that's nicely descriptive and has plenty of Google potential.

Here are my bullet points:
Coordinated, single source media playback for all devices throughout the home and office.
A stable, complete and robust API for developers to extend and enhance Media Center.
Nourish and promote a community of user enthusiasts who embrace and evangelize Media Center.
Build and support secure collaboration and communication features to leverage the Internet and networking.

This mostly seems to be the direction you're going. The collaboration/community/network features
would help to set you apart from competitors. I don't know of any media player that is leveraging the Internet to enhance their product in the way that companies like Amazon, Ebay, Google, etc. are doing. Your competitors seem to be stuck in a desktop computing mindset and you could take advantage of that.

Oh, and yes, more iPod and podcast support, please.

Catch 22 · « **Reply #6 on:** March 19, 2005, 04:23:38 am »

Great ideas,

Do a version for portables i.e. Pocket PC, Palm, Smartphone, symbian etc. I'm about to upgrade my cellphone and want to move to something like the i-mate Jam. With MC on it I'd be in cloud nine. Also Portable Media Players, a lot of these are starting to hit the market.

How about a version on Linux?

I also like the idea of a version for Music only. My original search was for a music player that ripped to MP3.

Ciao
PS Oneremote looks a darn cool idea.

Listening to The Undertones - True Confessions

gpvillamil · « **Reply #7 on:** March 19, 2005, 05:21:29 am »

It is great that you are thinking along these lines, and a fine demonstration of trust that you are reaching out to the community for ideas.

My first thought would be that you should be setting your goals, not in terms of what the software does/will do, but in terms of the customer problem you are solving.

Richard Branson (Virgin Group) recently said that as far as he is concerned, the problem of music & video DiSTRIBUTION is practically solved electronically, NAVIGATION is almost solved, but the problem of DISCOVERY (finding new stuff you like) is still almost untouched.

So perhaps you might want to re-phrase your goals:

Our goals:

To help customers with large media libraries find & enjoy the media they want, in any format, in any place, in the highest possible quality.

To do this we will:

Build relationships with a wide variety of content providers & device manufacturers
Use multiple techniques to help customers find music they'll enjoy
Organize, Tag, and Play any media
Connect any device
Serve any file securely
Host any digital media service
Convert formats and DRM's as needed
Offer multiple interfaces and support third party front ends
Simplify whenever possible

If I had to pick the key competitive differentiator out of the above, it would be the connectivity aspect - working with all content providers and device manufacturers. This is tricky, because it is out of your hands - but still worth pursuing.

If I look at what MC actually is right now, and what differentiates it (ie. what makes it worth $$$ vs free alternatives) it is probably the focus on managing large libraries of media, the support for multiple media types and ability to form part of a larger system. This probably means that you can refine your target market segment, to those customers who have large collections of media which they manage themselves.

If electronic distribution & broadband speeds evolve, it is foreseeable that customers would not manage their data themselves, rather stream it on demand. So something like MC would work best in a hosted model.

The focus should be on finding and playing media, not organizing & tagging. The latter are means to an end. I would strongly suggest working with MoodLogic, MusicBrainz etc. to include support for those navigation techniques in MC.

Another thing to think about moving metadata handling one step beyond per-song tagging. Currently MC stores data about individual songs, which it processes to infer attributes of albums. It might be interesting to extend the tagging model to better reflect entities like albums, artists, etc and explicitly hold info about them. This would especially benefit things like classical music.

You might want to consider tying up with Meedio, or a similar product. That way you could leave (some of) the user interface development to them, and focus MC on navigation and organization.

Anyway, just some random thoughts, hope it is helpful.

sirshambling · « **Reply #8 on:** March 19, 2005, 06:24:49 pm »

The weakest area of MC for me (assuming Steve G finds the time to get Ipod support bang up to date) at the present I think is streaming media. If that is one of the key ways forward for media content you might want to think about how your goals reflect this.

I'm a very strong supporter of MC and try and spread the word as far and as often as I can - part of the reason is the response/community involvement through these forums. So customer support in the broadest sense is already one of your greatest key features (as opposed to so many of your competitors) so again a goal might be to build on this, putting customer feedback and community participation as a major plank in your "how we do this" section.

In any event I wish you all at JRiver the very best in your endeavours.

John.

lalittle · « **Reply #9 on:** March 19, 2005, 09:26:44 pm »

Quote

b) being able to dump Audible (but we have that now don't we, yeah!)

What does this mean? Are you referring to dumping the Audible "Manager," or to dumping Audible all together? As far as I know, if you want to use Audible content on a system, you still need AM installed to get the content to play, and you still need AM to actually download the content (even though I use MC to play them and sync them to an iPod.)

Thanks for any details on this,

Larry

UPDATE: I just saw this thread http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=26556.0 which of course explains what you meant. This is terrific news.

BlueGlow · « **Reply #10 on:** March 20, 2005, 01:58:04 am »

Quote from: gpvillamil on March 19, 2005, 05:21:29 am

It is great that you are thinking along these lines, and a fine demonstration of trust that you are reaching out to the community for ideas.
...

To help customers with large media libraries find & enjoy the media they want, in any format, in any place, in the highest possible quality.

Well said, very good post. You've captured the essence of what I hope JRiver will ultimately deliver.

indybrett · « **Reply #11 on:** March 20, 2005, 07:02:50 am »

Quote from: JimH on March 18, 2005, 10:30:58 am

Our goals:
Organize, Tag, and Play any media

Will this part be dependant on external codec devolopers to write the necessary plugins? I'm thinking specifically of Wavpack and FLAC.

Mastiff · « **Reply #12 on:** March 20, 2005, 08:18:43 am »

What's new about the oneremote-stuff? It's called NetRemote...

I would prefer that it stuck to multimedia and didn't go into other types of files.

gpvillamil · « **Reply #13 on:** March 20, 2005, 08:54:24 am »

I suppose what I would really enjoy is this: for MC to really, really major in music search & organization. Some kind of really, really fast & snappy search that would help to build original and enjoyable playlists.

Imagine something like the Musicplasma.com interface, but also flagging which items are already held locally, which can be purchased. Ease of use like Picasa, but for music.

That would be really worthwhile.

Like everyone else, I don't see the value of trying to manage too many document types within MC. Google Desktop Search deals with that nicely already. I don't need another layer of filesystem/search engine.

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** March 20, 2005, 05:50:16 pm »

Quote from: Mastiff on March 20, 2005, 08:18:43 am

What's new about the oneremote-stuff? It's called NetRemote...

You're often right, Tor. It may be NetRemote.

Here's what I think can happen. (I wrote the following a few months ago to try to help stimulate our own thinking about the subject.)

-------------

Many people now carry a cell phone. Some also carry a PDA, an iPod-like device, or a camera.

These devices are converging. Cell phones take pictures. iPod devices display images. Some phones have PDA capabilities. Some PDA's are phones. It is likely they will continue to converge.

Example: 5 megapixel camera phone with TV output: http://www.photographic.com/news/102104samsung/

Because memory and CPU costs are declining rapidly, these devices are likely to become the primary choice for securely moving files among home, car, and office.

Example in the future: When you arrive home and place your "phone" on your desk, it syncs itself with your PC just as a Palm device syncs its address book. The next day, driving to work, the device syncs with your car player, so new media is available in your car. At work, it syncs with your PC. All of this is automatic.

Future devices will also allow secure access to additional home or office files while travelling.

Example: In a hotel, far from home, you put your cell phone on the dresser. The TV in the room recognizes it and offers to open a connection. The device connects over a network to your home PC. After entering a PIN, you can use a TiVo-like interface on the TV to listen to your music from your home PC, or view your pictures or video, or open a document you have at home.

The device can do this because it understands the network and can seamlessly switch among networks: telephone, WiFi, BlueTooth, or Near Field Communication.

All the technology to do this currently exists.

tlongacre · « **Reply #15 on:** March 20, 2005, 07:33:00 pm »

Well, I personally would be thrilled if JRiver created something to replace NetRemote. For me, NetRemote is almost useless because I do not have hours free to learn some new programming language to build an interface to be able to control my music. For those who have the time to invest in setting it up, it seems like a technically great product, but it's never going to make it into anything close to the mainstream the way it is being released now.

Anyway, a little OT.

I also really like the idea of modules. I really only use MC for music, although I might someday use it for photos if it ever worked as well as anything else. I might also someday use it to play DVDs for the same reason. But I might not. I'd love to be able to add a module if and when I ever needed it without having to have all that stuff bloating the main thing I need and love -- music management.

I also agree that you would have a much more powerful vision, and more marketable, if your goals were spoken as benefits to the customer.

I would love to see someone come up with a module for DISCOVERY, too. This is one thing I really don't like about iTMS -- it is very difficult to even know what is there and impossible to really discover anything new. They made it very easy to find something if you already know what you are looking for, but what if you don't? The only things online that I've seen that are delving into the arena of discovery are things like musicmobs and audioscrobbler that try to hook you to other people who listen to the same music as you.

RobOK · « **Reply #16 on:** March 20, 2005, 08:03:47 pm »

Quote from: tlongacre on March 20, 2005, 07:33:00 pm

I would love to see someone come up with a module for DISCOVERY, too. This is one thing I really don't like about iTMS -- it is very difficult to even know what is there and impossible to really discover anything new. They made it very easy to find something if you already know what you are looking for, but what if you don't? The only things online that I've seen that are delving into the arena of discovery are things like musicmobs and audioscrobbler that try to hook you to other people who listen to the same music as you.

Building on this theme and Jim, your post about the future, .... yes, devices that you move between your various locations, but also those devices are interconnected with your friends, whether throuh IM type linkages, social networking sites, audioscrobber, blogs, etc., etc. I think you should keep your eye on developments around new playlist formats. The iTunes (on the store part) capability of iMixes has been enormously popular. Your friends or famous people make lists that give you ideas.

I would like to be able to share parts of my library with my friends or publicly. I know there are copyright issues, but those can be worked out perhaps (?). But say I create 4-5 playlists of different types and I can mark them "Public, publish on my site" and then an XML playlist is FTPed with links back to MC to serve up the music. Or I take my iPod w/BlueTooth v. 5 and when I run into my buddy, I have several playlists built and tagged and they get shared automatically.

This might be a bit further afield than you were thinking, but, hey, you asked...!

I think continue to focus on music first, photos second. I think Internet Radio needs to be overhauled and explicit support for Podcasting (on a scheduled basis go and get pre-recorded mp3 sessions from podcasts that you have subscribed too).

MC as the hub of the digital house -- keep up with your support of devices. Music on a computer is fine, but its much better when piped out to Tivos and devices across the house.

Build in tagging lookup the same way you have image lookup (using the Music Brainz engine if possible).

A thin client for connecting from away from home. Basically connecting and playback with very light footprint. Think foobar2000 with the ability to connect and play from a MC server.

And finally, Usability. You have one of the most complex products because you have so much power and capability. Sometimes it gets really confusing. I think a lot of the features you have added have been to help in usability, but it is still an uphill battle with this product because it does so much.

JimH · « **Reply #17 on:** March 21, 2005, 09:02:52 am »

An off topic thread on sharing was split:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;topic=26592.0

Another group of posts about whether Media Center should be music only was split to this location:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=26596.0

Mastiff · « **Reply #18 on:** March 21, 2005, 01:51:32 pm »

Actually you're wrong, tlongacre. NetRemote comes with definition files that will do that for you, both on a PPC and on Win32, and the standard CCF is more advanced than most things that's set in stone for other, similar programs. You don't have to program a thing.

davisford · « **Reply #19 on:** March 21, 2005, 08:21:03 pm »

Convergence -- agree that things are converging (cell phone, PDA, portable music player).

I work in the auto industry specifically in Telematics. Interoperability is key for many of the scenarios you mention Jim. The key to interoperability is standards. Take a look at http://www.openmobilealliance.org -- this is where a lot of key mobile device manufacturers are moving in the standards world.

JustinChase · « **Reply #20 on:** March 22, 2005, 09:23:58 am »

I would like it if there was some sort of 'clothing' as opposed to skins. Let me explain.

Skin change the way the program looks, but nothing else, mainly just the colors. My suggestion for 'clothing' (can't think of anything else better at the moment) would let users share library parts. Things like playlists, visualizations and view schemes. We could share all or just a part of these things amongst each other.

I am certain that many people have much more creative playlists and view schemes for managing their respective libraries. If we had the ability to add a little description to how it could be best utilized, or it's intended purpose, that would make these things quite valuable.

Just an opinion...

pank2002 · « **Reply #21 on:** March 22, 2005, 02:56:39 pm »

That actually sound nice. It made me think of another thing though. If the user could decide what to show in the main window, people could decide what they wanted to use. I.e. I use MC for music and pictures, so I would only have relevant features in the main window like the photo and music button plus ripping, sync features show. The rest would be hidden away.
This could be kinda like the tool bars, but only for the whole main window.
-Rasmus

RobOK · « **Reply #22 on:** May 16, 2005, 03:10:23 pm »

Jim -- what happened to this thread... i liked where you were going... have you had any more recent thoughts and/or feedback from the community that you could share/summarize?

Quote from: RobOK on March 20, 2005, 08:03:47 pm

Building on this theme and Jim, your post about the future, .... yes, devices that you move between your various locations, but also those devices are interconnected with your friends, whether throuh IM type linkages, social networking sites, audioscrobber, blogs, etc., etc. I think you should keep your eye on developments around new playlist formats. The iTunes (on the store part) capability of iMixes has been enormously popular. Your friends or famous people make lists that give you ideas.

Here is a link to an emerging open playlist format called XSPF - for XML Shareable Playlist Format. The goal is NOT to share MP3 a la Napster and Kazaa, but to share information about artists, songs, in groups of playlists. I think this would appeal very much to MC users and i encourage JRiver to get invovled and support and implement this format.

http://gonze.com/xspf/xspf-draft-8.html

http://xspf.org/

RobOK · « **Reply #23 on:** May 16, 2005, 04:58:22 pm »

Quote from: Pink Waters on May 16, 2005, 03:17:02 pm

That sounds interesting

You may be interested in http://www.broadbandmechanics.com which lays out how some of these different things (blogs, mobile tech, media players, calendars/eveents, etc) all fit together in the next few years. They are promoting a lot of open standard XML formats.

Pink Waters · « **Reply #24 on:** May 16, 2005, 05:13:17 pm »

Quote from: RobOK on May 16, 2005, 04:58:22 pm

You may be interested in http://www.broadbandmechanics.com which lays out how some of these different things (blogs, mobile tech, media players, calendars/eveents, etc) all fit together in the next few years. They are promoting a lot of open standard XML formats.

Few clients so far!

Tab · « **Reply #25 on:** May 17, 2005, 04:39:16 pm »

Overall approach:

JR MC is by far the most featured and powerful media player already. Those that dont use it dont because of its weaknesses, not because of its lack of strength. It has 3 weaknesses that I'm aware of.

I understand that its most exciting to develop further strengths, and most difficult to tackle the very issues that the dev team have not yet fully cracked, but this is what would make most difference to user desiredness. A tougher challenge than developing new ideas, but also one that would please more users.

I bet even if MC 12 were about nothing but that, it would get plenty of thumbs up.

Lack of visis are one of those 3 areas imho, but then I would think that.

Tab

Tab · « **Reply #26 on:** May 17, 2005, 04:41:04 pm »

The Music Discovery problem:

I can think of one way to tackle this, with a database of user offered track associations. Multiple approaches will be wanted IRL.

1. JR hosts a database online

2. For each track a user likes, ('track 1') they can suggest one other track to associate with it ('track 2'). Track 2 is the one that user thinks will be liked by people that like track 1, ie it will be same/similar genre, popular etc.

3. When a user requsets discovery around track A, the JR discovery database tells then which track is most associated with track A. Or the top 5/10 offerings etc.

This could really help with the discovery problem, and sounds relatively simple. Your users provide all the DB content.

Tab

Tab · « **Reply #27 on:** May 17, 2005, 04:42:38 pm »

Brand name:

Media Center is hard to locate as it has effectively no distinctive brand name. The term 'media center' is very widespread. So when x says to y 'I use media center, its great', y fails to find it on google, ending up at some other site.

Best to not lose the MC name of course.

Suggested solution: 'River Media Center' ... RMC12.

Tab

RobOK · « **Reply #28 on:** May 17, 2005, 06:10:24 pm »

Quote from: Tab on May 17, 2005, 04:41:04 pm

The Music Discovery problem:

I can think of one way to tackle this, with a database of user offered track associations. Multiple approaches will be wanted IRL.

1. JR hosts a database online

2. For each track a user likes, ('track 1') they can suggest one other track to associate with it ('track 2'). Track 2 is the one that user thinks will be liked by people that like track 1, ie it will be same/similar genre, popular etc.

3. When a user requsets discovery around track A, the JR discovery database tells then which track is most associated with track A. Or the top 5/10 offerings etc.

This could really help with the discovery problem, and sounds relatively simple. Your users provide all the DB content.

Tab

Great idea... if i understand what you are suggesting, it is already a reality at www.audioscrobbler.com for which there is also a MC plug in. It submits the songs you play and builds a similarity database (not user submitted linkages as you suggest) based on playing patterns. You can find similar songs through their web site.

brossmac · « **Reply #29 on:** May 18, 2005, 10:14:44 am »

Quote from: imjustagamer on March 18, 2005, 12:24:20 pm

I agree with him on both fronts. You need a catchier name Then Media Center or Media Jukebox.... Winamp was VERY catchy....

YES! It's too generic and has nothing to differentiate it. Hate to say it, but the logo has the same problem. It looks like several other player controls:

PeterS · « **Reply #30 on:** May 18, 2005, 12:31:30 pm »

Maybe they look like us!

brossmac · « **Reply #31 on:** May 18, 2005, 03:55:17 pm »

Quote from: PeterS on May 18, 2005, 12:31:30 pm

Maybe they look like us!

Possible. But they have more money and muscle to push their branding/image to buyers. It seems to me that MC needs something to make itself stand out. A new name and logo would help. As would, perhaps, a freeware "lite" version.

adamsp70 · « **Reply #32 on:** May 19, 2005, 06:27:42 am »

In order to realise the OneRemote vision (very nice) - i think that MC "client" should be split from MC "server".

So that the bit we currently see becomes the PC client, but all the clever library function and server plugins become the "server".

Obviously for standalone PCs, it will run both - but for more bleeding edge households with a big fileserver holding all the media (in the basement) and lots of lightwieght client PCs (or similar) that connect to the fileserver and stream/download from it you want the functionality split.

3rd parties (or J River themselves) could then start to write clients for their own devices (or operating systems) without infringing on J River sales of the main product (the server).

And doing this should (hopefully) allow you to be able to update the server database with client statistics - something that has been requested for many a year now ;-)

MC is a fantastic product - i love it to bits - and would love to see it become the defacto standard for discerning audiophiles everywhere....

JustinChase · « **Reply #33 on:** May 19, 2005, 10:57:49 am »

Quote from: adamsp70 on May 19, 2005, 06:27:42 am

In order to realise the OneRemote vision (very nice) - i think that MC "client" should be split from MC "server".

So that the bit we currently see becomes the PC client, but all the clever library function and server plugins become the "server".

Obviously for standalone PCs, it will run both - but for more bleeding edge households with a big fileserver holding all the media (in the basement) and lots of lightwieght client PCs (or similar) that connect to the fileserver and stream/download from it you want the functionality split.

3rd parties (or J River themselves) could then start to write clients for their own devices (or operating systems) without infringing on J River sales of the main product (the server).

And doing this should (hopefully) allow you to be able to update the server database with client statistics - something that has been requested for many a year now ;-)

MC is a fantastic product - i love it to bits - and would love to see it become the defacto standard for discerning audiophiles everywhere....

Well put.

JimH · « **Reply #34 on:** May 19, 2005, 11:09:08 am »

This isn't much different from the current implementation, except that MC can act as both client and server.

You can run a very minimal version of MC on the server by running Media Server from MC's Tools/Advanced menu.

Playcounts are currently updated by the servers in MC11.

Third party solutions also exist -- NetRemote and MusicLobby, for example. This is done with the Interface Plug-in SDK. http://www.jrmediacenter.com/devzone.html

JustinChase · « **Reply #35 on:** May 19, 2005, 11:22:55 am »

Jim, I think what he's getting at is that MC is currently not a real client/server program.

You cannot update anything on the server from a client, and all that that entails.

This has been requested by more people than I can think of for longer than I can remember.

In my current situation (travelling long term) it's not important to me; but it is to MANY others.

RobOK · « **Reply #36 on:** May 19, 2005, 02:10:31 pm »

Quote from: RobOK on May 16, 2005, 03:10:23 pm

Here is a link to an emerging open playlist format called XSPF - for XML Shareable Playlist Format. The goal is NOT to share MP3 a la Napster and Kazaa, but to share information about artists, songs, in groups of playlists. I think this would appeal very much to MC users and i encourage JRiver to get invovled and support and implement this format.

http://gonze.com/xspf/xspf-draft-8.html

http://xspf.org/

Here is a blog posting about XSPF with a set of comments... some people are think we are losing the concept of an "Album" by focusing on playlists. I'm not sure that I agree, but if you are interested, check out:

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/05/spiff.html

Tab · « **Reply #37 on:** May 20, 2005, 07:57:22 am »

Quote from: RobOK

Great idea... if i understand what you are suggesting, it is already a reality at www.audioscrobbler.com for which there is also a MC plug in. It submits the songs you play and builds a similarity database (not user submitted linkages as you suggest) based on playing patterns. You can find similar songs through their web site.

Interesting, I didnt even know about it. I note the selection mechanism is different, and not track specific: does it work well?

Tab

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Author Topic: Where MC is going in the next few years (Read 10764 times)

PeterS