I do like glynor's comments, especially given that I agree with his points, but from the opposing perspective. I like physical media and have done since starting to collect vinyl, which I continue to do so and, for what its worth, is making huge inroads back in to the audiophile arena - but one area where even MC couldn't be used. In fact, I probably enjoy listening to vinyal more that digital music, but I do listen to MORE digital music.
With my digital media I still like collecting the physical product. There's something about the opening of a box and putting a disc into a machine, reading the paraphernalia that comes with well packaged products, and viewing some alternative materiel - granted most is ****, but some material is the best viewing I have ever seen. Yet, my CD collection now remains untouched, ripped and stored in high bitrate formats (which don't take up that much room given today TB RAID arrays), with my music library being expanded upon from various 'other' sources.
However, on the video front, I seemed to have skipped the DVD world completely, but I have fully embraced BluRay. Whilst I will watch I good quality MKV or even AVI rip, they simply do not even come close to the physical BluRay disk, and given the choice of what to watch if I have both options available to me, I would resort to the actual disc every time. Its a shame I can't rip the entire disc as I would do with a DVD, but even if I could at 25-50GB a time, even my relatively large array will soon be filled.
Yet any digital source I have, I would like to be able to access using a consistent interface across multiple devices, in multiple rooms. This means looking to HTPC systems all running MC hooked up to a back end server. I would like to be able to play "All Media in One Interface" (as ripped from the JRiver Home page), which would not only include digital files, but also multiple TV streams (still away off for MC) and physical digital media, such as CD, DVD and the dreaded BluRay.
As a more techy user, I wouldn't mind cobbling bits of software together to get this working, but I too think that this would be unacceptable for the average user.
Certainly, if such an area as BluRay playback is decided to be overlooked by JRiver, then they might want to think about re-marketing (although on another note, this might be worth while doing in any case as the website is a little tired at best, and completely out of date by 5 years or so (maybe even longer) at worst- just another one of those"to-do" to add to the list).
But essentially, it boils down to choice - choice for JRiver which direction they want to go, and potentially a choice for us if we want to adopt a particular feature. Each to their own, but I believe choice is a good thing.