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[fidelio]

Dear all and Mr. JimH,

having been a loyal customer for the past 6 years, upgraded all versions up to MC14, I must say the last months I became more and more dissatisfied with the strategy you are taking with your product.
My main reason is missing hardware support for portable players.
1) Support of IPODs fading
2) Alternative MP3players use mostly MTP as an alternative - MC does not support --> many limitations ("bugs") to live with.

Some years ago I suggested an MC based hardware-player / would have even bought that one for perfect integration / but it never came true. The way you are going now - with focus on Home Theater / audio system - sounds exciting, but my primary usage is administrating and syncing portable media.

You were very customer oriented, liked your approach. Since last year I read too often "no" and "you just have to accept it".

Bye,
Rainer

[fitbrit]

Sounds like they need to be "you-oriented", since many customers like myself appreciate the home theatre slant. Things aren't perfect with any software, but hopefully you'll find what works for you.
I agree though, that J River branded hardware like a portable media player and a settop home theatre player like Sage's would be most welcome.

[JimH]

MC does support MTP transfer, but maybe I misunderstood.

Bye Rainer.  Thanks for your past business.

[Fabricio]

Bye ...

Media Center is excellent. I am satisfied. He is the best.

[gappie]

Dear all and Mr. JimH,

having been a loyal customer for the past 6 years, upgraded all versions up to MC14, I must say the last months I became more and more dissatisfied with the strategy you are taking with your product.
My main reason is missing hardware support for portable players.
1) Support of IPODs fading
2) Alternative MP3players use mostly MTP as an alternative - MC does not support --> many limitations ("bugs") to live with.

Some years ago I suggested an MC based hardware-player / would have even bought that one for perfect integration / but it never came true. The way you are going now - with focus on Home Theater / audio system - sounds exciting, but my primary usage is administrating and syncing portable media.

You were very customer oriented, liked your approach. Since last year I read too often "no" and "you just have to accept it".

Bye,
Rainer

i can feel your pain,  or maybe better, i understand the frustration you feel. and the fact you took time to post this shows frustration and courtesy to mc, so maybe dont slam the door to hard. enjoy what ever software you find that fits your needs, and sometimes you want to come back here, there might be something going on that might catch your interest.

 
gab

[sunfire7]

I can feel your pain too! I'd love to have ipod sync. I hope the team work on the feature "Export to iTunes" to be a nice and simple workaround to sync.  Any other thing in MC is just perfect, and I love it.  Thanks to J River Team for their effords

[lostvibrations]

Hang on, the main page of JRiver states "Supports more cell phones, MP3 players, DLNA, and other devices". Am I to understand that it does not allow transfer of music to an iPhone? That's not exactly supporting MORE cell phones!

[rossp]

The iPhone is an exception since Apple locked 3rd parties out by encrypting the database.
You can export ta playlist to iTunes and then sync via iTunes. It works well and is a reasonable work around.

Ross

[justsomeguy]

mediamonkey supports syncing to ipod, ipad and even iphone 4.  Even though I don't use or care about ianything, I think MC should still have proper support for it since it touts mp3 player support as a feature to push sales.  No where on the main sales page did I see anything stating that iphone, ipad etc wasn't supported.  Other than "i" support, the syncing options are a little lacking in some features that are available in other software.

Its obvious that at some point jriver decided to take MC in a different direction and while some of the new features such as DLNA have been useful and worth the upgrade to me, the whole theater view has a ways to go from my experience to be as "easy" to use as windows media center.  I've played with theater view and could use it myself but I have others in the house that prefer WMC because it seems more straight forward.  We only use WMC for TV and watching ripped movies.  TV support in MC last timed I tried it had issues and wasn't usable here and was a deal breaker.

Currently on my htpc I only have MC running as a DLNA renderer in the background behind WMC.  I only use MC on my main pc for music.  In my honest opinion jriver would be better off focusing more on what made it great in the past and leave the whole full htpc control to something like WMC.  It seems you are fighting an up hill battle trying to take the htpc market when almost every new PC sold with windows7 comes with and already fairly capable WMC for free.  I think WMC audio support is a little lacking and would like MC to maybe focus more on filling that hole (which I'm kinda trying to do myself using MC for DLNA in the background).

Just my thoughts.  I still love MC though.

[Bill Kearney]

I have to agree with the sentiment of the original post.  MC has some tremendously fantastic features.  It's tag editing features cannot be beat in any other program.   Same thing about musical zones.  

But it really embodies the old saying "Jack of All Trades but Master of None."  In fairness, this is true of quite a lot of home automation/home theatre stuff. 

Some of the stuff they've attempted to do with MC are hard problems to solve.  And the effort seen by users on dealing with them makes it look like they're putting little or no effort into solving the problems users already have.  Creeping featuritis is annoying, in any program.  Grafting all sorts of new features (and their bugs) while ignoring existing stuff disappoints existing users.  And soon new users become similarly disillusioned as they discover the things they like don't actually work, or at least not up to their expectations.

I, too, miss the original Media Jukebox efforts.  What do I want?  A touchscreen friendly MC that supports zones with user-proof interface controls.  MC has been sooo close on this for ages, but never quite makes it.

I have no need for the theatre stuff at all.  Yeah, at some point I might.  But right now I don't.  My wife can stream from Netflix or pytivo into the Tivos and that's enough for us.  Trying to have her wrestle with the interface in MC is just a total non-starter.

Compared to WMC or Front Row using MC isn't viable for normal people.  The home automation market knows what WAF means (wife acceptance factor).  One has to wonder whether JRiver grasps this concept.  I know, they're trying, but to what end?

As for portable devices like the iPod, tell Apple to stop being such assh0les about it.  As long as Apple keeps putting such energies into making it proprietary it's never going to be practical for 3rd parties to work with it.  Clearly Apple puts no value on 3rd party interaction with the devices directly.  Instead they're hell bent on forcing the users to put up with their inferior solutions (and actively preventing developers from make better ones).  Few others actually work with the latest iDevices either.  And this is ENTIRELY due to Apple's efforts, not the 3rd parties.  Just say no to Apple and their products.

In the end MC is a tremendous bargain for the money.  I've bought into it and will likely continue with the upgrades.  It's just a continuing disappointment to see it keep missing the mark.

[tcman41]

I use MC15 as a entry point for media into my network. I import music, tv shows, movies and images and once in my collection,  organize and the tag the hell out of them.

I use MC15 to sync music to my memory stick for playing in the car, converting files and listening to music in the home.

For images, tv shows and movies and use XBMC headend on my two flat screens in the house.

No one product can really do everything.

TC 

[HTPC4ME]

i've said it before and will continue to, get rid of the Iusers, fire all the employess who use it, kick all of them out of the forums that use it. (That Was Said Lightly) and continue focusing on what you have been. (This Icrap isnt Jrivers fault. I think\Propose, in all headers of jrivers site\sites there should be Huge text saying we do not support apple Due To Apple's Blankety Blank Policy's, and post exactly what apple has told them. All confussion would be clarified, and the rest of us users wouldn't have to see the letter I ever again)

You've made and continue to make great changes keep up the great work on Theaterview, DLNA, tagging, making user accounts, tv, fixing the problems (Ummmm at the latest on a weekly basis... Rarelly See That from any other company PERIOD!) and above all taking our requests to heart and giving us little treats(addons, tweaks, requests, new features) every so often!

Great Job JRiver, Great Job!

No one product can really do everything.

but if there is one that comes close, it's def JRiver. i've tried xbmc and although it has some great features, they weren't enough to make me keep the proggy on my hdd. theaterview is getting closer and closer in my opinion, and every new update i get excited to see what may have been added or changed... Again Great Job JRiver!

[glynor]

Compared to WMC or Front Row using MC isn't viable for normal people.  The home automation market knows what WAF means (wife acceptance factor).  One has to wonder whether JRiver grasps this concept.  I know, they're trying, but to what end?

I really don't get this.  Theater View in MC15 is much easier to navigate and use than either of those products you listed, so long as you take a little time to set up the views properly to match your media library at the front-end.  That and, you know, it can actually handle a large media library and manage tags in a reasonable manner.  My wife, and completely untrained friends who visit, have literally zero problems using and navigating MC's Theater View using a remote at my house.

The same cannot even be said for iTunes, much less Front Row or WMC.

Now, using MC in Standard View can be intimidating if you've never used an iTunes-like database application before, but you were comparing MC to other applications with 10-foot UIs, so you would compare to Theater View in MC.

[robydago]

Compared to WMC or Front Row using MC isn't viable for normal people.  The home automation market knows what WAF means (wife acceptance factor).

I really don't get this. 

I guess Bill is talking about the configuration interface. I quickly tried WMC in Windows 7 and configuring it, using the same 10-foot UI, is easier than MC.

I agree with Glynor that using MC Theater interface, once someone with good MC skills has properly configured it, is easy

[BryanC]

I think it's about time for some features to be converged and simplified. Take what works best and scrap the outdated junk that's accumulated in MC.

Things that need to be done away with:

Display view (should be automatic on playback)
Stacking (someone tell me they've gotten this "feature" to ever work properly or cause less headaches than it solves)
Import options other than auto-import (you shouldn't place files in your media folders that you don't want added to your library)
Video File Types options: this is just a confusing duplicate of the File Types section

Converge:

1) Networking Servers (share or don't share, the client can determine which type of server to utilize). Incorporate zones better.

2) Handheld syncing + Library backups-> Handheld syncing is too powerful for its own good. Just change it to Sync or something like that, and make assigning drives more prevalent

3) Library Folders + File Location: Make file locations default to library folders/naming schemes

4) "Connected" items in Theater View need to be expanded to incorporate all services and plugins including last.fm, podcasts, etc. Make this autoupdating.

5) Playlist/Library exporting: Look at the File menu--we've got 1) export playlist 2) export all playlists 3) export playlist to iTunes 4) Export to XML 5) Backup Library--how about just a simple backup/sync center where you can select what things you'd like to export and where you'd like them to be backed up to?

Highlight better:

1) Radios (online, library, podcast)
2) Sync/Backup (reworking handheld sync options, outlined above)

[glynor]

Stacking (someone tell me they've gotten this "feature" to ever work properly or cause less headaches than it solves)

I use Stacking quite extensively, to manage multiple versions of files and multiple file types.  I don't have any serious problems with it.

One common example in my library is multiple versions of a particular video.  Often, for videos I'm working on, I'll have the source file (which is almost always a MOV container file in some version of the ProRes codec), a HD Proxy (AVC High-Profile MP4 or MKV), and an iPhone compatible MP4 at 640x360.  With Stacking I can manage these all as one asset and make sure the metadata stays in sync.  MC also automatically manages the file locations for me and can move them as a unit.

I also have tons of audio files stacked with downsampled versions for portable media player use.  So, the "original" file may be either MP3 encoded at LAME VBR -V 1 or FLAC, where the "high quality portable" version of the file is stacked and is a MP3 at LAME -V 5 (usually).  This saves a ton of conversion time when I'm syncing over to my "handheld" (iTunes for use with my phones), and also allows me to keep and use the high-quality versions on my main system where storage space isn't a concern.

It works great!

[JimH]

Closing this now.  Please start a new thread if you have a topic you want to discuss.