JRiver Media Center Owner's Thread - Page 27

Just a quick question (I don't have the opportunity to try it myself atm); does JRiver display movie covers etc in a way like XBMC? Without having to download cover art and put in movie folders manually?

Yes

Virtual Clone Drive is free, lightweight and works well. Just need to be sure it is set as the default program in Windows to open .iso.

There is a very nice (5 star) review of JRiver Media Center by Andrew Robinson of Home Theater Review magazine, just published today.

http://hometheaterreview.com/jriver-media-center-software-reviewed/

Cool. Looks like positive endorsement.

That's what brought me here. I'm tired of messing with discs. I'm really tired of menus and ads. I want to timeshift broadcast tv (have silicon dust tuner already). I'd like solid aspect ratio control to work with my "zoom method" scope projection system. I'd like to have 7.1 analog audio with lossless multichannel decoding. I'd like sophisticated bass management to dial in my subs.


I don't want to spend hours and hours and hours fighting with a cranky windows computer though. I am willing to put in the time up front to build and configure a system but I expect the user experience to be clean and easy once it's all done.

Am I asking for the impossible?

The only weakness with JRiver Media Center (I'm running v17) is the TV viewing and time shifting features. Their EPG and TV recording functionality pales in comparison to Windows Media Center. Plus, if you have a HDHomeRun Prime, like me, you can't use JRMC to watch encrypted content even though you have a cablecard device. When they upgrade the TV features in JRMC, I might give up WMC entirely.

+1. Just deliver full CableCard functionality, and I am moving to JRiver the very next day.

Does this let you get around the ridiculous audio downsampling that PowerDVD does for blu-ray thanks to the insanely pointless industry mandate (I have only a single time in my life EVER heard of someone searching to copy a movie track in a way they would not like and for that they punish everyone else and send droves of people looking into all sorts of crackers, etc. a pointless, clueless, backfire of a move by the industry)? Does XMBC? It seems to play them, it is using an internal audio codec or some external one that downsamples (maybe using one installed from PowerDVD or something)?

Neither downsample in any way.

Agreed. Ignoring the lack of support for CableCard tuners, the overall TV functionality really isn't good enough yet. It's one area of JRMC that I consider weak.

You can't just add CableCard support, you most likely need to pay them for a license and jump through all kinds of crazy hoops for DRM. Its not a matter of simply writing a bunch of lines of code, sadly.

Many of us with more basic channel lineups do not have any copy once content. Some other programs like NextPVR and MythTV support copy freely content. It would nice if Jriver did too.

Very true Nev. Ceton offered help (financial and technical expertise) to address some of the DRM crazyness in the MediaPortal thread. Given the status of WMC and their current dependency on it, I believe they would be willing to offer the same support to JRiver as well.

Something to consider.

I have been buying JR at each version upgrade. Sadly, I feel I am only paying for a development project. Until such time as JR MC at minimum provides a robust live TV environment including at minimum support for copy freely cablecard content it will remain a curiousity to me. Yes I have installed and I watch the bugs come and go.. it has so much potential but they really are primarily an audio player house. Instead of adding a robust live TV environment to finish the product as a WMC alternative they are pouring lots of effort to move the application to OSX10.

I actually bought it years ago FOR the audio features and have also bought the upgrades each time since. During that time, it's evolved into an excellent video player too and replaced TheaterTek for me. The only gaping hole is the TV capabilities (both for recording and live TV) which definitely need a lot of work even think about replacing WMC completely. Support for CableCard content is only part of the equation - the recording options simply aren't capable enough for things like season pass functionality and wish lists (automatically record something based on matching an actor, a partial title match, etc.), etc. They need to take a good long look at the recording capabilities of other options including WMC, Tivo, BeyondTV, SageTV, etc. and offer that level of capability. Same thing with the guide - IMHO it's still a work in progress.

But even with the TV shortcomings, I still think JRMC is worth every penny they charge for it.

I bought JRMC mainly for the audio features back around 2001 and have been upgrading ever since. It still hasn't replaced WMC for watching DVDs and Blu-rays, because I have WMC tweeked to give me good picture quality and since it works well and has a nicer 10' UI, I still use it as my primary DVD/Blu-ray/TV player.

However, I don't think Microsoft is going to put any more development work in WMC, so I'm hoping JRMC can become a full replacement. Maybe Microsoft is hoping/planning developers will provide a metro app for each of the current WMC features. A movie tile, a DVR tile, a live TV tile with EPG, etc.

Didn't Google buy SageTV years ago? I wonder if that will ever bear fruit.

Thanks.
That sounds promising.

I guess XMBC can't decode DTS-HD MA though (although I believe it does all the other formats)? And it only provides the core from that format unless you tell it to use the TMT filters? At which point those filters would downsample the audio?

EDIT: Or wait, it looks like XMBC actually can decode DST-HD MA fully now since last May I take it, so I guess all should be good then. Awesome! Finally.
Edited by skibum5000 - 11/17/12 at 4:04pm

I may have misread your original post - I assumed you were referring to 'bitstreaming', rather than decoding in player. JRiver and other Direct Show players will decode DTS-HD MA with the inclusion of the 'dtsdecoderdll.dll' file and LAV Filters (perhaps ffdshow as well, though I haven't used them since LAV became available). XBMC cannot, it only decodes to 'core' DTS.

One of the newer XBMC versions add both HD audio decoding, AND bitstreaming. Dolby and DTS.

Just finished my trial. I enjoyed it although I didn't have as much time to play with it due to work. I even extended the trial, but could only mess about for a day.

I don't know if I would spend $50 on it, mind you. It is real close though.

Over all I will keep my eye on it and see if I can't live without it.

Good program, and although I didn't get too into it, I can certainly recommended to others.

That is what stops me upgrading every revision, I have MC16 and see the current version as a collection incremental improvements.

MC is very good at what it does, lately XBMC has been getting its house in order, the latest releases are quickly catching up to MC.

If they integrate DSPlayer into mainline XBMC it is once step closer to replacing MC, not sure if XBMC can ever replace MC though, not at least until they let MadVR in and let it take over the rendering.

DSPlayer is unlikely to migrate to mainline xbmc - this is one of the reasons development by tiben and seb stopped in its tracks - because there was no desire from Team xbmc to maintain such a release. Could become a plug-in but doubt it will ever be fully recoginsed and intetgrated - stranger things have happened mind you.

This a big reason I use JRiver on my HTPC and is why XBMC was never a serious consideration.

XBMC works great on my ARM based extenders, I use those to watch the news and playback music

Hey,

With TV series, I'm struggling to get the levels set correctly. I would like this:

Theater View > TV > Program Name > Program Series > Disc #, so Theater View > TV > Homeland > Series 1 > Disc 1/2/3/4

My tags for this are Name = Homeland, Season = Series 1, Disc # = 1/2/3/4. I can't get Media Center to follow this.

Cheers

I concur with most of your sentiments. IMHO I think JRiver development has lost its way. To clarify that comment, I am a long time subscriber to JRiver and when the fee for version 18 became due I purchased a licence as I have done each year for many years in spite of the fact that future development ideas were pretty thin on the ground. As with all previous versions I decided to wait until Version 18 was listed as stable and last week it was officially announced that MC18 was the new flagship so I installed version 18 over version 17. Unfortunately I am unable to have V17 and V18 installed at the same time due to the remote control relying upon MC Core Commands.

Following the upgrade the first issue I found was that the command line MC18.exe /Mode Theater did not work any more. In fairness to development, although I did not get any response to reporting the issue, it was fixed in the next version just days later. Alas the problems did not stop , the next bug I have come across is that Auto Frame rate does not work with dual monitors:mad: (works fine with a single monitor)

I do not have cable but I am still forced to use WMC for recording off air content due to the poor facilities offered within JRiver. Why didn't JRiver stay with the Version 17 base code and simply give us the sort of PVR functionality found within WMC? It seems to me that Version 18 has been released way to early and I can only assume that the aforementioned review was made with MC V17 which I will now need to roll back to. For me V18 has been a retrograde step (one step forward and two steps back) and I suspect that much of the new software development has been re-writing the program core code to enable porting to an IOS environment.

Bottom line, I expect a product that is announced as the latest flagship to be thoroughly tested. I want to use the product, not continue to be a beta tester. Needless to say I am presently NOT a happy camper and am beginning to wonder what MC18 is going to offer over MC17. I have no issue with the annual license fee, it is worth paying just to keep MC17 up to date but JRiver need to stop using the customer base as beta testers. By all means have beta releases but make sure you have a fully tested baseline version that customers can rely on before making grand announcements.
Edited by Beamer - 12/26/12 at 1:31am

+1 or maybe plus 20....; there are so many problems with 18 they will never figure them all out. There obsession with platform independence is a business decision but really fix the freaking base product before you try to port it all over the planet. The whole Theater Mode LiveTV/DVR barely works at all. They do a release create 100 bugs, fix 50 rinse, repeat endlessly. Meanwhile Windows Media Center just works like an appliance. I can't even get the Windows remote to work reliably in Theater Mode with Live TV. This worked fine for ages. They broke it in the last couple of patches on 17 and I never know if I can even watch Live TV from one release to another. So much potential, so little availability! If you bring it up they never acknowledge it.

I was reading the jRiver MC forum on headfi, and someone posted about upgrading to MC18, and that there were sonic improvements to be had. So, I decided to do the upgrade, from my MC16. Turns out to be a big mistake....I connected my Sansa Fuze +, and copied a couple of albums over. When the copy was done, I tried to close the Fuze, and my mouse was frozen.....had to do a hard shut down and reboot.

Later, after I checked all of my setting from MC16 to MC18, I was listening to music, Sting, "The Soul Cages", to be exact. All of a sudden my screen distorted, locked, and I got my first blue screen of death. Had this computer over a year with no problems running MC16, so I rebooted, this time listening to the same album in MC16, which luckily I kept both versions. Later I tried MC18, same sequence of events led to another BSOD. I finnished the night listening to MC16. Now this morning, I immediately went back to MC18, same album.....same problem, am now listening to MC16!

Now what do I do, no phone support, and jRiver got my $24......how do I get a refund. I have been happy with MC for several years and I thought it was great, but they keep trying to get more money out of me every year asking me to do an upgrade because the new version is better. I am supposed to believe that?

Need help, stuck!

Have you made a post on the JRiver MC18 Forum? http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=27.0 That is their primary means of customer support.

Good luck.

Rod

I tried that forum in the past and never had any luck finding anything.....too damn confusing. They leave their custome support to all of the users, email support or phone support would at least make sense!