J. River Media Center 15.0.167

Rated 10/50 by Second Shadow at Sep 5, 2009

Don't let the astroturfing fool you The only "support" you can remotely hope of getting with this software is through their forums .... However, the exceedingly arrogant owner, Jim Hillegass, promptly BANS from the forums anyone who dares criticize the program* .... Kind of a Catch-22, don't you think? * See: http://yabb.jriver.com/i...318.msg251719#msg251719

Rated 10/50 by emanresU deriseD at Sep 10, 2009

I love how the people accusing me of trolling and urging me to use the "discussion tab" are doing something worse than what I was doing. At least I was talking about the software. You people are just assailing ME. And yet the irony escapes you. I installed this version of JRMC, just to legitimize further criticism. I have long since deleted my entire JRMC library and all settings and data files, so I had no choice but to start fresh. No matter. I was able, within half an hour, to reproduce the database corruption I mentioned a LOOOOOOONG time ago in the forums, to no avail. It took a few tries but it happened.

Rated 50/50 by hedley at Sep 10, 2009

Second Shadow what your comment has with 14.0.61 version? Use discussion tab or go somewhere else for trolling. 14.0.61 : NEW: MC will import MyMovies data in the file [mediafilename].mymovies.xml or mymovies.xml residing in the same folder as video file, if the standard JRSidecar file does not exist, provided the data contained in the xml file pertain to the media file.

Rated 50/50 by laptopy.net at Sep 16, 2009

Brilliant Application

Rated 50/50 by outofspace at Sep 16, 2009

1. Changed: Updated EPG in Standard View to allow viewing further into the future. (allows back 2 days, forward two weeks plus two days) 2. NEW: Added command 'Rebuild Thumbnail' to the cover art menu to force thumbnail building. (builds video thumbnails even if the option is disabled in Options > Tree & View) 3. Fixed: Television OSD for current and next programs displayed only the sub-titles without the series name. 4. Changed: Switched sliders on output plug-in configuration dialogs to J. River sliders; fixed tab navigation issues. 5. Fixed: Vista's window presentation engine would not correctly handle displaying multiple subsequent 3D views. (problem fixed by Microsoft in Windows 7, workaround added for Vista) 6. Fixed: Syncing a portable device from Library Server did not work correctly. 7. Fixed: When canceling time-based subscriptions for a television channel, the subscription's recording start time was displayed as "4:00PM 12/31/1899" (109 years ago). Now it will be shown as "4:00PM every Mon, Tue, Fri", for example. 8. Changed: Adding files to the library will run one-at-a-time during a background import, and only two-at-a-time during a manual import. 9. Optimized: Auto-import builds thumbnails two-at-a-time when run manually. 10. Changed: Auto-import will no longer respond to external file system changes while playing in Display View, but instead wait to reconcile changes until exiting Display View. 11. Fixed: Folder watching would not always kick-in right away after making changes with a fresh install. 12. NEW: Added 'Run Auto-Import Now' option to Import wizard. 13. NEW: Reworked the 'Auto-Import' page of the import wizard to be less intrusive with suggestions. 14. Changed: Improved support for shortcuts like right-click and double-click in the Auto-Import wizard. 15. Changed: Minor change to ipod detection that could possibly have resulted in an ipod model detection error.

Rated 10/50 by rumpleskillson at Jan 1, 2010

Junk company. They will try and charge you again and again by quickly going to a new version number. very hard to remove all of the junk it puts on your computer. heed the warning herein ... except for a few friends of the family this objective people view this company as bad .... bad ... bad.

Rated 30/50 by Gr0wl at Feb 15, 2010

I have been using this for quite sometime now. Unfortunately it's never quite done what i required. Forum posts/suggestions seem to go unanswered if they don't appeal to the select few. Wikipedia manual is poor. Each new version seems to come with a new selection of functionality which nobody asked for, yet other functionality that has been requested numerous times is ignored. In the space of 2 months 70 posts where unanswered. However i believe it's nail bitingly close to what would be regarded as the ideal media organiser / player if they realised they are providing software for a broader selection of the public and not just the elite few. Give the trial software a go if it does *exactly* what is required then all well and good. It's also very heavily music biased, organistation of other media isn't very friendly or logical.

Rated 50/50 by armondo at Feb 28, 2010

Its the best. I have been using j river for 3 years, and have yet to find anything better. every version gets even better. it is one of the 3 programs i have that aren't open source because there is nothing open source that comes close to j river's goodness.

Rated 50/50 by outofspace at Mar 19, 2010

rumpleskillson 1. Don't be a troll use discussion tab 2. They will try and charge you again and again by quickly going to a new version number. what a argument!? WTF!? look at corel or cyberlink or ahead software this is the way business is going on ________________________________________ 14.0.158 DLNA improvements

Rated 50/50 by wongjai at Jun 11, 2010

I've used JRMC since version 14 and just love it! It's the best, comprehensive, media center available, and contrary to what another person has written here, I've never had to tweak the application. I've used support twice through their forum and each time the response had been great - directly from their headman, no less! The developer is also very responsive to suggestions for improvements which are added frequently. They have a free trial - go ahead and try it, and look into their forum, and you'll be sold!!

Rated 40/50 by StockportJambo at Jun 11, 2010

JRMC is a very good program, providing you spend the 100 or so hours required tweaking and setting things up properly. It handles large libraries with ease - there are still (since MC13, the last version I used before this) quirks that are seemingly only put there to annoy you, it is customisable and free in some ways, but extremely restrictive in others. Unfortunately the support still sucks, and the management are still contemptible & nasty to their users. You're unlikely to see that before you buy however as their forum (the only support) is moderated to the extreme. Still, if you can live with the shortcomings and forget all notion of support or help from the authors, it's one of the best all-round media management tools out there.

Rated 10/50 by Plumber at Jul 2, 2010

Unfortunately, I've had an experience similar to some of the others mentioned here. My JRMC database became corrupt and I could not use the application at all. I started fresh (what a hassle!) and it happened again. I asked for help, and had to bump my thread repeatedly just to get a response. The only response I got was an angry, impolite reply not to bump the thread, and then the thread was deleted.

Rated 10/50 by Plumber at Jul 2, 2010

Unfortunately, I've had an experience similar to some of the others mentioned here. My JRMC database became corrupt and I could not use the application at all. I started fresh (what a hassle!) and it happened again. I asked for help, and had to bump my thread repeatedly just to get a response (I never bumped more often than once every two days). The only response I got was an angry, impolite reply not to bump the thread, and then the thread was deleted.

Rated 50/50 by outofspace at Aug 31, 2010

Plumber at first . Use discussion tab for that. Secondary problems with your hard drive et bad sector got nothing with MC. MC got backup option you should use it.

Rated 30/50 by tranglos at Sep 9, 2010

Fast or slow? It's surprisingly fast (to start up and execute commands) for an application that can handle really huge media libraries. It's still not fast enough to be my default media player. It's unparalleled for organizing and searching for media. Awesome, configurable displays. Great facilities for creating playlists - regular and "smart". It's an OK audio player, but really inconvenient IMO as a video player. You can either play videos in that laughable, tiny little panel in left-hand corner, or full screen. Nothing in-between that I can find. And video playback controls are not so great either. I'll take KMPlayer or Zoom Player for video any time. Plays internet radio, but there is no station list or search - all it does it display a web page in the embedded browser. You can save channels, but the links will eventually go stale. The default skins are all painfully ugly except for Noire, but Noire is all dark. Try to find the thumbtack on the scroll-bar - it's almost invisible. But that's a disease of practically all media players today: they can look good, but usability was not even a second thought. It's nice to have a user-supported forums, but my personal experience says you can't count on a reply (let alone a fix) from the developers. At the price, this is inexcusable. Even worse, the help system is practically non-existent. There is no built-in help at all. The Help menu refers you to their wiki, which is useless. You'll find the basic things, those you can figure out on your own too, but for anything more advanced you're pretty much on your own. Still using version 14, since the upgrade to 15 is pricey as well, and not a single useful feature was added. The jump to a new version was indeed arbitrary - what happened to 14.5 or 14.9? My advice - go with the free Media Jukebox version, which is identical to the commercial edition, except it's only for audio (i.e., no video-related features). Use it for a while, then buy the full thing if y

Rated 10/50 by Plumber at Sep 9, 2010

My hard drive is fine, thanks. I love how every blind fan of this software wants all bad reviews to be relegated to the Discussion tab. No, this is a review and it'll stay right here, at least by my hands. Nice to see that people claim a backup feature makes up for data-corrupting bugs. It doesn't, and it also doesn't make up for the company behind the product.

Rated 10/50 by Anonymous at Jan 16, 2011

I wanted to buy this software as it looks good, having previously wasted my life re-structuring 350gb of music when iTunes obliterated it. I could not get my head around that pre-sales dept did not exist, nor do they offer email support. This is not a real business, more of a Mickey Mouse business. There is a forum where the owners of the business let purchasers of the software answer your questions IF they can be bothered too. So this results in many unanswered Q's. I've never known a business model like this with no email support. I am not prepared to run the risk of messing up 350gb of music AGAIN if MC was to get a little to excited. So i had to move on... next!

Rated 10/50 by CyberDoc999 at Jan 18, 2011

newer versions crashed had to go back to version 14 wish it was more like winamp

Rated 10/50 by pjafrombbay at Apr 21, 2011

$40 for this rubbish! You must be joking! Try foobar 2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/); its free and minimalist and works just fine. 1x1 is another minimalist music player. Why bother replacing Windows Media Player bloat with J. River bloat? Does not make sense. My rating would be lower if "No stars" was an option. Peter

Rated 50/50 by hedley at May 1, 2011

Media Center plays More file formats than any other player Connected media from Last.fm, Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube. And it sends to Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Supports more cell phones, MP3 players, DLNA, and other devices Powers an HTPC to entertain your family. Even different playback in multiple zones.