Good input from Sandy Ridge. I think that the original post might have been worded better by raising everyone's attention to the benefits of JRiver, rather than slating the software that other use, which will always get a slightly defensive response (since many are passionate about the software choice that they have made for their systems)
Personally, I think one key reason that people like to go for open source software is that they know that they can get quick development of plugins and skins by people who want a similar thing, but with closed source software, if the developer isn't interested in something, they won't do it. Also, it looks like the JRiver software can not be configured out of the box using the 10ft interface, which is one of the main reasons why many people love XBMC.
I have had a look on the JRiver website, and even after 10 minutes looking at it, I still feel that I don't quite know what it is capable of. There are very few screen-shots, and a huge amount of the wiki is just hyperlinks to the forum, which is really poor.
The support forums look quite busy (which is always a good indication as to how easy you can fix problems), but the actual numbers of people using it are really quite low, for example, the most people ever logged on was 305, in comparison to MediaPortal which was 3,104 (I can't check XBMC forum from work as it is blocked for some reason!).
Originally Posted by robbo100
I am not sure it is worth spending $50 on JRiver when there are free and open source alternatives that do most of the above plus some other (better) features (in my opinion)
This is the point.. Such as?? There isn't! Not even close. I wish there was!
Line em up and I'll shoot em down!
I do feel like I bang on about MediaPortal a bit too much on this forum (I am sure you will all agree), but seeing as you are so insistent I will use it as an example with your list of features to prove that "There isn't! Not even close", isn't the case at all:
No browser, - MP Does
or streaming, - MP Does
Internet tv, - MP Does
freeview or frees at etc. - MP Does
can u use it as a hub to network your media to other devices? Currently MP does not support this natively, however since MP is designed to run as a server/client setup to share data this is not really the design aims of the software. However I believe there is a plugin for it and it (I think) will be supported in MP Version 2. This isn't a feature I need or want, so JRiver brings me no benifit here.
Can you use your iPhone as a remote for it or stream all media to your android in its max resolution? - MP Does
Or watch YouTube on it while it upscales to 1080p with the most powerful upscaling algorithm currently available? You can watch YouTube on MP, and my GPU will automatically upscale. Who has judged it as "the most powerful upscaling algorithm currently available"
Can you set it to select the audio stream you prefer for the media type your listening or watching automatically- for instance, all lossless audio is left native, but any mp3 192k files are upscaled to 64 bit. I Don't think MP can do this, but you can upscale the audio using other software I believe. This is not a massive requirement for me to be honest, so it wouldn't make me spend the money.
Or dynamic compression for action films for late viewing. I hate dynamic compression on film soundtracks. If the director wanted the soundtrack to make a hissing sound during quiet scenes then he would have put an aeroplane with it's engines running on the set.
- No MP can not do this...., but you can get the sound filter to do it for you without any problem if you really want - so the answer is probably "MP Does".
Not to mention room eq. For gods sake - I've got it running 10 speakers all eq'd with house curves on the subs and different target curves for playing different media- even different crossovers for the subs when playing different media!. My onkyo 886 couldn't even come close to doing that! - Ummmm, my wife would kill me if I bought more speakers, for me this is not an important requirement and not worth spending the money for.
Not sue what you mean by jumping, not had any issue like that myself, or heard of it. - N/A
Xbmc lived in my system for about 2 months till I realised that it looks great, but can't even play a DVD without having frame rate issues ( jumpy playback) and I'm not paying 5k for a TV and watching that. N/A - MP plays media of all formats without any problem and the codecs can be manually configured (if you wish) to get the best results for your individual system.
Same issue with boxee. Subtitles were a pain in the ass on these too, you can't set it to use forced English subtitles or quickly turn them on when playing a foreign film. - You can on MP.
You can even rip blurays and DVDs in JRiver now. - Hmmm, well I looked on the JRiver website about this one, and it doesn't do it natively. Even for JRiver you need to install an on-the-fly decrypter to do this, which is exactly the same for MediaPortal.
EDIT: Just to clarify, MP can rip DVDs, but not rip bluerays, but it can play DVDs and Bluerays natively.
And I would also argue that xbmc and boxee among others don't play dts hdma, just the core tracks. - MediaPortal plays DTS HDMA without any problem completely natively without any additional software. Also, looking on the JRiver wiki, it says that you need to "to copy the "dtsdecoderdll.dll" from an installation of Arcsoft TMT", which means that you need to spend another $99 just to get HD Audio working (or break the law).
Here are some MediaPortal functions that JRiver can't do (these functions are really important to me):
1) Keep all your tuner cards in one server on the network and stream live TV across the network to clients.
2) record more than one channel using a single tuner card.
3) Highly configurable skinning
4) Any number of bespoke plugins.
I think what this says is that everyone has different requirements and pick their software as individuals. I suspect that if you don't watch live TV then XBMC is far better at meeting most people's requirements than JRiver (and free), and MediaPortal is better at meeting the requirements of most requirements for people who do want to watch live TV. Either that, or the JRiver marketing is poor and/or the price just puts people off (even thought there is a free trial period).