J River Media Center 14 (soon to be 15) worth the purchase?

[Flamin_Spirit]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for some advice on a Media Player for my PC (Win 7 x64)

I'm currently using Foobar2000 with a custom Columns UI. It's not bad really, it gets the job done, but I miss having the ease of use of some other players, like the older Windows Media Player (11? the one that came before the current Windows 7 version) However, WMP can't play some of the filetypes I use. FLAC, OGG, and several video types are completely foreign to it.

If I buy Media Center from j. river, I will have to know it's a good purchase. It will be used for burning CDs for my car, Syncing and keeping a Cowon S9 up to date, playing music (obviously) of MP3, FLAC, and OGG format, and playing video (mostly .avi, but I mostly need it for the h264 and mkv video. (As I cannot find a concise codec support list, I do not know if it will support these video types or if they will require transcoding. Information on this would be helpful.) as well as music tagging and library maintenance. I also would possibly be hooking my laptop up to an HDTV to play video or music via HDMI cable, so the TV features are a plus.

I have tried the Jukebox version 12, it's good, but it doesn't have as many of the features I'd be looking for in the full version.

So, my biggest questions are:

1. Does Media Center 14/15 support h264 and mkv formats? Does it also support subtitle formats?

2. in your personal experience, has it been worth the $50 price tag?

3. would it be a good, more user friendly transition from Foobar2000 with all of it's fiddlyness?

[CrowdAds]

[Andreas]

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archi...w-giveaway.php

[Flamin_Spirit]

I saw the review, I'm not stupid. I was hoping to broaden the horizon, taking just one review, even from an experienced reviewer often leads to misplaced confidence and regretted decisions. Since often times reviewers leave out things that normal everyday people see, I decided to ask the community. If you have a problem with it, say so, don't just automatically spit out a link. It looks just plain rude.

EDIT: also, that review is for media center 14, my questions broaden the spectrum to those who have begun to try out version 15.

[nobs]

Your question is loaded, what is worth $50 to me is stupid to most college students scrapping by. Also if you have less than 10K tracks or a few dozen vids then a free media player is probably a better choice.

1. Does Media Center 14/15 support h264 and mkv formats? Does it also support subtitle formats?
Not sure about h264, but mkv is supported as long as you have the codec installed. Subtitles work on my setup, don't remember if I added somthing for it or what. Problem is it will NOT play BluRay iso or discs. It will play straight vob and more importantly the ifo file (can change audio and activate Subs on the fly) . So far this still works for me, but without bluRay support I suspect this will defeat most folk’s version of HTPC.

2. in your personal experience, has it been worth the $50 price tag?
Since MC11 I have bought EVERY version, never at full upgrade price. Ex, $15 from 14 to 15 is my way of supporting the developers, yet most folks thought that was too much <shrug>
I also own Media Monkey Lifetime, yet have not installed it for over a year (or two?).

3. would it be a good, more user friendly transition from Foobar2000 with all of its fiddlyness?
It's been even longer since I played with the Foo, my opinion is meaningless...

I can tell you that I can sync a newer gen iPod Classic 143 (160 in marketing speak) choke full of playlists without iTunes installed.

JRiver's ability to do multilevel Playlist is why I continue to support them.
I have a large collection of audio book series, so I can have playlist groups in both artist and or genre grouping. Below the upper level group I can do multi level Series with book title(s) below and even number the series for fast find and sort.

Do yourself a favor and down load the trial and spend some time on the eval.
Their support forum has some pretty smart folks, just don't go picking a fight or comparing the competitions benefits over their love child and they won’t rub you wrong.