J River Media Center

J. River Media Center 11 looks like a player. A very complex one: it plays songs, movies, indexes pictures, burns CDs or DVDs, rips CDs, prints, synchronizes with most handheld devices. Media Center will gladly help you do anything a home user could desire. The overall works are smooth and the looks are just great. Definitely well worth the 40 USD J River is sold for.

First when I thought of looking to the J River Media Center, just before beginning to review it I expected the one-in-a-million media players. Shortly I noticed there was something more to this software than meets the eye. Basically it really is a media center: lovely and useful features such as online TV, customizable task schedulers, various encoding settings, seemingly infinite audio and video tweak options, a CD label maker, an audio editor even. The creators of the J River MC 11 wanted to bring all the things one user could ever want in just one application. And they succeeded, in my humble opinion.

This software has it all. When speaking about a common person who wants his/her media collection set up the proper way, the JR Media Center 11 is the tool. From indexing media content on the PC to playing it the way or ways one desires, from helping the user design a cover for his latest holiday-pictures DVD to editing audio recorded on a camera, various instruments work together. So the user can really experience media exactly the way he wants.

The GUI

Visually speaking, the J River Media Center is a very good-looking player. Whether it's about the music or the video content, the J River abounds in sometimes quite handy information, from usual ID3 tagging to features like rating. Editing this information is a child's play because the makers of this cool software have thought about ergonomy: extremely useful panes grouping related tasks, from tagging to CD-burning make everything a lot easier. Dragging and dropping have an unequaled integration; technically, you can drag-drop your entire PC in the Media Center just to see what's to be done later.

Smooth coloring for the skins adds a very nice feel to this program, while icons and other graphical symbols create a warm and inspiring look. One more thing about the look: HIGLY INTUITIVE. One can extremely easy navigate between different panes while jumping from listening to some fav tracks to shopping for online music, from searching for certain internet TV broadcasts to writing pictures on a DVD.

Minimal mode, fullscreen, windowed and even theatre mode assure the creators of the J River that any user will be satisfied up to the last details. Even triple-split views are available for the highly-active users.

The TOOLS

Should one look in a hurry over the J River's MC "too many tools!" wouldn't be a surprise. Yet, let's not forget the name CENTER. Indeed, for all the most common tasks and even more, the JR is at least well prepared: -audio/video player -e-radio/e-TV tuner -image acquisition -CD ripping- CD/DVD burning- sound recorder/editor -audio analyzer -CD labeler -download manager....want more?

For the middle needs, all those tools are just the perfect amount of technicity and ease-of-use. Very easy to learn, easy to handle and with enough processing power for the basic needs, be it the case of adding reverb to an audio strip, grouping some images or quickly designing a label for a CD you want to bring to a party. Podcast-organizing is easier than ever, along with other features like multiple-format playlist exporting.

For those who ask a bit more from their multimedia experience, the J River Media Center has provided a really fair DSP (Digital Signal Processing) unit which contains a highly-effective EQ, a series of environment presets, a gain-adjustment section that allows you to normalize in real time the levels of media you play according to track-gain or album-gain, and a very interesting output format-pane, letting you choose various bitdepths, number of channels, sample rates or even clip-proof settings.

The sound recorder and the audio editor act as a small studio when need is to add some narration or chop off parts of audio tracks. Though a bit too simple, for the lesser needs one may encounter day by day, those advanced tools from J River are exactly what's necessary. Features like echo, normalization, some vocal-remover technology, channel splitter, dynamic booster/fader, silence/phone tones generator can come in very handy as one just wants to add a bit of color in a track. A minus, because there are some minuses too, goes for the total absence of transport control shortcuts. In vain have I desperately pushed SPACE to play a selected portion of the track... there are either playback menus or some 2 buttons that act as transport controls. Yet, one more time, the J River Media Center is not made for professional use so it's not an 8-hours everyday editing work what we're about.

Persons with creativity and a bit of patience will obtain quite lovely CD covers and printing designs when using the CD label-maker. Pre-defined shapes and the easy handling of commands there will let you produce nice labels in just minutes.

Online media-shopping and local security have not been forgotten by the makers of the J River MC. Internet connection for the first and admin rights for the second will assure trouble-free operation and the most enjoyable moments in company of both Media Center and favorite content.

Accessing hand-held devices is almost instantaneous since the J River has been specifically designed to operate with most of them, be it iPOD, palm or even other PC, as a laptop, what we're having in mind. It all depends on the user and the way he interacts with the software.

The Good

The J River Media Center is a complete command-center for the daily multimedia experience. And this is the truth; even those who won't be as enthusiastic as I was have to admit. It's easy, it's good, one can rely on... I'd even go further and say the J River MC is sexy. As a personal impression, I felt quite good using it. If it was to give up the multitude of softwares that do different tasks and try to choose some sort of bundle to do them all as good as "softwarely" possible... I would definitely choose the J R. When no pro stuff is needed, this Media Center is so far one of the best programs of its kind I've seen.

The Bad

There's not much about the bad things in J River MC. What really annoyed me was the fact that when editing audio a lot of time is lost looking for the transport buttons with the mouse cursor. Another thing that surprised me was the fact that, when previewing the prepared changes for a track or a portion from a track, you cannot tweak the settings: you don't even have to stop the preview, because it suddenly stops in a much too short time, in any case much lesser than the selection itself. So, tweaking different knobs in the DSP section of the editor is not made in real time and this also consumes time. I grew bored and even upset after some editing.

I am confident this will be dealt with in future versions because it's a "sine qua non" in editing software. Shortcuts rule! The Truth

Overall, the many features and options the J River Media Center has at the mere cost of 40 dollars outclass by far the extent of specifications the Windows Media Player/Media Center offers for free. If you're looking for an all-in-one "media center"- type software you can rely on, the J River is definitely one of the best bytes money can buy.

Some screenshots: