Use J River as Meadia Player with plugin

by **jlcrawford** on Mon Apr 10, 2006 10:09 pm

I have just been reading about J River Meadia Center and I think it has a multi zone facility where zones can be run independantly and also has a multi syncing facility.
I have never got successful syncing using Xlobby and was wondering whether J river could be incorporated into Xlobby insted of Winamp or Foobar.
I am not capable of writing the pluggin but it appears that only one instance of J River would have to be used and it could probably also cover dvd playback. I know it is not free but I would gladly part with the cost if it got me flawless zoning of audio and video.
I have downloaded the demo and will try out the zoning and syncing over the next few nigts and report back.
Cheers

by **anachronistic** on Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:13 am

JR media center works great for multi-zone support. I've been playing with the NetRemote interface to it, but have been frustrated by the steep learning curve of the netremote config files....so I'm here looking at xLobby.

So far I'm very impressed with xLobby's features and ease of use...A JR Media Center plugin would complete the picture.

They have an API which allows bi-directional feedback, and a very robust playlist system. I will be sometime before I can look at doing this (I've got to learn more about xLobby first...)...maybe someone else can have a go before I get to it...

cheers

by **jlcrawford** on Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:09 pm

I have very limited ability but got J River to create five zones and they synced perectly. If a pluggin coulod be written it would solve all my problems.
J River even has IR built in and I am going to spend some time learning how to use it.
Cheers

by **CiXel** on Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:06 am

It's very amusing to me that this post was started, because it was just last night that I found J River's ability to multizone and sync and do it well. I had 5 virtual zones going strong (I only have 3 actual home zones) but I was able to listen to the other zones on Headphones and it was great. There are some other really nice features like being able to setup a Tvio server and stuff, but it's usability and configuration pale to that of EJ.

The only other thing I find sad about it, it that while there are some well thought out plugins built into the software, I miss the ability to use my specified chosen winamp ones. The SQR corssfader for instance is great because it can determine the crossfade dynamically based on incoming and outgoing streams which always seems to work out much better than setting an arbitrary default crossfade time. Oh well... I'll keep working ont he multizone sync issue with EJ.

by **TLCNORM** on Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:21 am

I just found xlobby tonight and want to give it a try. I am also interested in multi zone audio and like JRiver.

by **samgreco** on Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:55 am

The fact is that XLobby has multizone audio at it's core. If Steven can solve the sync issues (and I know he can

) then there wouldn't be a need for J River.

Overall, I like the way XLobby handles music much better anyway.

by **jlcrawford** on Sun Apr 16, 2006 3:37 pm

I would agree if I had syncing working but I am unsure if it is on the agenda for a fix as there have been posts about the issue for about a year now. I just thought this may have been an easier solution but I have no idea how or whether it could be achieved.

by **dalanik** on Sun Apr 16, 2006 9:52 pm

jlcrawford wrote:I would agree if I had syncing working but I am unsure if it is on the agenda for a fix as there have been posts about the issue for about a year now. I just thought this may have been an easier solution but I have no idea how or whether it could be achieved.

Easier maybe, but not better. You seem to forget that every program consumes huge amounts of RAM thesedays, since industry wants you to continually buy new systems and upgrade, so they don't care about program performance and size anymore.

Adding another (big) program to my HTPC would be the last thing I'd want to do, especially program that would have to run continuously.

Just my 2c worth...

D.

by **analogroaming** on Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:41 pm

You know what I do? I just set J River to run in theater view mode on startup and then launch it from XLobby. I prefer the features that J River has (plus I use it for more than just my htpc.... why have two media libraries).

Then I remove the Pictures and Music screens and make a button to launch Media Center.

When I close J River....Xlobby seems to come back into focus. Set the backgrounds to be the same and you hardly notice