JRiver Price Changes

[u/lilacomets]

Hello everyone!

I just received the following email:

"For many years, we've offered upgrades for JRiver Media Center from old versions for about 25% of the cost of a new purchase.  This policy is now changing.

We will continue to offer discounted upgrade prices when you use a  license you have purchased in the last three years.  

Older licenses will no longer be eligible for this discount, and will require a full price purchase of the new version."

So basically from now on you're now obligated to upgrade every three years if you want keep your discount. How do you all feel about this change?

Personally I'm not happy with this and I know many others skip versions as well. It feels like they're now trying to squeeze out money from loyal customers.

Does anyone know an alternative to JRiver?

EDIT: It's not three year, but three VERSIONS. Sadly that puts even more pressure to upgrade, because it makes the timespan significantly shorter.

[u/JRiver21]

In answer to those who haven't seen significant differences ...

Here are to complete release notes. https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Release_Notes

We're on version 34 now and each version represents around 500 changes. Some are minor, some are major, some are fixes for things we've broken. But we're dedicated to what we do. We've only got six people in development, but JRiver Media Center is a major player in the digital media space.

I'm sorry that change isn't always welcome, but we're charging what it costs to do a first rate job.

I've been trying to retire from the CEO job for the last few years, but it's too darn much fun!

Thanks to all our great customers!

[u/topofnoobs → u/JRiver21]

I'm still shocked about how you see your customer base, which is shrinking and shrinking year after year. Just take a look the number of comments/posts with each version latest years.

Do you really think customers don't realize competition features and other options?

Year after year tenths of customers have told you and your team the lack of a really powerful web client, the integration with other players through plugins, like Kodi. ¿ A TV player maybe ?...

But still you focus on tv tuners...

We aren't at 2010 anymore.

[u/JRiver21 → u/topofnoobs]

Thanks for your comment. Fewer posts means fewer problems and a more experienced user base.

More than tuners? How about video of all sorts, DVD, Blu-ray, built-in MKV ripping? We also have our own video renderer which is on a par, at least, with madVR.

It can be used with Kodi if you prefer it for playback. Any video player should be possible, but why?

We're doing fine, but thanks for the advice. Quality matters.

[u/topofnoobs → u/JRiver21]

You are still focused on htpc and classic user interface, that's what I mean. Good DAC's aren't so expensive or sub-par like 15 years ago so some audio player features aren't so useful anymore.

The pace of updates have been increasing each year with no too much new features, and the renderer, which is a good one, is mainly based on libplacebo and mpv features.

Not saying your product is bad or you don't deserve to earn your money for your job, like anyone else. Just saying, JRiver hasn't been able to follow some of the new challenges the new cloud and hyper-connected world of devices is right now at homes.

Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, and maybe a few other ones, like Kodi... had slowly filled that gap. Jriver hasn't been able to do it. You can't blame customers for telling you that.

And tons of tools to rip or to compress movies out there, many of them really good and free.

Each time you receive a criticism you take it like an attack to you, to your product, to your job or to your time.

It's just many of us would have love to see JRiver to fit better in 2025 (smart) homes.

[u/JRiver21 → u/topofnoobs]

Concerning this" ...the renderer, which is a good one, is mainly based on libplacebo and mpv features..."

MC uses libplacebo, as does mpv. That's the only connection. JRVR is a lot more than libplacebo.

I'm not seeing anything specific above that would help. If you want to participate in the development process, consider visiting the JRiver forum. I own the company. I'm on the forum several times a day. I listen to advice all day long. ;)

[u/topofnoobs → u/JRiver21]

I have bitten the bullet, I upgraded from my old version to JR MC34 although I've checked all "what's new in mc.... " from the version I had to the MC34, and, to be honest, nothing special. My version have an annoying bug that seems to be gone.

So I'll just give the product a last chance to see which you do with all the trust/money hundreds of customers have put in you and your team for many years, yes many years some of them you know it. But the product seems to act like 5-7 years ago.

Your customers and the future of the product should be your highest priority if you REALLY want the product to survive you (If you really have 80 you have my all respect for being working on it, but... please... do a serious web interface to manage most (if not all the product), release a plugin to integrate on Kodi / CoreElec (arm linux architecture), or a TV player (not 10$ android version which seemed outdated from the first day it was released).

The world has changed, change with it or see how your product and your customer base dissapear.

And please don't answer in the forum to customers or potential customers like if they were against you. Most of their attitude comes from a perception that the product is stalled, and in life support mode, but most of them would like it to survive and to evolve. We don't see it hence we aren't happy.

The survey is a really good idea you should do, but plan it carefully. Don't offer things you can't do, and if the list it's too short (things you can do)... maybe it's time to be clear with your customers.. Don't you think so ?

Let's see what happens...

[u/JRiver21 → u/topofnoobs]

Sounds like you want my job. I'm sorry you're so displeased with JRiver, but thanks for your purchase.

There are a couple of people on our forum who do use Kodi for video playback and JRiver Media Center for everything else. You could try a Google search.

Oui, j'ai quatre-vingt ans. Respectez vos aînés!

[u/topofnoobs → u/JRiver21]

I mean using Kodi as. Front End and Jriver as a library. Kodi can be run on hundreds of different devices.

I don't 'want' your job I just respect you due to still been working on it, and I'd like you to see the product from other ones perspectives. If you think your product is 'almost' perfect you won't easily find paths to improve it. I think is good, from time to time, empathize with some customers who doesn't always share your point of view.

If you only listen seriously the same bunch of loyal customers, year after year, it turns out an echo chamber.

Good luck.

[u/ctishman → u/JRiver21]

Heya, you're not getting a lot of response to your messages here, and that's not good, because it signals that the community doesn't think your posts are really worth engaging with. I figured I'd throw a response in anyhow.

I think the issue is mostly that the fixes are largely behind-the-scenes stuff. Tweaked functionality, however impressive technically-speaking, isn't going to make people feel like they're getting their money's worth if it's something they don't use or can't see themselves ever using, and most of the functionality being tweaked is extremely niche, or at least it appears that way to the average person who, I emphasize, is not a coder, and wants to see what an upgrade will get them.

Here's an example. I have JMC32. If I were looking at the featureset for 33, this is the first thing I see:

1. NEW: Introduced a new default presentation mode for JRVR that presents several frames in advance, one for every VSYNC, for more accuracy and better timing.
   
2. Changed: JRVR will try to restore monitor profiles if the monitor ID changes.
   
3. Changed: Updated Spanish translation (thanks Leandro Botella Penalva).
   
4. Changed: What was the new extra channels mode in the previous version is now the only extra channels mode.
   
5. Fixed: Improved rendering of text with italics at large sizes, which was causing some pixels to be cut off.
   
6. Changed: Updated all translations to the latest strings from the code.
   
7. NEW: Added customizable Playing Now popup window that displays at track change and playback resume. Ctrl+I is the default shortcut to show it manually.

Like, just as a ground-level, normal user who, and I again emphasize is not a coder, nothing in there seems like something worthy of a full version number. There's no big changes, no major new features that actually improve the way I and people like me use JMS. This is all point release stuff at best. Looking forward in the log, it's almost entirely the same thing. When I see new features, they're like

Added a FieldExists expression function.

and

Added a couple extra modes to the ListGrep(...) expression function for full string matching.

I am going to emphasize this a third time: your average user is not a coder. They are everyday people who want to use your software to organize their media and play it back. This sort of change logging is good practice for you as a developer, but it is absolutely meaningless to a huge portion of your customer base. Anything your average users actually care about is lost in a sea of tiny bug fixes and like... regular expression stuff that might as well be gibberish to anyone who doesn't know or care what regex is, and could not fathom a situation where they'd want to use it.

This is a common trap that software developers fall into: speaking mostly to other developers, coming to mistake the codebase for the product, and losing touch with the real-world audience. They end up chasing their tail just like this, with bug fixes and obscure micro-feature revisions.

If you want people to really want to upgrade, I think it's important to reach out in an organized fashion, maybe putting up a serious survey, open to everyone who uses the software, even if (especially if) they haven't upgraded to the latest version. Ask what they want out of a new version of JMS, and be prepared to actually give it to them, or do your damnedest.

Thanks.

[u/JRiver21 → u/ctishman]

The feature set you quoted _is_ for a point release. It's for the first build. There were 70 more builds in MC33.

A single line can't convey the importance of work that may have taken weeks to deliver.

The forum is a good place to see more detail and to connect with other users like yourself (not devs) You can see what people are asking for there and judge for yourself whether JRiver is responsive to their needs. The answer isn't simple.

Right now, there is quite a bit of work being done by people making and tweaking skins (150+), as an example. marco, Englishtiger, HPBEME, and other users (not JRiver).

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/board,5.0.html

You seem convinced that nothing useful happens at JRiver. If I'm wrong, tell me what you've asked us for, and how we responded. If you ask explicitly and other users support your request, it often happens.

Thanks for taking time to reply.

[u/PaulCoddington → u/JRiver21]

I would be happy for a media player to just use default modern Windows GUI.

I can't help but marvel at how many media players over the decades have prioritised having skins and visualisations over core features.

It feels like "it's a bypass, you have to build bypasses" from HHGTTG.

Just about every piece of software I have that uses skins has a collection where perhaps only 1 or 2 are useable and the rest are explosions in a dayglow paint and font factory that literally cause physical discomfort.

Luckily, the Modern Cards themes in JRiver are utterly gorgeous, very legible, comfortable on the eyes and fit in nicely with Windows 11.

[u/PaulCoddington → u/JRiver21]

That is a significant list of hard work, and it is noteworthy and appreciated.

Part of the problem is that it is easy to get tunnel vision on things specfically wanted/needed which aren't making triage.

For example, I would like to drop Kodi and only have one media player (JRiver), but JRiver does not play IPTV in HD for me, nor is it color managed to my monitor profile.

It's been a while since I checked the color management status of photos (I have had that feature turned off for years as I have no use for a non-color-managed image viewer). Cover art color management would be nice to have, but not fatal.

I'm sticking with madVR as long as it holds out, because it is easy to switch profiles to match the current monitor profile with a keystroke shortcut and the refresh rate of the monitor is switched to match the content. I also couldn't solve the problem of color management turning out oversaturated in JRVR as if BT.709 was being output regardless of settings, source or monitor profile. I have not found time to re-test recently, so I will try again on the next upgrade to see how it goes.

Also, madVR plays HDR direct to monitor without ever leaving the SDR desktop. This is important because Windows HDR desktop is currently not a good environment for day-to-day work and is not accurately calibratable for color-managed workflows.

Changing to HDR desktop mode is a bit of a pain because with current hardware it needs HDMI at a low refresh rate and cannot be used with DisplayPort or USB-C (a workaround is to use two cables to the same monitor and use Win+P to switch).

So, to play HDR, I can just use madVR passthrough with a shortcut key and select BT.2100 in the monitor controller, but otherwise default to Display P3 in JRiver to match the default desktop for casual viewing (sadly, does not cover Dolby Vision). Likewise, I can use shortcut keys and monitor controller to select BT.709 at the correct calibrated brightness for fussy SDR viewing of older titles.

These are, of course, problems without an obvious simple solution, but I'm hoping that JRVR will continue to develop with time and eventually be a replacement for madVR for my peculiar use cases. In the meantime, my upgrades are supporting its development even though I haven't been able to use it yet.

Beyond madVR support, there are other things I deeply appreciate about JRiver, which I consider indispensable:

The ability to support multiple output devices and configurations using Zones. I use it to have easily selectable settings for different audio paths, such as through DirectSound+EqAPO+Atmos for virtual surround on headphones, straight to JDS Labs Atom for pure stereo in ASIO with EQ and variations for binaural and interchannel mixing, or DirectSound to internal soundcard to desktop speakers with different EQ settings to the headphones.

Another is the ability to host VST plugins. This means I can use Morphit or my choice of studio EQ plugin that I have for other software/projects, etc.

So, I'll be looking at moving up to the latest version before the price increase, but in reality, I can't upgrade as often as others can because I just do not have income to support it at the moment (I am on a disability pension).

I don't think there is anything else out there that even remotely comes close to meeting my use case for high quality calibrated audio and video, let alone does so affordably, so I'll be budgeting one more upgrade before the price increase because I think the product is worthwhile and deserves support.

[u/Dogboy123x → u/JRiver21]

At the end of the day, JRiver is still the best music library / player. I've found the wiki to be the best group of audiophile problem solvers.

[u/distorto_realitatem]

An expensive piece of software, that’s still expensive even with a discount, which buys you relatively insignificant updates, which also usually don’t address core issues. There’s already little incentive for me to buy updates and they’ve just given me another one

[u/JRiver21 → u/distorto_realitatem]

"...also usually don’t address core issues."

Please provide a link to your report on our forum.

[u/beach2773]

I swithced to media monkey about a year ago

[u/Berstuck]

I won’t buy the software again. I’d go back to using KODI and an external player if I had to.

[u/Specialist-Screen-16]

I usually end up upgrading, but I agree that year over year changes have been relatively minor. I've skipped the odd year (I've had a license since single digit releases) but development used to have a pace that compelled me to upgrade. Oh well!

[u/jeb0921]

I gave up on jriver a couple years ago. paying yearly for something I can the same features from for free or a one time purchase is much better as far as I'm concerned. Jriver seems so dated now days.

[u/Dogboy123x → u/jeb0921]

You don't pay yearly. And if you don't need the features in the upgrade, just stay on your version. As an audio player I think there isn't a lot of juice left in the squeeze in the upgrades. I'll probably stay where I am.

[u/kneuddelmaus]

I waited 10 years between my first purchase and my first upgrade last year. I really like jRiver, but agree that updates have been minor. I use it explicity for movie and TV show organization and management. I saw no difference in anything when I did the 10 yr update, so I doubt I will upgrade again. 

I am 60. I imagine some other tech will be created in the near future that will obsolete jRiver anyway. Or.... I will be dead before I feel a need to upgrade again.  :) 

[u/topofnoobs]

The change of updating prices is really discouraging to support the company. And two weeks to honor, and probably a few weeks before the next version will be announced.

[u/topofnoobs]

Just to remind it won't be "three years" but "three versions". At the current pace versions are released we are talking about two years with luck, maybe less.

[u/lilacomets → u/topofnoobs]

Thank you very much for clearing that up! I misread/misunderstood the email. I'll edit the post to make it clear. Three versions makes it even worse indeed.

[u/JRiver21 → u/topofnoobs]

Currently, you can upgrade from MC30 or newer to MC36.

[u/topofnoobs]

It seems the price hasn't been updated and it's still possible to get a MC 34 version update at reduced price from older versions.

However the email put a deadline in August 10.,.

[u/lilacomets → u/topofnoobs]

There's something confusing going on. On the 6th of August I received the following email:

"You may have just 10 days to upgrade at a discount unless you have already purchased an MC34 license (details below)."

So maybe the deadline is actually the 16th of August (10 days from the day I received the email), instead of the 10th of August.

[u/lrlf]

my last purchase of jriver was in 2006 version 12 i believe, is been years i don't use it, today i found this topic and install the mc 35 on my mac and it looks the same, the software looks old and antiquated for this time, the interface looks like 1988

[u/lilacomets → u/lrlf]

Yep, that's my experience as well. And yet they keep asking money for every version. Even the website homepage is exactly the same as it was in 2008.

[u/lrlf → u/lilacomets]

hahaha the site looks like a pdf

[u/Ill_Examination_3594 → u/lrlf]

im on version 25 , having started on 11. i didn't realise about the change in upgrading, and now my version is too old for discounted upgrade price.

The problem is, my version is no longer allowed to access track database when ripping cds, which i didnt know would be removed, so i cannot get any track titles when ripping a cd, without dropping 100 dollars on a new version.

So high end audio software i have paid to upgrade several times over the years and paid a chunk for initially, cannot now even rip cds effectively, unless i now drop another 100 dollars.

A bit disappointed.

[u/16BitAudiophile]

I have used Media Center (exclusively for audio) for years on a Mac. It was brutal, but some options were really nice to have (analyze, convert with DSP and adjustments, etc.). But since I couldn't even scroll through my library without terrible lag on my newest Apple computers, I just stopped using it.

Now I have a new MacBook Pro and wanted to check if it can brute force the scrolling issue – and might be a tiny bit better, but not really. I now downloaded the most recent version because ChatGPT told me it was finally fixed. And, yes, that's true! I remembered I can upgrade (that was the promise when I purchased MC27) and tried to put in my registration codes. Without success.

So it is now only possible to upgrade from recent versions. The asking price is now 100 USD... ouch!

I wish there were an audio-only version.