JRiver Media Center 30 is an intuitive program that lets you manage all your media files — audio, video, images, and more — from a single interface. It’s not pretty, but it provides a great platform for your media and almost all the configuration options you could hope for.

While there are several skins for J. River Media Center, none of them do much in the looks department. What’s appealing, however, is the variety of viewing modes available: four screen options let you go from quick access to theater-style viewing of movies and TV shows. Playback quality is good, especially audio, and the larger screen options don’t interfere with your viewing experience.

You will also get a good multimedia file organizer, a built-in and excellent media editor, you can control the equalizer, use the built-in DSP and remote control. Activation of J.River Media Center key file is not required, it is enough to use a replacement of the original file, replacing the original.

The software allows you to configure the execution of the necessary functions for the time you need, for this you will need a built-in task scheduler. As an addition, you can change the appearance of the program, there is a mini-mode when using which a minimum of space will be occupied on the desktop, while you will not be limited in functionality.

J. River Media Center has all the features you’d expect from a modern player. In addition to the standard audio, video, and picture capabilities, you can also subscribe to and manage podcasts, burn and rip CDs, sync with handheld devices, control with a remote control, stream from the network, and connect to HDTV (though you’ll need a tuner for that). Add that to J. River Media Center’s extensive organization, tagging, and management capabilities, and J. River Media Center starts to look like a serious threat to other media players.

Key features of the program:

  • Support for over 80 file formats
  • Create custom playlists and Smartlists from the library
  • CD and DVD burning
  • Support for popular MP3 devices, including iPod ®, Creative ® and SanDisk ®
  • Skin selection
  • Search, download and play from Google Video / Images, YouTube and SHOUTcast
  • Media Mode — a button for quick access to information such as: music, photos, videos
  • Built-in CD Labeler for printing labels
  • Automatic control and import of recently added files
  • Scroll and zoom wheel for photos, videos, DVDs and TV
  • Support for Winamp 2 skins
  • New View Mode display
  • Remote control
  • Media Server — Home Network
  • Replay Gain (volume equalization)
  • B-line editing of file properties
  • Web TV and radio
  • Visualization Studio — create and save your own visualization
  • Media scheduler
  • Built-in download manager
  • DSP / EQ Studio
  • Media editor for editing music files
  • Watch TV (from tuner)
  • Record and watch DVDs
  • Organize and enhance digital images
  • 3D visualization
  • Flexible database that allows an unlimited number of new fields to be added
  • View panel – shows album covers / images for each track or CD or DVD
  • Built-in music editor Slideshow
  • ASIO playback
  • Multi-Zone playback
  • Web or FTP upload of media files
  • Support for Play ‘N’ Universal Plug devices, such as Media streamers
  • Basic image editing
  • Multi-Zone synchronization