Media Control plugin -- not working with Media Center 11

I think J. River must have changed something in Media Center 11 to make the plugin functionality break. I used the Media Control plugin with MC11 quite a long time ago, but stopped using it. Now, many builds of MC11 later, I have reinstalled the Media Control plugin, and it doesn't work at all with MC11.

The problem is that it says "player is not running". The hotkeys don't work, nor do the Media Control plugin "toolbar" buttons.

I am using:

Media Center 11.0.297
True Launch Bar 3.2.2 beta (not interested in trying 3.2.7 beta)
Media Control plugin 4.2
J.River Media Center 11 support 1.0

I installed TLB 3.2.7 beta, then reinstalled Media Control 4.2 and J. River Media Center 11 support. It still doesn't detect MC11.

I may have found a way around the problem. After making sure that Media Center 11 was not running, I went to this registry key:

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\J. River\Media Center 11\Plugins\Interface\TLB Remote

And set the value of Active to 1 (it was 0 to begin with). After that, the plugin seems to work.

This probably could have been accomplished through MC11's plugin dialog, but I didn't check there very thoroughly before trying the above.

I also manually registered mediactl.dll and jrMC11.dll, but I don't know if that mattered. They need to be registered, so it can't hurt to do so. (You run regsvr32 <path>\<filename>)

Thanks, err, umm, whatever.

I've just updated to Media Center 12 beta. The beta of Media Center works very well, but the TLB Media Control plugin doesn't support it all that well with the old player plugin.

Could support for Media Center 12 be added, please?

In case anyone wants to try using the Media Control plugin with Media Center 12 right now, here's what I found: I managed to get it "sort of working" by copying the following keys to the Media Center 12 subkey (rather than the Media Center 11 subkey, as shown):

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\J. River\Media Center 11\Plugins\Interface\TLB Remote

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\J. River\Media Center 11\Plugins\Interface\TLB Remote

I made sure that the latter key shown above had a DWORD value of Enabled, and that this was set to 1. I also ensured it had a DWORD of Active, also set to 1. I think Media Center 12 only looks at the Active value for this plugin (but seems to use Enabled for others...I don't know, don't ask me...). I didn't feel like testing it more.

I also changed the Path to player to C:\WINDOWS\system32\MC12.exe. I tried using the path to Media Center 12.exe, but it wouldn't work at all.

As it is, the Media Control plugin works with Media Center 12 beta, sort of... Once Media Center 12 starts, if I click the play button on the Media Control, there's a delay, but it eventually works... Sometimes. Not always.

Hi Scott

The media control run fine with WMP 11 here for a week (after a clean installation of XP), and then, stop working. I only manage the desktop icons transparencies between the time it work and don't.

Hope I can find a way to fix that. I don't have the J. River value in my registry.


Thanx.


Stef

My "solution" was to simply stop using the Media Control plugin.