Suggestion from a new customer

[smokeyjon]

Pull the Rifftrax player from the website.  Something so utterly broken that it not only does not work but can't even be cleanly uninstalled leaves a pretty horrible taste in a new customer's mouth.  I'm not sure what you intend to accomplish by distributing it other than irritating the hell out of people who you are hoping to get more money from.

I wouldn't be anywhere near as annoyed if, in the ten minutes I spent looking at this forum, I didn't find multiple topics 6+ months old complaining of the exact same problems I was experiencing.  The fact that the thing phones home without warning to do pretty much anything, including (attempting to) uninstall doesn't help matters either.

So honestly, do yourselves and your customers a favor and ditch the player until you've got a version that actually works.  Also, if you intend for any future versions to phone home, put a very large and obvious disclaimer on it.

[torgosPizza]

Not a bad idea, actually.

Also I just wanted to mention that, in our defense, it seemed to work better earlier on before we had switched the servers. We were unaware of some of the "phoning home" issues until we did make that move.

Another disclaimer I'd like to add is the fact that we don't have the resources to devote to full-time development (or fixing, patching, squashing bugs) of the current player, which is why you are seeing threads from 6+ months ago.

Not sure if you'd read ALL the threads but we ARE working on a new version that should be more stable and a lot less intrusive.

Another quick point: not everyone has issues. There are some people who have no problems whatsoever. So the fact is that the problems are not widespread, but we're going to see what we can do in the meantime to make people aware that it's still pretty much an (abandoned) Alpha product and there is work on a new player being done.

[smokeyjon]

Fair enough, and thanks for the response.  I think the broken uninstaller is what pushed me over the edge.  I realize that not everyone has issues, but frankly the potential inability to cleanly uninstall is enough of a showstopper that it should be pulled from availability.  Not everyone is tech-savvy enough to clean out their system by hand, nor should they be forced to the forums to hopefully stumble across an unsupported removal tool.

Whether you pull the player or not, the page for it really needs to be modified.  There's no indication that it's either abandoned or Alpha-grade, in fact it's referred to as a Beta and honestly gives every appearance of being the preferred way of using RiffTrax.  You should consider turning the page into an information center on the new player under development, and at best only offer the old player after redirecting to a page warning that it's an abandoned alpha with known issues, etc.

[bigdave]

I finally got the player to work. I hope this helps.
1. download rifftrax player. Close the player after you have it downloaded.
2. Put the movie you want to watch into the dvd drive.
3. Go to your files at rifftrax.com. I'll use the movie I am going to watch next as an example.
4. I click on starwarsanewhope.riff
5. The screen shows "file download."
6. Click on save.
7. The "save as screen" comes up.
8. On the "save in" tab make sure it states "desktop."
9. Click "save"
10. You are now downloading to desktop. When this is done it will say download complete.
11. Click the red X to eliminate the download complete screen.
12. Minimize everything so that only your desktop is showing.
13. On your desktop you will see the riff you just saved to desktop and the rifftrax player.
14. Left click and hold the riff on your desktop and drag it over the rifftrax player. Release the left click.
15. In about 30 seconds the player springs to life.
16. Click on load rifftrax.
17. Open rifftrax file screen opens.
18. Left click the movie you want to watch and drag it to the "file name tab." Click open.
19. You are now watching a rifftrax movie.
Note: I recv'd several hundred error messages over the last four or five hours while trying to get a rifftrax movie to play. I would suggest just clicking on the red X every time an error message shows up. I am very pissed right now. This is considered a good movie riff delivery system by rifftrax tech. crew? I would like to fill this reply w/ a billlion cuss words right now aimed directly at the affore mentioned tech crew.
I'm glad I got this working and I hope some of you will be able to watch a rifftrax tonight.

[torgosPizza]

I am very pissed right now. This is considered a good movie riff delivery system by rifftrax tech. crew? I would like to fill this reply w/ a billlion cuss words right now aimed directly at the affore mentioned tech crew.

Did you read anything I posted?

[Action Batch]

Read?

[deadking13]

"Whether you pull the player or not, the page for it really needs to be modified.  There's no indication that it's either abandoned or Alpha-grade, in fact it's referred to as a Beta and honestly gives every appearance of being the preferred way of using RiffTrax."

i am having to agree with the poster on this one.  I am one of the people who doesn't know how to manually clean out my computer.  I keep getting the following error messages:

An exception was raised on the server: Access violation at address 004048B6 in module 'ComX.exe'. Read of address 000FAFE9.

Connected to 209.234.190.27 port 25
220 RIFFTRAX.COM Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.3959 ready at  Fri, 2 Oct 2009 16:59:03 -0700

Access violation at address 0072CC67 in module 'RiffTrax.exe'. Read of address 00000001.

I keep trying to uninstall the program and it will NOT uninstall.  That is one of the most frustrating parts.  The main page says to uninstall, the player, install the codecs, then re-install the program, but how am i supposed to do that if i can't even uninstall the program?  Apparently this has something to do with the new server and there is a problem "phoning home" or whatever.  If the player has this many issues (especially being unable to uninstall making the program by definition a VIRUS), it should be made unavailable or at the very least, as suggested, make sure to warn people about all its difficulties

[Ortega]

In actuality, most people either watch RiffTrax in the "intended" way, i.e, Syncing the riff with a DVD.  After a few tries, its not that hard.  Even past that, another preferred method is reauthoring(i.e syncing and mixing the riff with the movie audio).  As a long-time customer, and one of the initial testers of the first builds of the RIffTrax Player, i can back up Torgo on the fact that it DID work before they switched servers.  Personally, on my end, i haven't been able to get it to work since the server switch, while other friends of mine have the player install and work fine. 

While it does suck that the program is being finicky on your system, it definitely isn't the only way to enjoy RiffTrax.....

[torgosPizza]

We are putting more effort into working on a new player. Cameron (xrampage16) has been working on it this week. We hope to have made some progress in the next week or two.

[goflyblind]

i go the re-author route, so it's not such a big deal to me any more, but: mac version?

[suedenim]

Like the original poster said, I think it's really high time that Rifftrax as a corporate entity stops acting like Rifftrax Player is a functioning program.  It's still advertised on the front page, and I was just listening to Kevin Murphy on a podcast (the excellent Word Balloons, and a fun interview), who mentioned the player as an attractive option.

It does LOOK like the best way to watch a Rifftrax, at least in theory, and I imagine wrestling with this software gives a lot of people a bad first impression of Rifftrax.

If the program isn't just pulled completely, at the very least its page should bear a great red label: "Warning: Lark's Vomit."

Love Rifftrax, love the IDEA of Rifftrax Player, but I think it's time to punt on this one.

[Conor]

You are right, there should be a warning on the RiffTrax Player page.  I too, am tired of offering up "support" that consists of "I don't know how to help you."  I think we discussed a while back about putting a disclaimer on the Player page, I will ask Erik about it tomorrow.

[torgosPizza]

Done and done.