I have been a JRiver fan for about 10 years. It satisfies my needs very well. I am interested in classical music, and it delivers excellent music in 7.1. Tagging and cataloging is excellent, though it requires manual attention. But, I watch TV and Blu-Rays on my TV monitor with it, as well.
The system is simple. A PC is the heart of it. It feeds the audio via USB to a ExaSound Mch DAC, the amps and speakers, and the TV via HMDI. There is a 52 TB NAS hooked to the PC via Ethernet for my extensive Mch music SACD and PCM collection and my video collection. There is also a TV cable card tuner via Ethernet delivering full Mch sound which is well integrated with JRiver. There are also optical drives in the PC with CD, DVD, Blu-Ray capability.
JRiver is excellent for control and calibration over all sources. Audio is exquisite and bit perfect, from MP3’s to CD’s to high rez in Mch. Video is similarly excellent, using the superb MadVR reproduction system.
I need no audio processor - not a prepro or an AVR. I am using Dirac Live in the PC, which JRiver interfaces well with. Consequently, the core of the apps in the PC is JRiver and Dirac, that’s it. And, I like to use an iPad via JRemote control to select my recordings from my collection.
I am using Win7. If I saw other advantages to other OS’s, I would use those. But, I cannot find any, and often there are restrictions to non-Windows apps. But, yes, Apple and Linux are both supported by JRiver.