Replacement for Music and TV App?

[MallardDuck]

I just upgraded to 10.2, and am instantly looking for a replacement for the UI abomination that's the new TV app.

The only time I have sufficient unmetered bandwidth to watch or listen to something is when I'm at home, when I don't need to (because my content is all pre-downloaded and stored on the local network a single time (instead of once for every viewing).

So I don't stream, am not going to stream, and don't want to ever see any cloud/purchased content on my device (there's a reason I bought 256 GB of local storage).

The new UI deliberately tries to merge the two together, which is going to cause me to accidentally watch something while on a metered connection (the cellular toggle isn't sufficient to prevent that) and get a very unpleasant bill. The downloaded option is clunky at best (and prone to forgetting), but even when you do, it is *still* showing the 'download' button for seasons in iTunes that aren't on the local device (no episodes, just a blank season icon and a non-functional download button), and then for seasons that have episodes on the device, it still shows the iCloud download icon. This is just stupid.

This, and the music app, are the worst user interfaces to come from Apple in memory. Big, garish, clunky, force-fed streaming and online content to the user, low information density, and a large number of unnecessary navigation steps to start playing content.

So I'm looking for recommendations for both music and Video apps that can do the following:

1) Play content from the device library (though this is negotiable because of the continual corruption and content disappearing from the device)
2) For videos only, play FairPlay DRM content (I've now stopped buying content from the iTunes store to prevent further lock-in, but have a fair amount already purchased.
3) Only display, play, consider, think about, use, touch, or display on-device content. Period. No Cloud of any kind, in any way shape or form.
4) Have a user interface that's works while stopped at a stoplight. Playlists, genre's, artists, albums all at a single touch. No gestures required - touch/click style interface.
5) I don't care about displaying album art when choosing content, I'd rather see more choices on one screen (information density trumps white space).
6) Efficient navigation path to content.
7) No spyware, phoning home, etc.

Suggestions?

 

[Shirasaki]

1) Play content from the device library (though this is negotiable because of the continual corruption and content disappearing from the device)
2) For videos only, play FairPlay DRM content (I've now stopped buying content from the iTunes store to prevent further lock-in, but have a fair amount already purchased.
3) Only display, play, consider, think about, use, touch, or display on-device content. Period. No Cloud of any kind, in any way shape or form.
4) Have a user interface that's works while stopped at a stoplight. Playlists, genre's, artists, albums all at a single touch. No gestures required - touch/click style interface.
5) I don't care about displaying album art when choosing content, I'd rather see more choices on one screen (information density trumps white space).
6) Efficient navigation path to content.
7) No spyware, phoning home, etc.

1) Marvis+, Cesium, etc. But for music only.
2) No other choices other than Video app cause cracking DRM is highly discouraged. Another workaround is buying those videos bought in iTunes Store again elsewhere, and archive DVD/BD using some utilities.
3) Marvis+. It can play local contents ONLY. But again, only for music.
4) Marvis+ might meet some of your requirements, so does Cesium. But Marvis+ is more intuitive.
5) I don't have any recommendation on this one.
6) It depends. Perhaps Marvis+ is not the perfect one.
7) Marvis+ and Cesium. Both are clean apps.

PS: I also hate streaming and unwilling to support them in the near future.

 

[Craiguyver]

Cesium is a great app for playing local music files. I personally like the VLC app for local videos. You have to sync videos to the VLC app in iTunes.