It was mentioned in the MC21 Plans thread that Theater View would be getting some interface love in this version. I thought I would list some of my frustrations with it in the hope they will be useful to deciding any changes. I really think its worth getting Theater View right since in many ways the smartphone app interfaces take many of the same design cues. For me I exclusively use the apps and the HTPC theater view interface for browsing and playback these days and only go to Standard view for tagging.
Theater View niggles:
1. No simple way to toggle to audio to 'Night mode'.
As a workaround I have created two zones. One is called night mode and has some compression turned on. Its not a very elegant solution. My family have no idea about changing zones and so almost everything they play goes to the Night zone I created. For some reason this zone seems to be the default and there doesnt seem to be a way to change the default to my Day zone.
2. When I play music it takes me to Display View. I want to rate a track as it plays when I hear a favourite. To do this I have to switch to Playing Now view.
Display View and Playing Now seem to be redundant duplication. There must be a way to combine them. How about merging them and still going to a nice full screen display like mode by default, but adding in a new item in the 'up/down actions bar' called "Info" shrinks the display down into a smaller playing now type display that shows the playing now list and other info.
3. I wanna see info about any track in Playing Now on demand.
The 'info' view and 'list' view also seem needlessly broken up. I want to scroll through a list with an info pane on the right giving my details about the highlighted track. Also I dont want to have to then switch view to the main Playing Now view to rate a file in the list. I want the fields in the info panel to be actionable. Two obvious actions would be to 1) edit the highlighted field and 2) for it to act as a link taking you to a search of that value
4. I find lots of badly tagged Movies and files when browsing in Theater View but can never be assed to hunt for those files in Standard View to fix them.
How about a new roller action called "Reveal in Standard View" that takes us right to the file so we can retag it.
5. I want to be able to easily add songs to playlists as I am listening to them in Playing Now.
Playlists are totally removed from the Theater View experience. There should be a roller action called "Add to Playlist...". Also it would be nice if we could add playlist groups into our media sections. So I could add my "Best of Artists" playlist group to the Audio section of Theater View instead of having to go to the Playlists section.
