Topic: Skins MC21 v XBMC Aeon-Nox (Read 16817 times)

CubicZirconia · « **on:** February 09, 2016, 08:28:05 pm »

In another thread where I said I still miss the eye candies in XBMC Aeon-Nox skin, JimH asked my to open a thread on this. so here I am.

Disclaimer 1. I have not used XBMC for a while since I migrated to MC20. so the experience here is based on what I had on an old version of Aeon-Nox. There has since been new versions.

Disclaimer 2. Aeon-Nox is highly customizable. what I present is based on a customization that fits my like. But it does utilize many of the features in Aeon-Nox.

Disclaimer 3. I m doing screen shots of my media PC on my lap top via TeamViewer (a wonderful VNC like application, free for personal use, works on all platforms, very nice). so the image quality is not high.

That out of the way a few words on Aeon-Nox. Over the few years that I used XMBC, Aeon-Nox is the most fancy skin I found. It emphasize fan arts and eye candies. The price is a non negligible CPU load (5-8% on a Intel I5) even when XBMC just sits there showing the skin without doing much of anything else. It can probably be lowered with some tuning but I did not bother too much.

I plan to do this in a series of replies with screen shots if I could manage.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #1 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:29:01 pm »

here is the top level screen when "movie" is selected. The background is a slides show of movie fan arts in the library.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #2 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:33:38 pm »

the top level screen for TV shows, it is a slide show of TV fan arts in the library.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #3 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:36:32 pm »

this is the top level screen for "programs". I post it here because I want to mention that two boxes on the top right of the screen. Those are short cuts to features like library scan and other stuff. In JRiver, this could be some thing that lets user to do on demand import in Theater View or something.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #4 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:38:20 pm »

weather screen for what s worth it. I used the stock background which is a slide show of a few "weather" themed images.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #5 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:45:33 pm »

a movie. the background is a slide show of the fan art for this particular movie

again, I m doing screen shots on my laptop via a VNC like remote software. the screen shot does not do justice to the appearance. the post has reflections at the bottom, and you may notice that some file info is displayed at the bottom

JimH · « **Reply #6 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:52:59 pm »

Please describe what the down arrow does.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #7 on:** February 09, 2016, 08:58:42 pm »

yes sir.

press down arrow on the keyboard or the remote. all the clutters are removed, and the whole screen shows the fan art slides (of this movie) with no obstruction.

this is also true in the movie list screen, that is the screen two posts ago (the Lincoln Lawyer screen shot), with the shift list of all the movie posters. press down arrow, all the posters disappear, you get a slides show of all the moves with no obstruction.

I sometimes left my TV on and Aeon-Nox in this mode. It becomes a poster light box kinda thing.

on the left top there is a small grey box saying "press any key" to bring back the info and actionable icons.

I must add that this is a special feature in the Aeon-Nox lay out called ShowCase.

Quote from: JimH on February 09, 2016, 08:52:59 pm

Please describe what the down arrow does.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #8 on:** February 09, 2016, 09:05:58 pm »

movie information view. this is accessed through a context menu.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #9 on:** February 09, 2016, 09:11:16 pm »

a better screen shot of the movie "show case" view. this is grabbed from an XBMC instance on my laptop. so image quality is better. The library though is completely messed up so you see some of the posters twice.

at the bottom you see some file info. you can see the reflection a little better. on the top, you see temperature, date and time.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #10 on:** February 09, 2016, 09:15:58 pm »

up-arrow key shows movie info.

from the screen above (the X-men screen), press up arrow on keyboard or remote, you get movie info. there are a few layouts one can choose on the movie info pane. I attached two of them.

press the ENTER key on the remove or keyboard actually starts playing.

in JRiver, ENTER once goes to info, ENTER and second time starts playing. Aeon-Nox is "flatter" in terms of control sequence for lack of better words.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #11 on:** February 09, 2016, 09:24:36 pm »

TV shows list. this is one of the layouts that uses more of the features while giving a good view to the fan art. Again back ground is a slide show of the fan arts on the show selected.

left is the show poster, middle is a rolling list of shows, on the right we have synopsis (rolling text) on the top, station logo, show logo and rating logo on the bottom.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #12 on:** February 09, 2016, 09:29:11 pm »

also you can download show theme music in mp3 or mp4. there is a theme folder XBMC recognizes. with the screen above, the theme of The Big Bang Theory would be playing "our whole universe is a hot dense soup..." if you stay on this screen, the theme music repeats with small gaps with fading in and out.

Quote from: CubicZirconia on February 09, 2016, 09:24:36 pm

TV shows list. this is one of the layouts that uses more of the features while giving a good view to the fan art. Again back ground is a slide show of the fan arts on the show selected.

left is the show poster, middle is a rolling list of shows, on the right we have synopsis (rolling text) on the top, station logo, show logo and rating logo on the bottom.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #13 on:** February 09, 2016, 09:42:27 pm »

I want to add that the Aeon-Nox theme appears to have a different philosophy regarding fan arts.

It puts fan art at a very high importance, shows them as they are without any grey shading.

It also tries to provide layouts where the top-center portion of the screen is free of items so this part of the fan art can be displayed without any obstruction.

It provides a way to use the entire screen to display fan art slides without any obstruction, which makes the TV a poster light box kinda thing.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 10, 2016, 09:13:33 am »

I used to use Aeon Nox also back when I used XBMC. Great skin.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #15 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:17:43 pm »

yeah, it is pretty much the only thing I miss about my XBMC set up compare to JRiver.

Quote from: muzicman0 on February 10, 2016, 09:13:33 am

I used to use Aeon Nox also back when I used XBMC. Great skin.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #16 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:24:48 pm »

continue on TV Shows. Now I go into one of the show and the seasons are laid out in yet another way, which Aeon-Nox calls "Banner Flex". Each season has its own banner.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #17 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:29:14 pm »

going into a season, this is one of the few ways to lay out episodes. Just so happens this particular lay out is called "episodes" which I find is pretty good in displaying episode info and screen shot while leave the fan arts prominently displayed.

Again, in all these screens, the background is dynamic. It is a slides show of fan arts.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #18 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:38:00 pm »

one interesting view is tv shows in "episode" layout.

it uses banners to save vertical spaces so more shows are listed in one screen. the current show in focus shows the poster and a rolling text synopsis, with slide show fan art in the back ground.

Also the theme music of that show if present in certain folder, would play.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #19 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:45:43 pm »

TV shows in "showcase" lay out.

and with a press of the down arrow key, you get the full screen fan art slide show.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #20 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:48:50 pm »

that is about it for the tour of Aeon-Nox skin in XBMC/Kodi.

blgentry · « **Reply #21 on:** February 10, 2016, 07:58:02 pm »

Disclaimer: I don't use Theater View, so I don't have a great point of reference. I've just seen some demos.

It looks to me like the big difference here is background images. The layout is different of course, and it seems to show less items at a time. Is this appealing on it's own (less items on screen) or just a consequence of this skin wanting to show off lots and lots of background "fan art"?

Brian.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #22 on:** February 10, 2016, 08:13:15 pm »

Ah, sorry about the confusion. The Aeon-Nox skin has the "tile wall" layout. what skin does not? see the screen shots.

I left the left bar showing in one of the screen shot so one can see the list of layouts available which is many. there are two different shot of wall layout with slightly different cosmetics.

the ones I show in above posts reflect my personal choices in my instance.

Quote from: blgentry on February 10, 2016, 07:58:02 pm

Disclaimer: I don't use Theater View, so I don't have a great point of reference. I've just seen some demos.

It looks to me like the big difference here is background images. The layout is different of course, and it seems to show less items at a time. Is this appealing on it's own (less items on screen) or just a consequence of this skin wanting to show off lots and lots of background "fan art"?

Brian.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #23 on:** February 10, 2016, 09:12:27 pm »

info wall, which shows a lot of items plus poster and info for the item under focus

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #24 on:** February 14, 2016, 01:01:17 pm »

a few more observations.

1. JRiver lowers the brightness of the background fan art in general and displays text right on top. Aeon-Nox displays the fan art as is, but uses either a box around text or a gradient mask to darken a portion of the background on which the texts are overlaid.

2. in the poster flow layout, the down arrow button in JRiver appears to do nothing. Perhaps it could be implemented such that it triggers a full screen fan art slides show at full brightness.

3. Aeon-Nox uses more types of graphical elements. Show logo, show/season banner, TM icons for H264,BD etc, while JRiver mostly uses text for these. Presumably I guess these elements can be turned on in JRiver skin.

4. Aeon-Nox supports theme music and video background(I never tried the video background thingy). There s no such thing in JR.

Bad (or good) news depending on your perspective is that the latest version of Aeon-Nox opt for less fanciness and a more flat 2D look to reduce resource usage. So those of us who have high spec media PCs to run madVR have to settle with less fancy skins which can run on those tiny boxes. Kinda a tail wags the dog situation.

Another thing is that Kodi now can support Direct Show filters and madVR. But their forum thread has this in bold text on the top: "Important Notice: The developer of DSPlayer has decided to step away from this project due to personal reasons. " I guess this is another reason to choose JRiver against Kodi.

Mustangjeff · « **Reply #25 on:** February 15, 2016, 04:16:38 pm »

I use JRiver MC21 exclusively in theater view (unless I'm tweaking settings). My biggest complaint with JRiver would be the lack of skins/layouts available in Theater View. It would be great to see some enhancements to the the UI and spiff up the appearance.

connersw · « **Reply #26 on:** February 15, 2016, 05:03:54 pm »

Quote from: CubicZirconia on February 14, 2016, 01:01:17 pm

3. Aeon-Nox uses more types of graphical elements. Show logo, show/season banner, TM icons for H264,BD etc, while JRiver mostly uses text for these. Presumably I guess these elements can be turned on in JRiver skin.

For me, this is one of the biggest drawbacks to MC Theater View. It is such a wall of text. Post #8 is the screen shot that really shows where Kodi has the edge:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=103135.msg716131#msg716131

Being able to see codecs, movie ratings, studios, actor images, etc makes everything available at a glance. Notice, you can even access trailers from this screen. The dynamic way you can navigate the library (ie jump to movies by an actor) is also slick. MC added that feature in version 20, but I think there are some improvements that could be made to how it handles list fields, limiting media sub type, etc that could improve it.

JimH · « **Reply #27 on:** February 15, 2016, 05:15:43 pm »

While it could be a lot of work to modify Theater View, we might be able to add a page or two if we knew what to do. I like the suggestion in the original post of adding something that is accessed with a down arrow.

CubicZirconia · « **Reply #28 on:** February 15, 2016, 08:14:48 pm »

thanks Jim for the consideration.

Again, I want to stress, all these skin nicety are far outweighted by the advantages of JRiver which plays everything on all platform with server client capability. And it plays audio and video with high quality on Windows.

However, my feeling is that most all skins in various media center applications are something you zoom pass in order to reach a playable media (file or stream). The one exception for me is Aeon-Nox v4. With that, the skin is something you pause or even leave on to appreciate.

from what I understand, JRiver implements skins in a very different way than XBMC which might limit the skinnability or the extensibility to platforms other than Windows.

Quote from: JimH on February 15, 2016, 05:15:43 pm

While it could be a lot of work to modify Theater View, we might be able to add a page or two if we knew what to do. I like the suggestion in the original post of adding something that is accessed with a down arrow.

blgentry · « **Reply #29 on:** February 15, 2016, 08:39:46 pm »

This is off topic. If a mod wants to, split it to a new thread. That said...

I'm curious what specific features, design elements, or whatever attracted you to JRiver MC after using Kodi (XBMC). I have several friends that use Plex and Kodi and I don't really have a lot to say to them about why JRiver might be a better option. Mainly because I don't (can't) use Theater View. So I'm interested to hear what other people, who have tried both, think. Particularly those that have now chosen JRiver over one of the other two big fish in the video server arena.

Brian.

flac.rules · « **Reply #30 on:** February 16, 2016, 05:10:33 am »

Quote from: Mustangjeff on February 15, 2016, 04:16:38 pm

I use JRiver MC21 exclusively in theater view (unless I'm tweaking settings). My biggest complaint with JRiver would be the lack of skins/layouts available in Theater View. It would be great to see some enhancements to the the UI and spiff up the appearance.

Yeah, I would have to agree, the Equivalent of "theater view" in competing programs tends to look better, and have a lot more options when it comes to choosing skins with a wide variety of looks.

connersw · « **Reply #31 on:** February 16, 2016, 07:11:25 am »

Quote from: JimH on February 15, 2016, 05:15:43 pm

While it could be a lot of work to modify Theater View, we might be able to add a page or two if we knew what to do.

I really think that increasing the functionality of the Cover Art folder would go a long way in improving Theater View. It would be the easiest to implement because you would not need to add any pages or drastically change the UI. The way it would work is the same logic as pulling Season or Series cover art so you would not need to reinvent the wheel with much new code. Plus, it could be implemented a little bit at a time. You could provide stock images, but it would also allow users to customize any images they wanted themselves fairly easily.

For example, start with Genre. Add a Genre folder to /Cover Art with stock images for a dozen or so Genres. Something like these: http://i.imgur.com/4yaSxRX.jpg In Theater View, every time the Genre tag says "Action" it would pull the "Action" image instead of fanned cover art or just having text. There would be a stock image if the Genre does not match any images. Users could change, add, or delete whatever images they wanted for specific Genres just by editing the /Cover Art/Genre folder.

From there, you could add additional folders, like one for MPAA Rating, Codec, Channels, etc.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Skins MC21 v XBMC Aeon-Nox (Read 16817 times)