Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MusicHawk]

I love Media Center, and hope these observations in 11.1.99 are helpful. (I partially reported them for 11.1.196.) The first two are probably bugs, the last two are suggestions.

These comments have nothing to do with TV tuner hardware (assume it is installed and working fine), I am strictly commenting on how MC software behaves.


Bugs? Problems renaming TV channels (change "Channel 8" to "CBS", for instance) via TV Options > Configure TV > right click channel number > Edit Station Name:

+ Renaming seems impossible until the "where to click" trick is discovered. The station name can't be edited by clicking the station name text. Instead, the user must click the channel number, which can't be edited. But clicking it puts the adjacent station name into edit mode.

+ However, renamed station names don't stick. The rename vanishes everytime I close and reopen the dialog.


Suggestion 1:

The TV Tuner ScreenGrabs capability seems to be a black hole. I saved some TV screens, but couldn't find the saved .jpg files in any obvious MC location. They were deep in the MC Program Files tree, at C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\Data\ScreenGrabs. That might be OK, if MC let me get at them directly and immediately. But MC didn't add the new ScreenGrabs to the database; they weren't listed in Images, nor was there a link such as TV Tuner\ScreenGrabs. Obviously I could locate the images using a different tool, then manually add them to MC. I could also have MC search my drive for new content, but I'd either have to tell it exactly where to search, or deal with tons of stuff I don't want to import. But why require this? I expected that .jpg images created by MC would automatically be added to MC, much as ripping a CD with MC causes the new files to be listed in MC.

Also, I wonder if normal users should be expected or forced to routinely dig into Program Files? It would be safer and more logical to save ScreenGrabs in My Documents or My Pictures, or maybe at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\J River\Media Center 11, where Library, Backups and Thumbnails are stored. Even better, let users specify a path. (This is already provided for TV recordings; just add parallel capability for TV ScreenGrabs.) Meanwhile, is the ScreenGrabs path in the Registry, or hard-coded?


Suggestion 2:

The TV Tuner links to TV Guide and Yahoo TV would be much handier if the user could specify the URL that goes directly to the listing page. Right now MC's built-in links go to the main page of each site, which is not helpful for quickly checking a schedule. While average users should be able to specify the desired link via a dialog, if this info is stored in the Registry (or better an .ini file), knowing what to hack would be a good start for some of us.

[Yaobing]

Suggestion 1:

The TV Tuner ScreenGrabs capability seems to be a black hole.

You may have it mixed up with screen grabs when playing a video file.  TV's screen grabs are stored in the same location as your TV recordings, which, as you know, can be specified by the user.

On the other hand, for video playback, when you choose "Screen Grab to File" from the context menu, a Save As dialog is popped up for you to specify a file location. It defaults to the location you mentioned. Once you choose a folder, it is saved in the registry.  The next time, that location will be used, although you are still offered the opportunity to modify the file name and path.

[MusicHawk]

Thank you for clarifying. I didn't suspect MC would default to such an unusual location for playback ScreenGrabs, given how it handles other TV related files. I still wonder how less tech users will handle this, since MC doesn't seem to do an auto-import of playback ScreenGrabs, forcing the user to go digging for them.

Any thoughts on the two bugs and other suggestion?

-- John

[JimH]

John,
Yaobing is the primary developer for our TV.

[Yaobing]

Any thoughts on the two bugs and other suggestion?

Renaming of station names can be done one level deeper into the configuration - by going into "Analog Chan" and "Digital Chan" respectively.

I am working on it so renaming can be done on the "TV Channels" page as well.

I will have to take a deeper look at your second suggestion before I can say anything.

[MusicHawk]

>> Renaming of station names can be done one level deeper into the configuration - by going into "Analog Chan" and "Digital Chan" respectively.

Thanks for pointing the way. However, while this is a way to get it done, it behaves oddly which is why I didn't detect that it sort-of works.

I can edit several channel names, but when I then click "OK" only the last name change is saved. The others disappear.

The only way to keep a channel name change is to press OK after each edit. But the dialog doesn't say this and since it allows editing of any number of channel names BEFORE pressing OK, it's quite frustrating -- and of course different from how MC works in other areas.

Pressing OK after each channel name edit is also inefficient, because it pops the user of out the former position in the channel list.

Also, the observation is still true that it's necessary to select the Channel Number text to edit the Channel Name text, which can't be edited.

[Yaobing]

I can not reproduce any of the problems you described.

1. In the Scan Channels dialog window (clicking Analog Chan button brings it up), single clicking the station name puts the cell in editing mode.

2. Edit any number of station names before clicking OK button, the edited names show up in the parent window (i.e. "TV Channels" page).