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[MajorTomKY]

Having finished off the Vista sound fight, my HTPC and Big Screen is now in visual presentation considerations.

Since we want to browse this has led to modifying the Windows fonts & appearance setting to make things rather LARGE. The result is that some application, MC included have some difficulties with the font changes. Especially around the titlebar and menu bar area. Also Scroll bar everywher are far too small to manipulate or see  from a distance. ( Hey I'm gettin' old ;-)

Theater view is pretty good, we have it at 300% I believe and it is quite readable. However I still love the original interface of MC, I've always felt it was extremely flexible and powerful. Jukebox changed the way I listen to music. When with friends we bounce around the collection constantly.  So it's nice to have that display rather large as well. I'm skinned to virtually a black on white for maximum contrast. Only scrolling is hard. Also when things are playing I still haven't found that perfect display skin.

It would be nice to have a quite large album cover  and the basics of Artist, title, song name in large fonts , that leaves alot of real estate on a 40" widescreen 1080p. That space would be most wonderful if it had scrollable Notes.  I place complete Biographies, album reviews and the artist playing on the album all in Notes. Some skins had the notes but they didn't display the full contents, or didn't scroll and in all cases could never be read from far away. These are the thing my guests ALWAYS ask about.

In Theater mode that display would also be full screen and it would beeasy to glance over and see. I'm the only one in the house who already knows all the stuff in there but everyone else would like to read this infor.  While I'm wishing I guess it would be good if that display had the playlists cause any file in my collection probably is attached to a dozen or more which describe the nature of the artist, album and or song.

But like I said give me BIG scroll bars and I'll someday get around perhaps to creating that 'perfect' display skin .

[benn600]

Would you want to post a digital camera photo of your TV and theater view?  I'm confused why you have it at 300%.  I have ours at 100% and it's perfect.

Is there a way to un-bold everything?  Bold is not necessary for my needs and it just makes the text wider.  I've looked through the skin but can't seem to figure it out.  Larger thumbnails with smaller text would be perfect.  I like really emphasizing the thumbnails--which took hours to collect.

[MajorTomKY]

I'll see about that photo however I think I can sum up the 300%..

After 30 years of programming and being over 50 I and MK don't really have that great of eye sight !! I imagine the kids and everyone else see the screen just fine. We on the other hand require all the contrast possible and pretty large text. The icons and pictures are essentially meaningless to MK, she really wasn't a music collector and I'm usually more interested in the actual info that is text based. Unless I stand in front of the screen to me the scrolls are essentially invisible. They didn't resize with the native change in Windows display settings.

So maybe this almost a consideration for display with folks who are somewhat 'disabled' compared to most of the other users. Sitting in front of my primary computer I would never leave standard view because I'm concerned with the data itself.

I haven't investigate much as to how the theater view etc is being generated but I do know from programming Windows since 2.0 that you can obtain the metrics for menu bar, scroll size etc from the system. It's not uncommon for folks not to check those when creating their screens. I see it all the time as I run with custom windows settings for the whole display rather than provided schemes as I expand everything to much larger than normal for comfort of viewing... 

[benn600]

My biggest complaint with the sizing of theater view elements is the proportions.  The text should not be bold and the thumbnails should be enlarged a bit.  It just seems wasteful using bold because thicker letters mean less spacing and more horizontal space taken up, which leads to more line breaks and therefore, even smaller thumbnails.  The thumbnails appear to work best with square images but if you have taller thumbnails, like for DVD cover art, then there is a lot of empty space on the sides.

I've been looking through the skin files but haven't really found an easy to change setting anywhere.  It is also very personal as far as what settings work best for certain users, screens, resolutions, viewing distances, viewing habits, etc.  We may be getting a 1080p projector in the next few months or year and it will be our first true HD anything.  We have some nice monitors that exceed HD resolution but we've never had anything that will be used for TV that is basically exactly an HD resolution.

With this, we plan on bringing the total image size up as large as we can.  Now, we have around a 110" screen and it's the only way to watch a movie as far as I'm concerned.  Now, any 40 - 60 " TV looks tiny and worthless.  I like being engulfed by the picture...but my point is that with this new resolution being blown up so large, I'm betting theater view will be a significantly different experience and I will probably change the settings.  I may even lower the percentage because everything will be so large.

[cncb]

My biggest complaint with the sizing of theater view elements is the proportions.  The text should not be bold and the thumbnails should be enlarged a bit.  It just seems wasteful using bold because thicker letters mean less spacing and more horizontal space taken up, which leads to more line breaks and therefore, even smaller thumbnails.

I agree completely.  I have complained about the Theater View text for a while now.  I'm not sure why a bold font is used but it looks pretty bad on my displays especially relative to text in other full-screen programs I use.  Apparently no one else is bothered by it.

[MajorTomKY]

Actually as a long time programmer, the answer to the font issue is easy to see. You need as much user configuration as possible. Some want bold fonts and others need clearer fonts. Every user has different needs and it's impossible to have one size fits all as a solution. I could probably read fonts on thescreen over 100" described above but not on my 40". Likewise the 1080p monitor has real high resolution and anyfont I use is clear as a bell ( provided I'm close enough to see it ;-) 

[Matt]

Theater View uses whatever font you choose in Options > Tree & View

Hold control and spin the mouse wheel to fine-tune the sizing in Theater View.

[benn600]

That's great to know!  I'll try it when I get a chance at home.

[cncb]

This does change the text size but doesn't change the "boldness".  I've resurrected my old thread to discuss this some more with screenshots: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40223.0