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[wig]

I'm impressed with the changes you've made to gizmo in a short period of time. Its much slicker now. Two questions:

1. Is there any way to see the server address now? When gizmo utilized a browser it was easy to see the library server address at the top of the screen. I found this very useful; could server address info be accessible, perhaps through a menu option?

2. Scribbling for gizmo. Last.fm addicts like myself would love to have tracks played through gizmo to be scrobbled.  Is this on your radar?

[swinster]

What might be cool is an ability to use the Gizomote remote part of this app to be able to control any zone currently connected to the library - in a similar way that you can "Play to ....". I.e. The main library server is on a Server, and contacted to it is HTPC1 and HTPC2. Ideally you want be able to control HTPC1 or HTPC2 via the remote, yet also have the ability to list and play all files on the server.

I do understand that you can sign into different library servers that could be running on HTPC 1 or 2, but it much be slightly more slicker and user friendly to make it work as described above.

[JustinChase]

What might be cool is an ability to use the Gizomote remote part of this app to be able to control any zone currently connected to the library - in a similar way that you can "Play to ....". I.e. The main library server is on a Server, and contacted to it is HTPC1 and HTPC2. Ideally you want be able to control HTPC1 or HTPC2 via the remote, yet also have the ability to list and play all files on the server.

I think you can do this now.  whichever zone is selected (playing now shows you), the controls all work for that zone, including transport and media selection control.

I might be missing what you're saying.

Upon re-reading your post, I wonder if you mean use the 5 button remote screen to operate each zone.  I also think this just functions on the currently active zone, so switching zones should give you that screen to control whichever zone you have selected.  If not, I'm not sure I see the need to have it function on all zones.

I have found the 5 button very welcome, but only 60 to 80% finished, and the missing 20% plus makes it too much trouble for anything but ff and rw while watching a video of some sort.  Using it to try to navigate in theater view is still too cumbersome.  It seems to be impossible to select a movie and cause it to start playing from this interface.  It seems easier to just use the play to... to select what I want to play, then use regular transport controls for the ff and rw.

don't get me wrong, it's a very good start, but it still needs a bit of optimization in "flow" for it to be very useful.

I do understand that you can sign into different library servers that could be running on HTPC 1 or 2, but it much be slightly more slicker and user friendly to make it work as described above.

This confused me.  are HTPC 1 & 2 zones or library servers?  if zones, I think the above applies.  if Servers, I am not sure if you can have 2 servers running on the same physical machine at the same time.

if you could, this might open up some possibilities in the WAF department

hmmm...

[swinster]

@JustinChase - I'm talking solely about the 5 button (although I wish they would bring back the extra buttons) remote control over theatre mode. The other options of playing to zone works OK.

The 5 button remote, AFAIK, only allows you to control the theatre mode of the machine on which the library server is running that you are currently connected to. You can run multiple servers on multiple machine, but need to switch between them in order to get the 5 button remote to control the theatre mode of that particular machine.

E.g.

This confused me.  are HTPC 1 & 2 zones or library servers?  if zones, I think the above applies.  if Servers, I am not sure if you can have 2 servers running on the same physical machine at the same time.

if you could, this might open up some possibilities in the WAF department

hmmm...

In order to be able to "remote control" theatre mode, you need to connect to different machines at the moment (as shown above). This means you need to set up the library server on all machine you want to control, then from Gizmo you need to connect to the machine you want to control.

What would be great is a similar thing to the way the "Play To ...." option currently works, so that the you can control the theatre mode of connected 'zone' or clients without having to re-connect to diffent library servers directly

E.g.


Single Library Server by swinster, on Flickr


Hope this makes the idea easy to understand.

[JustinChase]

Ah, okay, I'm with you, it's 2 servers on 2 machines, each as only one zone.

do you find yourself wanting to use a theater view experience in 2 locations simultaneously?  I only have one machine, and 2 zones, so I only need/want the 5 button for theater view in one zone, and the webremote type control for the other is fine in my case.

I'd much rather see MC move to allowing multiple "library" connections to one server.  with "library" really being a customized client setup.

so, your server machine above would run the server portion of Media Center, and each place an interface is requested/shown (the 2 HTPC's and the Android device you show) is just a client.

the only library server is just the entire MC back end.  it handles all library organization, knows the locations of all media, and just presents that to each machine, and each machine can have a different "library" (client), including view schemes, playlists, ratings, etc.

One machine handles all of the reading and writing of the actual media files, makes this full list available to all clients/machines, and all other machines just tell that one what it needs.  all the meta data (much of the current library information) is stored on the server machine, when another machine connects, it asks which client, login, get your personalized experience.

However, wishing for the above isn't going to fix your request today (but would resolve that issue if implemented), so hopefully your request can be implemented soon.

Hopefully Gizmo continues to get some more development time to get a few shortcomings ironed out and polished up before we move on to v16. 

[swinster]

Hey JustinChase, that's pretty much what I would like, and in fact this is what I have forced MC to do at this time (with certain limitations that are listed elsewhere).

The ONLY reason to run the library server in the client machines (HTPC1 and 2) is to be able to control them remotely - NOT to actually serve any library files or information - they themselves still get ALL media files from the main library server. The naming convention in MC leads to a little confusion as to set up the ability for the clients to be remote controlled, you have to set up and enable the "library server". WebRemote and WebPlay are simply by-products (IMHO) of the library server services.

Further, it's not that I would like to be able to control BOTH HTPC's at the same time, but may well wonder from room to room and would like to switch simply and be able to control the HTPC Client in the room I am currently in. I can do this at the moment by disconnecting from the main library server (in Gizmo) and reconnecting to the individual servers running on the HTPC Clients, but it maybe more beneficial to be able to do this without this step.

For instance, there could be an additional menu after the "Enable Remote Theatre" mode and before the "5 button remote" pops up saying, "Which client would you like to control?"

There may be a problem here is that connected "zones" and not necessarily connected "clients" - a zone can contain multiple clients, yet with the remote theatre mode, it's the client that you want to control.  

Oddly, the one thing that I will defiantly NOT want to do is remote control the theatre mode on the main library server. This is a headless unit set up for the purpose of storing and serving. It can't even run Theatre mode!

[JimH]

Further, it's not that I would like to be able to control BOTH HTPC's at the same time, but may well wander from room to room and would like to switch simply and be able to control the HTPC Client in the room I am currently in.

If you also ran DLNA on the HTPC client, you could play to it with Gizmo. 

[swinster]

If you also ran DLNA on the HTPC client, you could play to it with Gizmo.  

Cheers Jim. I've actually got that working too -very well BTW. It's specifically the couch remote I'm interesting in.