More > Media Center 17
Where We're Going Next
JimH:
We already offer a lot of ways to access and control MC. In my opinion, they are underused, so I'm reluctant to extend them at this time.
Theater View skinning is a good example. MrHaugen, you're spending a lot of time proposing changes, but it appears that you've spent little time investigating the current capabilities.
That said, I would like to assemble a checklist of proposals for the next version of MC, without debating the merits of each here. Feel free to start new threads.
JimH:
Better handling of multiple libraries posts were split here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=66616.0
Listener:
Some items on my list:
- rich UI for tablets
I'd like to see an iPad/Android tablet interface that could use standard view with view schemes, especially panes rather than just a scaled up Gizmo small screen one-thing-at-a-time interface. I understand that fingers are much less precise than a mouse pointer for selecting content but I think that a tablet size screen is big enough for a rich user interface.
I understand that a Windows 8 tablet would allow me to run full MC but I think the odds are good that Win 8 tablets will be a dismal failure in the marketplace and be unattractive to MC users like me.
- seamless multi-room operation with MC running on a headless appliance PC
In a few years, I'll be running MC with Library Server on a headless PC that functions as an appliance. MC will be started when the PC is booted and it should never hang up because of some dialog asking for a user response. (My MusicPC on Win XP can run headless now without automatic updates.) I'll be using other devices to supply the UI for browsing and selecting music and videos:
- a desktop PC running MC with Tremote for playback in my home office
- a laptop running MC / TRemote when I'm already using the laptop in another room.
- a Tablet (iPad/Android/Win 8) running a slimmed down user interface when I sitting in my library or living room and want to listen/watch and surf the web.
I don't see this as a major new development effort but one of carefully streamlining and adapting current MC features. DLNA seems way too complicated now. Tremote seems much more usable now but networking is still too complicated.
- No screwups
If I install MC and get it setup the way I want it, MC should continue to run without any drama indefinitely.
Last night my wife fired up a VNC client on her PC and started playing music in our home office from my dedicated MusicPC. When she ran out of ideas, I play music. After a bit, she played more music. This is what I want from MC. Jim, you talk about WAF. Reliable, trouble-free operation is essential if my wife is going to use MC.
Yesterday MC updated itself to 16.0.176 on my personal PC when I clicked on the MC 16 icon. Today when I started MC 16, it no longer recognized the existence of my permanent library on that PC. It erased the library files! I can recover but screw-ups like this will make MC unusable for my wife.
Fortunately for us, I am very careful about the version of MC I use on our dedicated MusicPC. It is the last version of MC 15. I was about ready to move to MC 16 on that PC to use the lovely improvement to bi-directional filtering when this bone-head mistake occurred.
Some time back, I protested the automatic updates behavior in MC 16. At that time, Jim dismissed my concerns. Well, here is an example. You need to make your product simpler, more reliable and more appliance-like.
Bill
MrHaugen:
Fair enough Jim. I do think we're taking about quite different things though. Not that it matters much. Some of the most important things is already on the list. I'm like todays kids, you know. Way to demanding.... :) I'll shut up now, and start making some Theater View illustration and suggestions.
Jaguu:
One of my favorite novelties im MC16 was the artist image feature. It is amazing how many artists you are listening to (especially in classical music) without ever knowing how they look like. So this was a real revelation.
I would like to have this feature extended to other fields as well:
a. for all person related fields such as composer, conductor, soloist, band, orchestra, actors, directors, people etc.
b. for other fields in general such as events, places, user defined fields
Let's take an example: With the events view I see all those revolving thumbnails of many events, which is also a nice feature, but I still have to read the title of the event. But very often I want a single, specific top thumbnail for a specific event such as "My 2006 holidays in Paris" or "My sister's 50th birthday", kind of an event branding image. This images could either be retrieved automatically from the Internet or set specifically by the user.
With more and more screens in 16:9 or 16:10 format you always get black borders when watching images (mostly still in 4:3 format). It would be nice to be able to split the screen and have the caption infos on the side (left or right) and not over the image. Here some more flexibility in slideshow presentation for large screens would be a real goodie.
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