So... I've been thinking about the new Grid view style for Theater View, and how handy it could be for a wide variety of other types of View Schemes.
For example, what about this: A View that shows the last 10 days or so of your recently recorded/imported media, organized by [Date Created]-d. The Y axis (where the "channel listing" would be in a normal TV-Guide grid) represents days of the week. The X axis (where you'd have the days/time normally) would represent time (say 1 hour wide columns). When you open this view up at first, it "centers" on the current day and time in the upper-left corner. Inside the grid, you'd have blocks filled (just like a TV guide shows) showing the shows you have recorded. As you scroll down in the list from the "home position" you'd go back in time through the days, left and right through the time of the day.
It would be really nice for those times when you want to sit and choose something to watch, and you want to look back at what you have from the past week or so. You could just set the time axis at primetime, and then scroll up and down through the days (but really you'd probably be able to see at least a few days all at once that way - even with duplicate "day" rows here and there for overlapping recordings), and left and right a little to go earlier in the day or later.
But that would require a pretty large left-right scroll space (24 columns for 1 hour blocks). So, that'd be a problem for "escaping" from those views. But
that is really a problem for the normal Program Guide Grid too. Limiting the size arbitrarily feels like a hack solution. It doesn't scale well.
What about the Green Button? I mean,
keep it like it is, so that if you do reach the "edge" of the Grid (top or left) it will let you "out" (and don't allow infinite edge grid views). But what if when a
Grid-View control has the focus the first press of the Green Button serves to jump you immediately back to the roller? Like a shortcut, if you know it is there. After jumping back to the Roller, the Green Button would resume "normal" (current) functionality. So a second (or third or fourth) press of the Green Button would not "re-enter" the Grid View ever, just cycle through using the system it now uses (jumping back to the Roller when it hits the still-open Grid View).
And then we can just make a demo movie for Theater View and include that tip. But people might try it anyway. The Green Button "jumps" back to home in Theater View already, so it feels like a "get me out of here" button anyway.
I think that would work nicely and cleanly, and not require any new "required" buttons for the remote.
PS. I have other ideas for the grid control too. Eventually, a scheduling view something like Sage's would be very handy: