I purchased this program yesterday and like it very much.
It is solid and fast, never missing a cover art. I especially like the Playing Now UI for the music and its native support for foreign characters. Now Playing Button on the top right corner during browsing for extremely easy access is heaven as well. I was originally using iPad+Splashtop RD+MC Theater view for remote control. Now will use this native app for sure.
If there is a dedicated iPad version in the future. I have some suggestions (or biased/selfish demand in disguise
), wish it could help.
Current UI brings user to "Browsing" Section upon start which leave most of the iPad screen blank. I would add an option to let program jump directly to the category user last browsed. Small icon and text combination works well for iphone browsing.
Bigger icon or pure text looks better on iPad, IMHO. My mockup below. Program could choose random artist/album cover art and movie poster to be on the browsing page. Recently Added section might help fill the blank too.
Would bottom row be fully configurable in the future?
For me,I would put Audio, Movie, TV Show, Play List, Images,Radio on the bottom row.
Current Artist view UI is iTunish and very fast. Since I have large collections of classic music. I want something different.
Below is my mocked up UI for the artist view for iPad. It utilize JRiver unique features which allow cover art for Artist and artist biography field. This is a purely selfish feature request
since it is not easy to realize this view under MC.
In MC Theater view, user could create a Category to combine Album Artist, Conductor, Band, or any custom database field.
This function is very useful to organize Audio. In the case of Artist browsing, I could create a category name “Artist” as an umbrella for Conductor, Band, Orchestra, Violinist, Album artist etc,. field. It would be much easier to locate an artist comparing to rely solely on an album artist field.
By combining field with similar nature together under a single category, it would also make a simpler UI.
For the album view, current cover art thumbnail is perfect for iphone/itouch browsing but too small for Ipad browsing. My mock up below. Album is filtered by the Genre field.
I would recommend author disable the "Tracking Number" column before the movie/video titles.
Add "Year" field or IMDB rating field after the movie title would help as well.
Movie UI could be more fancy for iPad if utilizing cover art and fan art feature.
IMHO, XBMC Constellation iPad remote’s movie UI is well done. User could even access IMDB/youtube trailer page directly.
The Playing Now UI for movies need to have Subtitles and Audio Track Control Button. Movie Fanart, plot, rating, tech details could be shown in the cover art space. If bookmarking and trailer feature could be added in the future, that would be fantastic.
I know I ask too much.
BTW, maybe it is only me but during browsing Artist and Album, I was always trying to get to the previous category or screen by mistakenly click the “Settings” on the top left corner.
Is it possible to configure that button to function as previous category and move the Settings button to the bottom row?