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[jrobson]

Hi

I would like to know from other "theater view exclusive use" (This is ONLY for people who use JRiver as a full screen remote controlled, keyboardless and mouseless HTPC) users what hassles they pick up and see if we can bring this to the attention of the coders.

From my list:

1. Access control: This really is a bit of a "deal breaker" and renders theater view useless with remote only, the implementation in MB is much better, it would be cool if one can make a menu item, call it unlock or whatever, when you select it, you punch in the code and access controlled content is enabled for a period of specified hours.
2. General folder handling: TV Series Handling specifically, I find that I use mine only through the "Disk" menu which then messes up the series, my collection is quite large, and having it all stored in one row isn't ideal, also, in this mode it doubles up a lot of movies that are in multiple files, series are the worst. Again the implementation in MB is much better, especially when it comes to series.
3. Configuration: The ability to configure certain settings would be cool, for instance library location, network settings, maybe even theater view settings etc.
4. Animation control: While browsing is snappy and fast, the actual last bit of animation when resting on an item becomes jittery and slow(cover flow mode), it would be nice to control this, however if general folder handling is done a bit better then this probably wouldn't be the case, I noticed it's a lot worse on folders with subfolders. Btw, I'm using a E350 CPU and I know it's slow, but we are at the point now where low energy cpu's are perfectly capable of handling 1080p playback, it would make sense to optimize the interface for these processors. I don't know if it is possible to setup a lower resolution for the GUI then play movies at 1080p? I'll have to play around a bit and see, this might solve this. Will play around with this and post back.
5. Instability: It can be unstable at times with certain settings, for instance when you play a movie you hear sound but you are stuck at the GUI, pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and then escape fixes the problem, problem for remote use. I might have solved this be configuration, but if there are settings that can cause this why have them?
6. Plasma burn friendly GUI: I think this is already on the list in any case... thanks! would be cool not to worry about leaving it on.

Other than that, I have to say in general the software is great! It fixed my problems I was having with WMC and movie audio where I had to turn WMC all the way up and still couldn't hear properly, when using JRiver as shell it actually has audio control(Awesome!), fast forward and rewind works the way it should, and music handling is great!

Regards,
Jonathan.

[MrHaugen]

I'll comment on a few of these.

1. I agree. Access control is very important, and it's missing today. At least the ability to easily access these settings in Theater View. You can use a type of Access Control today, but it's only accessible trough standard view as I know of, and it's a bit limited imo.

2. Folder handling might need some improvement. But I think it's pretty safe to say that you'll have a MUCH better experience once you've imported all the data and organized it instead. MC is not really built to handle your media this way. Carnac and the automatic meta data solution in MC17 and onwards is so good now, that it should satisfy most people. Just browsing by directories on disk is slow and painful, and it lacks much of the bling and meta data that you would get otherwise. That is at least my impression after my very limited testing, a long time ago.

6. Plasma friendly GUI. This is on the to do list of MC 18 I think. Perhaps it's already done. I believe this was written on the news letter some days ago?

[jrobson]

Hi

Browsing by disk is fine, it shows all the same backdrop images that it normally shows, but works a bit better with multiple file folders. The only problem is that episodes in TV Shows are not working well in disk mode(for some reason it goes all the way into the season folder before separating alphabetically), but I'll try and set the series up the normal way and see if it works better, however since my HTPC is dedicated and connected 24/7, I need the TV to work on it, so not easy to get an open spot to work on everything.

I see there is a plugin that makes it possible to run media browser as a front end to JRiver, so might look into that since it solves most the problems, but that causes a slight problem for the music, there used to be a project that allowed music to be played with a squeezebox duet controller, so right now this is something I am looking into, having the TV on just to listen to music is a bit redundant in any case.

[MrHaugen]

I've never seen the reason to browse by file structure. It's so darn limiting. I'm not talking about only backdrops. I'm taking about all kinds of meta data, ratings, sort options and expressions available. I'm sure you can do some of it with file browsing, but you'll have to miss out. What can possibly be appealing with this method, when the intended way solves your problems and are more or less fully automagic?

[glynor]

I've never seen the reason to browse by file structure. It's so darn limiting.

+1

[kewe65]

This has come up before.  Here's the thread with my comments about Theater View from late last year:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=67151.msg451305#msg451305

Fast forward to today and my HTPC/media 'environment' and behavior amounts to this:

I have a HDMI switch that toggles between the PC and Roku for the TV:

Roku for HuluPlus, Amazon, etc. (because it logs into my account and allows me to create and select from queues etc and MC does not)
Roku for Netflix (because I'm already there, although i find myself using the PC and the website because neither MC nor Roku provide a comparable browse experience)
- would love to see the ability to have Roku in MC.  It (along with PlayOn) shows up as a device i can play from, it just cannot be controlled from within MC.

Windows Media Center for TV.  The browse/select/record/detail info/view functionality, especially with DVR is far superior to the MC interface/capabilities, particularly within Theater View 

I really do not use Theater View as a result

Adding these capabilities would go along way to make MC more of the cockpit of HTPC management i personally imagine it could be.

[Boltron]

I would like to have different File Captions for Video, TV, Music.

I think it's safe to say that many of us who use Theater View exclusively all have our own ideas of we would like to see. As a previously long time XBMC user, I had so many choices for skins. Options are the key here. I believe the single best feature you can add is a rich API which allows us to design our own Theater View skins.

Give us the tools and watch your legions of creative tech savvy users go wild!

[MrHaugen]

I would like to have different File Captions for Video, TV, Music.

You can do that. But it involves a lot of if sentences, which normal people will get very confused of. What's needed is a better caption management imo, so people don't loose control.

[Boltron]

Yep I do have a quite fancy File Captions statement that distinguishes between tv, movies etc... It should be easier though.

[JustinChase]

Give us the tools and watch your legions of creative tech savvy users go wild!

has been requested MANY times, and is still a great idea.  here's to hoping 

[jrobson]

I also went back to WMC for movies, so very short sting with MC, with media browser 2.6 it is now very easy to use VLC or MPC-HD to play content which fixed my audio issue, MB 2.6's neo theme is also very slick! I will probably still use MC for music since it supports ASIO and even the TV interface is better for me than WMC, but that would be only if I can get the squeezebox control working since I would prefer not to use the TV interface. For me Theater View is a long way behind the WMC+Media Browser I don't think it will catch up any time soon.

[Tiago C]

Hi all,

Did you ever listened to any song of "The Eels" in Theater View » Playing now?

I would like to see some scrolling pictures of the band, The Eels concert pictures, etc..
Theater view does this very well with other bands, but not with this one, and some others.

If you try it with "The Eels" you will see lots of pictures of fishes (Eels) and fishermen :-).
It seems a bug in the search engine that happens with some bands with peculiar names and its one feature that could be improved.

Looking forward to take a look at the v18!!!

Best regards,
Tiago

[gazjam]

You should try listening to Lambchop...

[kensn]

If you try it with "The Eels" you will see lots of pictures of fishes (Eels) and fishermen :-).

If you turn off Google as one of the sources for the images, you will get more relevent images....

Ken

[MrHaugen]

If you turn off Google as one of the sources for the images, you will get more relevent images....

It would. And I think it's possible to edit a text file to add for instance "artist" or "band" to certain artist searches. But it's not very user friendly at all. I do not remember where this file is, or what's it called.

People have been screaming for years for the ability to add your own background images to both artists, series, movies and so on. This is something that should be added sooner or later imo. Many media centers have had this ability for years. Don't get me wrong. Most of us love that you have the default built in way of doing it automatically, but there will be plenty of times where users want to control this them self. This is J River Media Center we're talking about. The application where you can do almost ANYTHING. Anything but this....

I have applications that brings me all the images I would ever want. But there are no good way of viewing this. Yes, we have themes. But let's just face it... That's probably not gonna work unless it starts looking for images next to the media.

[xplain]

the ability to add your own background images to both artists, series, movies and so on

Yes, this way it would possible to show your own photos from concerts.

[Chico]

When in Theater View/Playing Now, can the captions, and menus be set to auto hide after a period of M/KB inactivity?
Also, when displaying images from the web, can the images be resized to fit the screen?