INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 13 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: gt93grad on January 18, 2009, 10:38:09 am

Title: Touch screen monitors
Post by: gt93grad on January 18, 2009, 10:38:09 am
Just wanted to get an idea of how many people are using touch screen monitors, vs. other methods.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: imugli on January 18, 2009, 03:53:54 pm
Predominantly IR remote via USBUIRT. I do have a touch screen though, just don't use that functionality for much at all...
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: benn600 on January 18, 2009, 03:56:56 pm
I use the Keyspan remotes.  I believe I own 8 of them.  I have taken a lot of time to program the buttons to optimize their abilities while making them simple to understand.  I've had ambitions to create some touch screen systems but have never actually created one.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: dgilgonzalez on January 26, 2009, 04:13:02 pm
Touch screen will become a must when Win 7 becomes available as it will support touch in a native mode, besides the HP’s TouchSmart PC all leading Taiwanese PC giants as Asus, MSI and Shuttle showed touch PCs at CES for $500. Ideally, all the key features in the regular view should be transferred to the Theater View. The new Obsidian View is a big step forward but still lacks full touch support (some menus get hidden and can only be accessed with the mouse or cursor) and lack key features that force to switch to the regular view (iPod synchro, music import, etc.)
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: aussie1 on February 17, 2009, 06:32:00 am
I agree. Theater view and other parts of MC should be touch screen enabled. PC technology is heading this direction. Touch screen capabilities are available now and will be standard functionality in the OS and many apps next year.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: JimH on February 17, 2009, 06:50:37 am
I agree. Theater view and other parts of MC should be touch screen enabled. PC technology is heading this direction. Touch screen capabilities are available now and will be standard functionality in the OS and many apps next year.
We agree that touch screen is coming and that it's important.  Our proposed answer is Theater View's Obsidian interface.  Any problems using that interface with touch screen should be reported in the build threads.  Thanks.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: Bill Kearney on March 07, 2009, 09:02:50 pm
I was asking for more touch-friendly UI features five years ago.  I've long since given up expecting it to actually happen to MC.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: benn600 on March 07, 2009, 11:30:16 pm
Do you mind me asking what additional touch screen features you want?  As I understood it, a touch screen should simply act as a mouse button clicking.  If that is the case, then pretty much everything should work fine except for the recent removal of the left-side play control buttons.  What would be a few features you need?  Looking uninformed, it seems like touch screens would work pretty well out of the box.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: newsposter on March 08, 2009, 12:49:19 am
an inexpensive way to play around with interfaces and human factor stuff is to get an old Phillips Pronto and start writing config files for it.

I really wouldn't mind at all if JR would look into adopting the Pronto file/programming format as the basis for enabling touch screen on MC.  No sense reinventing the wheel when you've got this tech that's all debugged and in use.

For a third-party Pronto config file editor that can work with screens of any size, try this:

http://giantlaser.com/tonto/

Tonto hasn't been maintained for about 15 months now, but the author (at the time anyway) was pretty enthusiastic and responsive to his user community.

Also, the pronto freaks over at remotecentral.com are pretty knowledgeable.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: Bill Kearney on March 08, 2009, 07:23:51 am
As I understood it, a touch screen should simply act as a mouse button clicking. 

The point of a mouse cursor isn't the same as the tip of a finger.  A finger requires a much larger target area.  Trying to navigate through tiny tree lists and annoyingly recurring pop-up action windows makes it unnecessarily difficult.  Even something as simple as zone changes as a button was too much to ask.   
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: JimH on March 08, 2009, 07:53:22 am
I was asking for more touch-friendly UI features five years ago. 
Please make a list of what playback won't work from Theater View, Obsidian skin.

It's not reasonable to expect Standard View to work with touch screen only.
Title: Re: Touch screen monitors
Post by: Bill Kearney on March 08, 2009, 07:59:21 am
To work entirely from touchscreen?  No, of course not.  But a few things would certainly help make it even practical.