Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[slikvik]

I've been casually watching MC11 progress before I consider an upgrade.  There are certainly some nice new features mentioned along with some stuff that doesn't seem to fit in a Media Center program or doesn't add a great deal of value.  I don't remember seeing much in the way of Theatre View improvements though but maybe I missed it.  The lack of work in MC9.1 or 10 on this unfinished aspect of MC was a major cause of frustration for me and led me to investigate other products.  Thankfully a NetRemote interface into MC came to the rescue so I no longer care whether Theatre View gets properly finished, and I think that's probably just as well.

I totally agree with JLee on this. I have now decided to move for my HTPC and will not upgrade to 11. Although I got 10 for a great upgrade price over 9.1 there wasn't too many changes that worked for me and I can see the same thing happening with 11. MC is still a great media management app and I will continue to use v10 for the task. For what its worth here is a list of features that MC is missing as a MEDIA center (I think MC is still very much MP3 centric.)

Better control over video/DVD codecs such as codec selection, adding ffdShow etc. The freeware Media Player Classic has all this.

Theatre View should not mirror Standard View. I don't want 3 audio folders (Artist/Album, File Type, Disk Location) AND a list of Genres (because it's in my initial Audio Scheme) all on one page. (Add 2 tick boxes to the  Scheme edit page, one to 'Show in Theatre View' and one to 'Hide from Standard View'.

Please tweak theatre view - for example,  add a back button and lose the 'left cursor back' (its not very good for new users)

Allow us to choose any codec we like when recording TV programs. Maybe add an encode later function for slower codecs like Divx 5.

Can we please add proper DV use for TV viewing and Timeshifting. Lots of people now use DV Convertors to watch TV as the picture quality is much better than any TV card.

TV Guide maybe.

Better HotKey/Button/Remote support. I want to be able to choose how a song is added to playing now when a press a button. Although you have 3 different play options, you have to change them in the settings window. I dont always want to replace what I'm listening to and I dont always want to 'add to playing now'. Also I still have to right click to record a TV channel.


Anyway...sorry for the little feature moan. Basically I think MC needs to decide if it's going to be a file manager (document support!?!) OR media player (HTPC, feature rich Video playback etc.) I know you cant please all the people all the time but at the moment I feel you almost wasted your time adding video/dvd playback and theatre view because I dont use any of them. Unfortunately I would still rather play a video in MPC (Quicker), play a DVD in MPC (ffdShow), record TV with iuVCR (select my codec).

Thanks Guys

Vic

I have to say that the new changes to navigation in Theatre View are great. The back button and removal of left and right drill are definately more intuitive for the casual guest. I've now decided I will upgrade.
Thanks for the changes.
If you could maybe look at the other bits I mentioned that would be great. Especially the DVD playback bits as us HTPC users are real sticklers for a top quality DVD image!

Also the more customizable Theatre View gets, the better, especially from a plugin and XML point of view. Any documentation on the XML tags?

Regards

Vic

[JimH]

Vik,
You will make Matt's day.  You made mine.  

Thanks,

Jim

[skeeterfood]

I'll second Vik's vote for the new navigation being tremendously better than the old way!

However, (you knew it was coming) would it be possible to add a configuration option to have the navigation menus only pop-up when the left mouse button/touch-screen button is held down for some amount of time?  If you just click on a button/press Enter it should immediately go into the selected level/play the file if you've already drilled all the way down to a song.  Then you could assign another key (no idea which one) to pop up the menu.  This would allow remote users to navigate quickly, or pop up the menu (using a second) button, if they needed to access the other features.

If you make it a configurable option and default it to the current method, new users will know about the menu and when they start to get tired of hitting enter/clicking twice they'll hopefully go looking for an option like the one I've described above.

-John

[JimH]

I'll second Vik's vote for the new navigation being tremendously better than the old way!

However, (you knew it was coming) would it be possible to add a configuration option to have the navigation menus only pop-up when the left mouse button/touch-screen button is held down for some amount of time?  If you just click on a button/press Enter it should immediately go into the selected level/play the file if you've already drilled all the way down to a song.  Then you could assign another key (no idea which one) to pop up the menu.  This would allow remote users to navigate quickly, or pop up the menu (using a second) button, if they needed to access the other features.

You can currently do this by hitting enter twice.

[skeeterfood]

Yeah, but pressing Enter/a remote key twice to do what seems like a default action is annoying, doublie-clicking is so Windows 95, and I'm guessing it's REALLY ANNOYING for touchscreen users...

Maybe it's just me though...

-John

[CDvd]

Yeah, but pressing Enter/a remote key twice to do what seems like a default action is annoying, doublie-clicking is so Windows 95, and I'm guessing it's REALLY ANNOYING for touchscreen users...

Maybe it's just me though...

-John

Not at all, you're not alone. I tought it was a question of time before I get used with the double click key, but it is still not automatic. It's a bit strange (and not fluent) to double-press a keyboard key...

I agree too slikvik : with the addition of Home / Back / Controls / Popup Menu / Navigation Bar  ..... Theater View is better than ever!
I'm probably used to complain every time I don't like something, but I think it's sometimes worth saying "no, no.... it's fine the way it is! good job guys!"

[AnalogRoaming]

Pressing "enter" on my remote twice is actually not the easiest thing to do. It probably depends greatly on the remote though.

I know you guys aren't keen on the "left/right" navigation... it's ture that it's not intuitive, but for some reason, it was really easy for me and a lot of others around me to figure out once you're always jumping from menu to menu.

In any event, everything is still an improvement  If you don't plan on putting the old naviagtion back in as an option that we can turn on, can you recommend a way that I can emulate it?

[IlPadrino]

Yeah, but pressing Enter/a remote key twice to do what seems like a default action is annoying, doublie-clicking is so Windows 95, and I'm guessing it's REALLY ANNOYING for touchscreen users...

Maybe it's just me though...

-John

It's me, too.  It isn't as much of a problem when I'm using my remote because I just programmed Girder to send two enters for one click.  But when I'm using the keyboard, it drives me a bit nuts.  The frustration is that as I'm navigating around looking for the media, I have no use for the menu.

[slikvik]

My 2 pence...

The double enter doesn't bother me but I could easily program a double enter as a second button in Girder and think its fine.

I do agree though that the 5 button navigation i.e. exactly how it is now, is a great default configuration (please dont put the left and right drill back.)

But we could do with extra shortcuts for people using keyboards and fancy remotes. I would suggest using the keypad PLUS key to go straight in.

In short, make sure you can do everything you need with 5 buttons, BUT, allow for quick shortcuts as well.

Adding an option to remove the popmenu would mean adding the buttons back to the main menu. This would be a bad way to go and you'll end up with two versions of T.V.

Regards

Vik