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[DeaneG]

An easy to fix, but frustrating behavior my wife and I both experience: in theater view, while navigating through the grid of recorded shows tiles using the "right" direction button, we sometimes slip off the right hand end (last tile). The focus then goes to the menu above. My natural reaction is to just hit the "left" direction button to get back to the tiles. However, doing this then selects the "Back" menu item, which immediately (without any further key press) takes you out of the Shows list and up one menu level to the main menu.

I have fallen into this this twice in a row a couple of times just trying to select one particular show to watch. It's frustrating that the remote's direction keys do not produce symmetric results.

My suggestion would be that when in the grid of Shows tiles, the right/left direction keys move you within the Shows tiles only. If you want to get up to the menu, you have to press an up or down arrow key.

[Yaobing]

I am not seeing this behavior at all.

When I press the right-arrow key when I am at the very last show in the grid, it does nothing.  The last show remains selected.

Only the left arrow button would exhibit such behavior.  There is an option for that.  Tools > Options > Theater View > Behaviors > "Left edge jumps to top in Grid View Styles".  When this option is on, left arrow key on a show at the left edge would bring you to the top.

In general, the right arrow key on a right edge item brings you to the next lower line.

[CountryBumkin]

My Harmony remote works the same as Yaobing describes. Continuous pressing of right direction ends at last available Show. Continuous movement to the left takes you back to menu.

Which remote do you use?

[DeaneG]

My apologies, it its the Left button which causes me grief, not the Right.

I have unchecked the "Left edge jumps to top in Grid View Styles" box, saved the result, rebooted the PC, and the Left button still jumps to the top menu (out of the grid).

[RoderickGI]

the Left button still jumps to the top menu (out of the grid).

Are you on the top row of the grid (rows and columns of items/icons) when that happens?

What happens if you are in the second, third, or lower rows and keep pressing the left button until you reach the edge, then press left one more time?



If you are on the top most row in a grid of items/icons, with the highlight on the left most item in the row, and press left one more time, the highlight will move up to the menu. That is by design, that makes sense. On any lower row the highlight will wrap around to the last item on the previous row.

[DeaneG]

If you are on the top most row in a grid of items/icons, with the highlight on the left most item in the row, and press left one more time, the highlight will move up to the menu. That is by design, that makes sense. On any lower row the highlight will wrap around to the last item on the previous row.

That is what happens. But once the cursor moves up to the menu, one more left press pops you up one level of menu and out of what you were doing, forcing some re-navigation to get back to the grid. My too-eager trigger finger on the remote means this happens a lot when scrolling through a bunch of grid items. My wife has also been caught by it several times and finds it user-unfriendly.

We'd both rather that the left/right buttons keep the focus within the grid of items. We'd be happy to use the Up or Down buttons to get to the menu up top, because one extra button press won't dump you out of what you were doing, unlike the current behavior of the Left button.

Does the Tools > Options > Theater View > Behaviors > "Left edge jumps to top in Grid View Styles" checkbox not fix this?

[RoderickGI]

Well, I can't speak for JRiver, but the "left button gets you out of anywhere" has saved a bunch of people who managed to get themselves lost in the menu structure of MC. You could find several threads about it around here. It is a fundamental part of the MC design, and is part of the "four arrow keys and the OK button control anything" philosophy.

But it can't hurt to ask for a setting.

[DeaneG]

Well, I can't speak for JRiver, but the "left button gets you out of anywhere" has saved a bunch of people who managed to get themselves lost in the menu structure of MC. You could find several threads about it around here. It is a fundamental part of the MC design, and is part of the "four arrow keys and the OK button control anything" philosophy.

But it can't hurt to ask for a setting.

A dedicated "back" button (as on the MCE remote) has the same "dig me out of these menus please " capability. Many carmakers took a while to figure this out and finally added dedicated Back buttons a few years ago. Four direction buttons plus "OK" works great on a PC GUI, but may not be ideal on a 10-foot interface.

Yaobing - is the Tools > Options > Theater View > Behaviors > "Left edge jumps to top in Grid View Styles" checkbox functioning the way you expect? Un-checking it makes no difference that I can detect.

[JimH]

Someone once said that the Back button is the most important button on any interface, and I agree.  I miss it when it isn't there.

In MC, the Green Button cycles through several views.  The first is the root view of Theater View, so it's effectively a Major Back button.

[Yaobing]

A dedicated "back" button (as on the MCE remote) has the same "dig me out of these menus please " capability. Many carmakers took a while to figure this out and finally added dedicated Back buttons a few years ago. Four direction buttons plus "OK" works great on a PC GUI, but may not be ideal on a 10-foot interface.

We support back button, but it functions a little differently.  It takes you out of the current view directly, while the up arrow or left arrow takes you to the top where you can make other choices.

Yaobing - is the Tools > Options > Theater View > Behaviors > "Left edge jumps to top in Grid View Styles" checkbox functioning the way you expect? Un-checking it makes no difference that I can detect.

The option does function as expected.  When it is off, left arrow brings you to the right-most cell on the row above.  When you are on the first row, it takes you to the top.  It really is just a matter of getting used to the way it works.  When you see the cursor jumping to the top, you can easily make it your "instinct" to press the down arrow, instead of the right arrow.  After all, the cursor went "up", so it is natural to press down arrow to bring it down.  At least that is my reaction.

That said, adding another user configuration option may satisfy different users' needs.

[DeaneG]

The option does function as expected.  When it is off, left arrow brings you to the right-most cell on the row above.  When you are on the first row, it takes you to the top.

Is the option setting checkbox supposed to change this behavior? It seems to work as you described whether the option is turned on or off.  If the focus is on the first tile in the first grid row, pressing the Left button always moves me up to the menu rather than wrapping back down to the bottom right tile, for either setting of the option checkbox. I would like to disable the jump up to the menu and am hoping the option un-checked would do this.

My main concern is that if I've hit the left button two times too many, or if the remote's auto-repeat happened to kick in, then I get kicked out of the function I was in the middle of navigating.

Thanks for your time and help.

[RoderickGI]

When you are on the first tile of the first row, the left arrow always takes you up to the menu, regardless of the setting.

As Yaobing said, it would require another user configuration setting to change that.

[DeaneG]

I see now. The option changes the behavior of the 2nd through nth rows only.

Thanks all for your time.

[Castius]

If your interested. The left arrow option came from this thread.
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=95389.50

Thank you again to the J River Devs. For for the open discussions they have with their users.

PS.
I'd still like more control over the theater view navigation.

[DeaneG]

Castius, thanks for the pointer. I completely agree with your first post. My wife and I are roughly in the position of tolerating MC rather than enjoying it. Many small griefs in use.

We use Grid view in theater mode exclusively.

The one configuration checkbox I am wishing for is "I'm using MCE Remote: make MC's UI remote control interaction match Windows MCE"