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Author Topic: Views for browsing video in Remotes  (Read 2260 times)

blgentry

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Views for browsing video in Remotes
« on: February 29, 2016, 09:05:35 pm »

Pretend for a moment that you don't have Theater View and you're using your remote on a tablet or a phone to control playback of video on your display.  So you have JRemote (or other) in your hand/lap and you're browsing through categories.  Let's say you click on Shows.

You get a nice grid of Series art and you click on one.  Next you get a nice grid of Season art, so you click a Season.  At this point, you are totally expecting to get a nice grid of Episodes to click on.  But instead you get a simple list with a teeny tiny thumbnail next to the name of the Episode.  This is sort of confusing.

I understand why this happens.  MC and it's remote are designed with this kind of drill down in mind, but the thought is that the last thing to be picked should be a list.  This works with Albums, which have lists of songs.  You don't need graphical art for a song to pick it.  But this model breaks down with video because video is so visual.  I would like to see a grid of art work at this point, one for each episode.  It seems to make sense right?

I'm using a work around now, but it's not all that elegant.  I add another category to the end of my video views that I export.  The last category is "Name".  This gives me a nice pretty grid of Episodes with episode art to choose from.  The drawback of this is that when I click one of these Episode covers, I'm taken to the next level/screen where I'm shown a tiny thumbnail of the exact same thing, with the episode name next to it. Again, I understand why this happens.  It's just sort of awkward and not all that pleasing from a workflow perspective.  It's a little confusing for someone who's never seen it before.

With all that in mind, is there a better way?  A better work around.  Or some other way of setting up views?  Or is this maybe, somehow, something that the Remote software can do differently?

Thanks for reading.

Brian.
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mark_h

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Re: Views for browsing video in Remotes
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2016, 07:33:31 am »

Pretend for a moment that you don't have Theater View and you're using your remote on a tablet or a phone to control playback of video on your display.  So you have JRemote (or other) in your hand/lap and you're browsing through categories.  Let's say you click on Shows.

You get a nice grid of Series art and you click on one.  Next you get a nice grid of Season art, so you click a Season.  At this point, you are totally expecting to get a nice grid of Episodes to click on.  But instead you get a simple list with a teeny tiny thumbnail next to the name of the Episode.  This is sort of confusing.

You can set the app to default to thumbnails for all views.  Does that help?  Or perhaps this default breaks views where you prefer to see a list...

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blgentry

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Re: Views for browsing video in Remotes
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2016, 07:52:47 am »

^ I should have mentioned, I'm doing all of my testing with Gizmo and EOS remote.  I don't have JRemote on Android or IOS, though my long term plan is to get an ipad and put JRemote on it.  I didn't know that switching to "always thumbnail" was an option.

Thanks.  :)

Brian.
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