I wasn't suggesting to do this for Win 8 RT - but for regular Win 8 on PC platform. There are plenty of tablets/touchscreen laptop/ultrabook/convertibles where this will be useful. I would even like to use this on an all-in-one touchscreen desktop PC.
Would pretty much be a shortcut to MC in Theater View with some improvements to display view then? Check the video from Jmone. Does not sound any different than the suggestions given previously by improving playback UI for touch? Or am I missing something? Having MC default connecting as a client to it's local server does not make much sense to me. Why would you not just simply run a local player? It would do the same, yes?
Thanks for the suggestions - just got to try them out with a new video of the results ---> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/59011278/MConW8-V2.wmv
Great! That showed us the good and bad
The good:
- We can obviously launch MC just from the Modern UI
- MC starting in Theater View (as most of us knew was possible)
- Browsing of thumbnail view looked like it worked as expected. You flip up and down, and select a title for it to focus new items. Click again to enter item. That's how it have to be I think. List view would probably also work well.
The bad:
- As we've discussed before, the Lineup and 3D modes are struggling with scrolling and flicking. Selection could always be centered. That would perhaps sort this kind of problems?
- The rollers does not react logically imo. I think the best would be if the centered item always was selected. So the rollers are always rotating, but the selection is fixed in the middle. There could be a little pause before entering a new view (no pause to bring up second roller), so you could flick the rollers.
- The Playback controls in Display View is just horrible for touch screens. I would suggest to add an ability to drag a playback panel down from the top. With touch friendly buttons. Play, Pause, Stop, Forward, Rewind, Subtitles, Audio streams and so on. This is actually why I suggested the improved OSD was made with rollers. So it would be easier to use with touch.
- Single click does not pause. This should be the normal behavior imo. I thought this was the case one time. Or have I just seen so much Youtube videos that I mix it up?
With those few suggestions, I think the Theater View would be a lot more pleasant for everyone with touch hardware. You could tie all of those changes to an on/off option somewhere, or implement it based on the type of input used perhaps? I don't know what would be best.