With the right Theater View skin, it looks pretty good. But the big problem here is that there's functionality that's just not been added. By adding more possibilities to the skinning framework and documenting this, I think people would start creating amazingly gorgeous and functional skins. Castius mention many of the things I would like to see.
More control over positioning.
More graphics linked to meta data. Like actors images to actors name.
Bookmark bar that shows how how much you have watched/listened to something. (Netflix)
Ability to disable delete and shutdown options
Maybe support for dynamic transition. So you could apply some simple animations.
Like puling up a CD cover art list.
If I would add my own feature wish list it would be something like...
- Ability to position and resize almost everything
- Ability to add meta data and pictures to the main menu from other a set of criteria like last 5 movies added, last episodes added, last Music albums added.
- Ability to sum up the underlying number of albums, artists, tv shows, seasons, movies and how many of those are watched or not.
- Allowing users to add the small info pane above the "file level" so you could add category summary information
- Ability to position of the info pane, and items in the info pane (last one goes especially the big info pane).
- Ability to add icons and graphics that present key words in meta data. Such as 720P, 1080P, Different Audio codecs, Channels, Watched, Not watched icons
- Ability to disable certain items on the rollers, like "All ..." items, Shutdown and more (not necessarily a skinning framework thing, but an option addition).
- Ability to add meta data to the cover flow view, and change positioning of the cover art.
- Ability to set the size of the cover art on the "video wall" view (it's currently way to small for my 10/10 sight)
- Add a totally new Player bar for the Theater view (to separate it from display view). There should be a difference between launching from theater view or standard view imo. This would allow us to customize the player bar and making it more touch friendly, and making it match the theater view skin.
- Allowing users to customize the OSD
- Allowing users to sort and filter views on the fly (overrides the standard options momentarily)
I know this is much. I don't expect any of these to be implemented. But if they were, I believe we would be a lot closer to skins like we have in xbmc and other 10 foot players. There have not been much improvement in Theater View since we got the roller based navigation. And even though that was a good facelift all those years ago, it was still behind the competitors at that time. I seriously hope that Theater View will get more attention, as this is the only interface I use.
