Ideas Collection Thread

[Hawkeye]

Originally Posted by Muldini

I certainly do not want TV to start in Fullscreen as for anything else than TV (Recordings, Guide, Teletext etc. etc.) I'd always need to turn off Live TV first.

Well, maybe it could be an option to start it in Fullscreen. Or at least make it posible to go directly to the TV_FULLSCREEN-window by (remote)keypressed.

The autostart plugin was good for this issue and now I use the MCERemotePlugin for that. But IMO this really should be a core function...

[Roberdin]

I think that going straight to full screen TV is a bad idea. The reason being that it will not be obvious to anyone unfamiliar with MediaPortal that there are any other TV watching options. At the moment, you go into My TV, and there are a series of options about the TV Guide, Scheduled Recordings, Recordings, et c. If it goes straight to Live TV ... how will anyone know how to change channels, how to get to the EPG, how to watch recordings, et c. (Not everyone has a remote to make this easier.) Pressing "OK" (or the carriage return key) is non-trivial, who would think to do that unless he knew that there was more functionality and was trying all key combinations?

Maybe a solution is to have the first option within the My TV sub-menu, "Watch live TV now". Or even, keep what we have now, a big old TV preview on one side, and an option that says "Go to full screen TV".

I don't know if this is off topic, but what I think is an important necessity, is to "separate" the business layer of communicating with the TV server and the actual graphics display. What I mean is that if Media Portal is waiting for the TV server to do something (say set up several recordings when you select "Record every time..."), I don't want MediaPortal to hang while this happens (which it does, sometimes for more than 30 seconds). I can only presume that this is because that the UI system runs in the same thread as whatever system handles communicating with the TV server. This also happens to me when I browse in the EPG - it has to fetch the data from the server, and I'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs while the display freezes for maybe ten seconds. Instead, the display should "dynamically" update as data become available, like a web page displaying place holders until the images are downloaded.

[cul8er]

Please have a look at this thread;
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mo...ge-t26000.html

this is what I mean by starting i fullscreen. Not necessarily skipping the My TV start page but making it more usefull and getting rid of the preview window that I don't see the point with.

[iMse]

I think it would be good to give MyTV a submenu in the Mediaportal main menu, much like the music menu which contains "Last.fm", "My Music", "My Radio", etc...). Examples of options would be "Watch TV", "TV Guide", "Recorded TV", etc.. That would give you the opportunity to go wherever you want, right from the start.

[illStyle]

Yes! That is a very good idea and should satisfy everyone.


Regards,
Simon

[Willith]

Mediaportal is awesome!!

One thing i wouldnt mind seeing is the ability to have an EPG banner come up at the bottom of the screen showing Now and Next for the current channel. If you look at the software Sky and Virgin use on their STB's, one common thing is for the user to use the arrows on the remote to scroll through channels and view upcoming programs. If the user wishes, they can press 'Select' to view the currently highlighted channel. If they highlight a program that is on in the future, it sets a reminder. If the user does not do anything, the banner times out. I think Vista Media centre also has something like this though smaller. At the moment on my MCE remote if i use channel up + down, mediaportal performs something somewhat similar but with limited functionality, that brings you to the channel when you stop scrolling. Im perhaps thinking maybe it should have a bit more dominance on the screen.

Heres some screenshots of Sky's and Virgins as examples. My Sony freeview tuner also performs something similar.

http://www.vowles-home.demon.co.uk/Sat/images/3z.jpg

http://blog.wotsat.com/resources/wha...barsmaller.jpg

I currently have sky (used to also have NTL(now virgin)) The left and right arrows on the remote highlight the next and previous program in the list. The up and down arrow will display the next and previous channel epg banner respectively. In addition, an info button will display a program synopsis.

These are just common features ive found in most Set top boxes which i kinda miss when using mediaportal.

[msj33]

Hi.

I have been using Mediaportal for over 3 years now, and i still keep disabling MyTV. Why? 3 Main Reasons and at lot of Sub-reasons.

1: Channel Switching takes too long time, both on DVB-T and especially on my Hauppauge MCE150+500MCE. My TV-APP "FLYTV2000" change channel INSTANTLY, were Mediaportal tak 2-3 second

2: Image quality is bad. Missing depth in colors and picturesharpness.

3: MyTV is NOT a Out-Of The Box solution. Way to many thing to setup, and after that, you'll have to find some workarounds in the forums, because there still some small bugs.

Sub-reasons:

EPG is TOTALLY without ease of use. I know it is implemented in the Installation guide, but i have never seen it working without manual setup.

Timeshifting/Recording occasionally crashes MyTV.

Overall:
MyTV keeps getting more and more complex. Developers seem more keen on getting new features than getting the Main features working 110% I see it as a big step backwards, that TVE 0.3 was implemented. TVE 0.2 was not even stable enough. But now its done and we have to look forward.

Suggestion for TVE 0.3:
Keep it SIMPLE! Stop developing new features and complex setup options and trying to fulfill every users need for a specific feature. Get a 110% stable and Simple Out-Of-The-Box solution that WORKS! Mediaportal could have many more users, if only the main features in MyTV is working 110%

[infinityloop]

Originally Posted by msj33

Hi.

I have been using Mediaportal for over 3 years now, and i still keep disabling MyTV. Why? 3 Main Reasons and at lot of Sub-reasons.

1: Channel Switching takes too long time, both on DVB-T and especially on my Hauppauge MCE150+500MCE. My TV-APP "FLYTV2000" change channel INSTANTLY, were Mediaportal tak 2-3 second

2: Image quality is bad. Missing depth in colors and picturesharpness.

3: MyTV is NOT a Out-Of The Box solution. Way to many thing to setup, and after that, you'll have to find some workarounds in the forums, because there still some small bugs.

Sub-reasons:

EPG is TOTALLY without ease of use. I know it is implemented in the Installation guide, but i have never seen it working without manual setup.

Timeshifting/Recording occasionally crashes MyTV.

Overall:
MyTV keeps getting more and more complex. Developers seem more keen on getting new features than getting the Main features working 110% I see it as a big step backwards, that TVE 0.3 was implemented. TVE 0.2 was not even stable enough. But now its done and we have to look forward.

Suggestion for TVE 0.3:
Keep it SIMPLE! Stop developing new features and complex setup options and trying to fulfill every users need for a specific feature. Get a 110% stable and Simple Out-Of-The-Box solution that WORKS! Mediaportal could have many more users, if only the main features in MyTV is working 110%

@all

its understandable that some users are frustrated because of the issues they suffer.

BUT THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT FORUM FOR THAT!

further off-topic posts will be moved or deleted to keep this thread/forum clean and on-topic.

and

now more ideas about new User Interfaces Designs please

cul8er allready started working out a Design Concept. (see the thread in this forum) hopefule more of you will do the same.

[petzlux]

Okay here are my thoughts on this. They are not necessarly design oriented, but more about the functioning of the program, and intelligence in design and functionality. I stress that this is very much a wish list, and some of it might be very hard to impossible to implement, both for internal resource reasons as well as external factors impossible to control.

I would like Mediaportal as a whole to be more proactive and intelligent in linking in with external content. MP should become my buddy when it comes to picking content to watch and record, making life easy for me and allowing me to pick the most interesting stuff I want to see. I want to see the short EPG (a couple of lines of text about a movie or series) extended by such external content, ratings, user comments, additional media (stills, video previews of content ...). Obviously, this will depend on those external data sources as well. This content should become easily searchable, sortable and filtered interactively.

What I mean by that is from the EPG information, MP could proactively go out and try to gather more data on the tv channels, Movies and Series and other programs. This should happen in the background, so it doesnt interrupt my UI experience. It should then use all of that information to enrich the EPG and allow us to make intelligent decisions on what to watch.

For example, say I want to know what good films are on this weekend!? It would be great if I could see on one page, the 5 best films to watch this weekend on all channels. (This could be done by MP recognizing films automatically, go on IMDB and download information for all these movies, and then make all attributes like ratings, genre, actors, directors ... accessible to the user.) This is similar to what is already possible in MyMovies, but I would like to see that concept extended and refined for a more general application. CRUCIALLY, it has to be transparent to the user, eg no waiting bars and so on while stuff is downloading from the Internet.

Another example, I watch a lot of CSI and other crime type series (I dont actually but just for the sake of it). IF MP knew that CSI a fictional crime series, and was aware that I watch it a lot, it could propose to me that there is similar content on other channels. Somehow like Amazon proposing you other items to buy based on your previous purchases.

[Slurm]

There's one thing I would really like to see in MP:

As I have a lot of recordings programmed and am also watching quite often LiveTV I often end up in the middle of a movie in LiveTV which is stopped by a recording begining at that moment. This is very annoying and I've seen a good solution in MythTV (which I used a long time):

Popup a notification a minute or so before the recording begins with following options to choose:

- Quit LiveTV when Recording starts and show recording (this should be default when nothing is entered).
- Quit LiveTV when Recording starts and exit.
- Don't record and let LiveTV run on.

I know it's not new but I really miss this feature. It should also be aware of recordings on the same transponder as liveTV is and in that case only show option to switch to recording but otherwise continue with liveTV.