Re-Design MyTV - get involved

[boseg23]

hi,

well... being more and more psychically involved in testing and improving MP let's try some suggestion...

Rationale:
I use TV program mainly for zapping and looking on the current and future TV program (1-2 day max). Therefore I would prefer TV program beeing the main control for My TV.
There is also some other information I would like to have in a summary view (news, weather, etc.)

Got the following idea from Sharepoint services, which we use extensively at work.

Concept:

• Having the main My TV window as a portal for information about the current TV program and other configurable information would be very nice.
• Making the main TV control window a fixed set of let's say four or five panes, which are partially configurable, would be a first step for this (pls. have a look at the 16:9 sketch attached to this post)
• We could abstract this solution to the whole UI design of MP. Menues are no longer plugin oriented. Instead with the menues you may control a set of configurable windows which collects informations through different plugins and present them in the way the user would like to (naturally he has to configure them).
• There should be a standard design for an information window, for example four information panes and a button bar on the top, just to keep things simple for the basic UI design in MP.
• Installation could provide a standard set of windows which are oriented on the current MP UI design, in order to have a smooth migration for users who are comfortable with the current design.

I have no idea how far this proposal conflicts with the current UI architecture of MP. May be we could go into further discussion after I had a look at the development guidelines.
I hope my explanations gave the idea. Feel free to ask questions if you need more clarifying .

Regards
Arno

[Marcusb]

A while ago it was mentioned that this thread got a lot of initial respone, but then everyone lost interest (as sometimes happens) or decided it was too much work and gave up.
For me, I never responded, since I like the TV set up as it is.
For me, it seems to work exactly the way I would expect it to.
While I have read all the other users submission, and there are some points I like as improvements, I still think the current set up is the way I prefer.

Congrats to the devs for an intuitive and user (noob) friendly interface.

Cheers,

Marcus.

[Topfs]

Well, there are a number of things I'd like that My TV worked on.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/scre.../key,11/hit,1/

Rid of no needed buttons, For example "Time Shifting". For me. Everyone looking on TV want the timeshifting, I would go the length to say that it is one of the main point that we all use the thing
Also I'd say, loose the Group button as for me, this is not important at all. Maybe someone uses it and IF the person have more that one group, it could be used and showed, not otherwise. I also feel that the Channel button is useless as this almost is the same thing as the guide, or it could work with only the guide.

Also, I would like that the scheduled TV is a bit reorganized and not containing CURRENTLY recording shows, this is not a direct fault but I have gotten the question from lots that says. Im recording simpsons now but it isn't in recordings. Even if it isn't finished it seems more intuitive that it is indeed in Recordings just the same.

Also this might be a bug but sort by Date in Scheduled doesn't even kind of close shows it with right dates

In the TV menu I'd rather have that the TV on would buffer up the TV into a fullscreen experiance rather than first start it in the little window. Feels more right. If I want to watch TV i want to Watch it right!, big and beutifull

Also. General for MP. Easier acces to the Now Playing. While I am zapping through the menus I want fast and easy "return" to the fullscreen Video playing. MCE have this with that you can always press, Left -> up and voila your there.
MP in the guide is impossible to get to the now playing without leaving the screen, and there are more examples. The "old" home is also not that simple to get to the currently playing video.

One wierd thing for me that only uses 1 TV tuner is that if I have simpsons on channel 3 at 18.00 and another simpsons at 18.30 on the same channel and I want to record both I get a conflict error, and with padding it is a conflict. But I don't see this as really a conflict error when there on the same channel because the TVtuner would only need to record channel 3 18.00 -> 19.00 with padding and then split it as it wants. Voila, no conflict.

[danielpugh]

i agree with topfs - it should be simpler than before, unneeded buttons are a waste of time.
guides/miniguides are too complex and difficult
there should be a simple miniguide that shows now and next with further show info at press of button, and a simple main guide similar to now.

all navigation should be possible simply through remote control (e.g. its too difficult to change day/week without a mouse and too easy to accidentally enter a different menu, so...

reduce the number of control keys - have 6 or 7 keys that can easily be programmed on remote that allow you to do _everything_ _anywhere_ within the program contextually (primarily cursor and enter, ff, rw, stop, play, record, guide, info)
f6, f7, f8, y, i, o, p etc etc etc currently is good for keyboard but some keyboard combinations are too difficult to assign to remote e.g. f3 for retrieve artwork.
All of these keys should be based on actual keyboard commands so its easy to program any remote (most common seem to be microsoft and imon - if the same keys are used throughout within different contexts in different areas then life would be great

www.soundgraph.com new imedian beta has some nice ideas e.g. holding down buttons for longer period of time performs different function e.g. 1sec click left moves left, hold down 3secs (with simple onscreen timer) goes all the way home


1 click record, 2 clicks records series - the advanced record section is really good, but there should be a simpler way.

mildly off topic simple virtual keyboard for remote users so searching is easier from remote (as could be used throughout mediaportal e.g. music, videos etc

also timeshifting needs to be transparent - quite often i want to leave tv/videos/mediaportal for a minute to do a search on google or whatever - wherever you are in videos/tv/music should remember last position and auto pause/timeshift so that when i maximise i can go straight back to whatever i was watching/listening to without crash - optionally even if i closed mediaportal frontend completely

[pkaul]

Hi,

I would like to place my 2 cents, too:
I'm using MP the most of time as a harddisk recorder for (manual) tv recordings. Therefore, support for easy scheduling and managing my recordings is absolutely necessary to me. The currently available GUI for doing such things does not really fit my needs since scheduling a new recording is quite cumbersome (e.g. I can't simply enter the recording's end time but I have to enter the duration). I coded the functions I need by myself (as you might see in the "TV Recordings" plugin) and I would be happy if they will find their way into the redesigned MyTV.

[Domarkas]

I am confused about the state of TV server. I am doing permanent long run tests with 2 machines. It doesnt work stable. Is the point to get real information about the state and what will come and what I can do to help?