A new Plugin for the Music-Part! Is it possible? (2 Viewers)

[emphatic]

Here's is an example of some desktop app. There are dozens of them (amarok, rhythmbox, winamp, itunes, ...) following the same concept so many people should be used to it.

Now either have three horizontal buttons or even the full lists at the top of the music screen for "quick filtering".

This is a nice way of browsing, yes, but does it not require quite high screen resolutions to fit all the text fields? My idea of using the same layouts as MP TV-Series does basically the same thing as you propose, but:

Series = Artist
Season = Album
Episodes = Tracks

Of course genres, record labels etc could be added to the "main filters".
Emph

 

[hwahrmann]

i really don't understand the difference between using the Artist / AlbumArtist view and a view in TV Series.
Both have 3 Levels.

What you describe above is already present in the current Music View system.
Or do i understand something completely wrong?

What we DON'T have are those nice fanart backdrops, but that's a matter of skinning, like we see from some skins (e.g. aMped and the new fidelity screen that Harley does).

So instead of redoing the complete music plugin, a FanArt grabber, might be a first step.

 

[emphatic]

i really don't understand the difference between using the Artist / AlbumArtist view and a view in TV Series.
Both have 3 Levels.

What you describe above is already present in the current Music View system.
Or do i understand something completely wrong?

What we DON'T have are those nice fanart backdrops, but that's a matter of skinning, like we see from some skins (e.g. aMped and the new fidelity screen that Harley does).

So instead of redoing the complete music plugin, a FanArt grabber, might be a first step.

Have a look at the XFactor forum for a plugin for universal Fanart display (one folder for all skins, supporting Music, Film, Games, etc).

I guess what I'm missing is some creative skinning then. But that's getting better all the time as this thread seems to highlight to people what's possible already inside MediaPortal, and that has to be a good thing, at least for me.

Emph

 

[hwahrmann]

ah yes, that's fine. so at the end of the day it is a skinning issue as you said.
of course there will be some things that aren't possible due to the architecture, but then there's always room for improvement.

 

[emphatic]

ah yes, that's fine. so at the end of the day it is a skinning issue as you said.
of course there will be some things that aren't possible due to the architecture, but then there's always room for improvement.

Limitations is the mother of all inventions after all!
Emph

 

[jameson_uk]

Not going to read the whole thread as the last few pages are enough

The music section is the one thing I hate about MP :sorry:. It is not really the lack of shiny features like fanart and nice skinning nor lack of functionality but more fundamental in that the experience is not intuitive. My mum was sat down and within 2 mins was using live TV, my pics, TV series etc. Put her in front of the music section and it is like I don't get it... why is it doing that?

A lot of people don't even seem to know about the database and are still using folder browsing (I guess the defaults and the config app lead you down that route) but even the fact there are multiple now playing screens and controls do different things on different screen is confusing.

As much as I agree with many of the thoughts in this thread I can't see much coming out of it. There are too many thoughts and people wanting to go in different directions. I think the reason it has come so far without a plugin is (a) it is quite hard and (b) there aren't that many actual developers.

For me I think that music would be better if it tried to do less, pleased less people but did what it did well. I have an idea about how this could be made a lot more intuitive and will have to have a play over the weekend...

 

[kiwijunglist]

This is similar to what i would propose for music that is faster to browse, i guess i should post some mockups next week with my ideas. Of course my ideas would only be relevant to MP2 unless someone codes a new plugin. I think the hard part is to make sure it works well with a remote control or keyboard, without using a mouse. Also integrating album art and fanart while still having all the above functionality might be tricky.

 

[hwahrmann]

Not going to read the whole thread as the last few pages are enough

The music section is the one thing I hate about MP :sorry:. It is not really the lack of shiny features like fanart and nice skinning nor lack of functionality but more fundamental in that the experience is not intuitive. My mum was sat down and within 2 mins was using live TV, my pics, TV series etc. Put her in front of the music section and it is like I don't get it... why is it doing that?

A lot of people don't even seem to know about the database and are still using folder browsing (I guess the defaults and the config app lead you down that route) but even the fact there are multiple now playing screens and controls do different things on different screen is confusing.

As much as I agree with many of the thoughts in this thread I can't see much coming out of it. There are too many thoughts and people wanting to go in different directions. I think the reason it has come so far without a plugin is (a) it is quite hard and (b) there aren't that many actual developers.

For me I think that music would be better if it tried to do less, pleased less people but did what it did well. I have an idea about how this could be made a lot more intuitive and will have to have a play over the weekend...

is it really so hard to select an artist, an album within it and press play on a track?

As for the shares view, i would love to completely remove it. aybe for MP2 we should consider of not having it all.

 

[tourettes]

is it really so hard to select an artist, an album within it and press play on a track?

It might I personally dont use that much different view types in music plugin. I already know what I want to listen to so

1) select letter
2) select artist
3) select album and press play

Or use Last.fm to scrobble similar artits that I like. So, anything that makes such use case more complex is bad from my point of view. And this again shows that there are huge variety of different needs for the music plugin (and we cannot satisfy everyone). Why not take Meedio route and provide 10 different music plugins Everyone is free to implement one, or even two.

As for the shares view, i would love to completely remove it. aybe for MP2 we should consider of not having it all.

Yep, someone could provide such functionality as a extra plugin (maybe a file manager, that allows users to use shares type of view for pictures, music, videos... all in the same packet).

 

[scythe000]

This is going to rock someday.