Better remote control handling + Other issues (1 Viewer)

htpcNoob

Portal Pro
January 23, 2005
52
0
Hello. Once again MP is coming along extremely well. I have got my htpc up and running and it works wonderfully. But I have about 4 issues I would like to address

1) I am a remote control user. Currently using homemade ir with winlirc+girder to send messages to MP. The problem is sometimes the "keypresses" arent emulated as fast or as precisely as those coming from keyboards. So I was wondering whether the functionality of WinLIRC could be implemented into MP (I know a WinLIRC plugin exists but it has ceased to work and no updates are avaliable.) This way we can cut out girder and possibly improve the input rate coming from the remote.

2) Stems from #1. Is it possible to "cancel" keyboard/remote input when MP is working? Here is a scenario. I have lots of MP3's categorized by genre. When I click on "My Music" it might take about 2 seconds to display the music page because of the size. The problem is, sometimes I end up sending 2 button presses (again a remote issue) and if the Music module is still loading, it will send that keypress once the button has been pressed. Once the music is displayed the second "accidental" keypress that I sent while MP was loading the list will cause the default button (in this case its the type of view to get executed). My point is, is is possible to cancel any keypresses that occur while media is working on the main thread instead of queuing them to be executed. It sort of gives it a bad laggy feeling.

3) Is it possible to show an icon on the bottom when mp is busy. take the case from #2 where it might take a while to load a list of mp3's or start a video. While its working on loading a display to a different page/module or executing the music/movie player, a little busy icon (animated perhaps) on one of the corners might really help. Especailly if the volume is muted.

4) I have movies/music spanned across multiple PC's networked together together. My Music for example is like this:
--My Music
------Local Music (On HTPC Drive)
------My Music (On \\192.168.100.101\Music)
------Sisters Music (On 192.168.100.102\Music)
------CD Audio

Currently if any one of the networked pc's is not on, MP will freeze for a while to access trying to access the main music page until it times out. The problem is this "freeze" can last a while and can be annoying when trying to go from "Local Music" to "Sisters Music" but if "My Music" (my pc) is turned off, itll have to wait for the timeout message from windows. I propose that to make it faster, MP shows the list and tries to connect to the directories only if that share is picked. That way you can avoid the hang.


I think i will shut up now. Its too long already. I hope some of these ideas fall thru.
 

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