how to prevent mp from losing control of the remote (1 Viewer)

lewisdw

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January 21, 2005
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I'm using nview to make my tv display the primary and have mp appear there so I can keep working on my 2nd display. A couple questions:

Is their a way to make mp open fullscreen (no border) in this mode?

How do I get mp to keep working with the remote after it loses focus (someone on the computer working in an application)?

Thanks
 

Callifo

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    Thats sadly a limitation of windows, it cant handle two input devices controlling two different programs at the same time.

    I know my MCE remote does work pressing the back button which brings MP (which is on top just not in focus) back to focus but in a dual screen setup Im not sure how thatll go.
     

    lewisdw

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    January 21, 2005
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    lewisdw said:
    I'm using nview to make my tv display the primary and have mp appear there so I can keep working on my 2nd display. A couple questions:

    Is there a way to make mp open fullscreen (no border) in this mode?

    How do I get mp to keep working with the remote after it loses focus (someone on the computer working in an application)?

    Thanks

    A slight update to my above questions, and some remarks to callifo:

    MP will open and run in fullscreen on the primary display (yeah!), however, I lose the taskbar on the 2nd display when it does this (not too big a deal, but annoying). Is there a way to prevent MP from closing the taskbar when in fullscreen mode, or have it open maximized without borders?

    To callifo or anyone else that can answer: you're saying that MP or any other program can't monitor for input from a device unless it has focus? That just doesn't sound right, but it might be. It would seem that there should be a way to have MP watch for keypresses on the remote since it has exclusive control of it, even when not the foreground application (or is this the problem, it loses control of the remote when it's not in the foreground? If so, just don't give up control!). If that's not possible, can I assign a button on the remote (hauppauge 40 something key remote) to bring MP back to the foreground when pressed? If so, how?

    Thanks again
     

    mPod

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    January 26, 2005
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    I guess everyone here thought you'd be using the MCE remote. What Callifo said is true for an MCE remote, the Hauppauge remote part of MP can handle your problem...

    Open configuration.exe, go to Remote/Hauppauge Remote and disable the checkmark next to "External processes may use the remote control". After this, only MP controls the remote when it's running...

    The only buttons not exclusively controlled by MP are the number buttons. I had to replace the number commands back to Keystrokes because some parts of MP do not respond to the REMOTE_0 to REMOTE_9 actions. As soon as that part is fixed in MP, I'm gonna change it back to the actions instead of keystrokes again.
    Only foreground windows get ordinary keystrokes, that's also the reason why the MCE remote can't behave the way the Hauppauge one can. :wink:

    Have fun!

    Ah, and btw... better use the support template next time, so we would have known your configuration from the start.
     

    Callifo

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    lewisdw said:
    MP will open and run in fullscreen on the primary display (yeah!), however, I lose the taskbar on the 2nd display when it does this (not too big a deal, but annoying). Is there a way to prevent MP from closing the taskbar when in fullscreen mode, or have it open maximized without borders?

    Youve ticked the option "Hide taskbar in fullscreen mode" in setup?
     

    Marcusb

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    Just in case this helps others, you can have the same effect with the MCE remote but you have to disable the MS MCE driver and use the HIP MCE driver.
    This lets you specify which app gets the signals regardless of whether it has focus. It also lets you tap into the blasters so you can control your TV (for example) from anywhere in the world via the HIP Web interface.
    Another benefit is that you can then configure the key mapping on the MCE remote.

    I can't give any real experiences though, this is on my to-do list but has dropped down on the priorities ;-)
     

    lewisdw

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    January 21, 2005
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    mPod said:
    I guess everyone here thought you'd be using the MCE remote. What Callifo said is true for an MCE remote, the Hauppauge remote part of MP can handle your problem...

    Open configuration.exe, go to Remote/Hauppauge Remote and disable the checkmark next to "External processes may use the remote control". After this, only MP controls the remote when it's running...

    The only buttons not exclusively controlled by MP are the number buttons. I had to replace the number commands back to Keystrokes because some parts of MP do not respond to the REMOTE_0 to REMOTE_9 actions. As soon as that part is fixed in MP, I'm gonna change it back to the actions instead of keystrokes again.
    Only foreground windows get ordinary keystrokes, that's also the reason why the MCE remote can't behave the way the Hauppauge one can. :wink:

    Have fun!

    Ah, and btw... better use the support template next time, so we would have known your configuration from the start.

    Sorry about that.

    I done what you said in mp setup for the remote, but mp still does not respond to the remote unless it is the foreground application.
     

    lewisdw

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    January 21, 2005
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    Callifo said:
    lewisdw said:
    MP will open and run in fullscreen on the primary display (yeah!), however, I lose the taskbar on the 2nd display when it does this (not too big a deal, but annoying). Is there a way to prevent MP from closing the taskbar when in fullscreen mode, or have it open maximized without borders?

    Youve ticked the option "Hide taskbar in fullscreen mode" in setup?

    Thanks for pointing out that option. That fixes that problem. However, I've discovered that mp is very touchy running in fullscreen with nview enabled. The tv guide doesn't work right, and other things are flakey at best. If I turn off fullscreen and maximize the window, it works great.
     

    mPod

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    lewisdw said:
    Sorry about that.

    I done what you said in mp setup for the remote, but mp still does not respond to the remote unless it is the foreground application.
    What version of MP are you running? Try resetting the mapping of the remote to default.

    MP reacts here, if it is not the forground app. So no problem...
     

    Webcomber

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    I have the same problem/wish... to use my MCE Remote (Eu version) to control MP while it does not have focus, and on the secondary monitor.

    I used to have (up to last week) WinXPpro, all setup and great, but I crashed it. :evil:
    Now I run everything from WinXPMCE2005.

    All still works, however, when I press the green button MP does not get full focus, in the task bar its color changes to ORANGE! Never seen a win app do that, it's either light-blue when out of focus or dark-blue when the app has focus. Some sequence of keypresses on the remote (haven't figured out which ones) finally give MP focus.

    OK, so I want all Remote input sent directly into MP, even if it does not have focus.

    I tried HIP, very neat, very easy to setup and I used the special drivers to unhook the MCE Remote from the system keyboard. HIP will bring the target app in focus and send IR input as keystrokes input into the app.

    However, this leaves MP in focus and the user of the other apps on the pimary screen has to sit back and wait for the family to finish their MP browsing.... :cry:

    Does anybody know of a way of making this work?
    Ie. does MP accept COM input (output possibility of HIP)? If so, how?
    or,
    is there a way to trick HIP or Girder to send OUTPUT as
    - USBUIRT? (USBUIRT will only see its own hardware (+driver))
    - SerialUIR?
    - WinLIRC?
    as MP can accept all of these.

    OR... maybe my best suggestion except it involves effort from others:

    What would MP developers think of supporting the special MCE remote drivers as used by Girder or HIP?Downloadable from here.
    And would that give me (us?) what I want?

    I'll be happy to help testing!

    I use MP v0.2RC2. No CSV's.
     

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