[Configuration] Improve Usability->Configuration in MediaPortal (1 Viewer)

[Scandermore]

Hello!

I've been using MediaPortal since about a year, and I think it's great, and it's becoming even greater each day.

tehre's one thing, but, that many times disturb me, and is that you have to shut it down and open it again to configure a lot of things. This is very annoying, and I think that the usability would improve a lot if the parameters were configurable directly from inside MediaPortal. Parameters should change withuot restarting it.

I know this would be a major upgrade, because how the code is written, but I think that this is a thing that developers should think about, to implement in the future...

By the way... thank to all MP developers! It's great!

aLeX

 

[pilehave]

Actually it should be possible to write a plugin that does excactly that, since MP stores data in XML-files and can read/write to these from within the GUI. If would be quite a task to layout and write it though...

 

[tourettes]

Wont happen with MP1, but such is planned already for MPII. But in any case, you should configure the HTPC application only once and then just use it.

 

[Scandermore]

I agree that there are many things that should be only configured one time, but there are things (like autostart, and other settings in the plugins, for example say that I want to disable the RSS ticker temporarily), that would be very useful to be able to change without exiting MP.

As I said, I know it's a big change (also for the plugins developers) and didn't expect to have it done in MP1, but I only wanted to mention it.

aLeX

 

[Mats42]

But in any case, you should configure the HTPC application only once and then just use it.

True if you just talks about MP without TV functionality but many of us uses our HTPC:s to watch TV too. In that scenario you will have to reconfigure from time to time du to channel and transponder changes.

Unfortunally tat today means shutdown MP. Fetch a mouse and a keyboard, plug them in to the HTPC, start TV server config, scan for channels, restart mp, remove mouse and keyboard. This isn't a smoth procedure or a good user experiance to talk MS language. The WAF is not ok on this point.

A possible solution would be to create a MP pluggin that can configure the tvserver. Since it is a true Client server architecture i belive it should be possible to make this pluggin capable of configuring tv servers running both locally and remote. It also should be easy to detect if there isn't any tv server installed and then just not show the option to configure a tv server.

I belive that MP would benefit greatly from this kind of change since it would be easier for a beginner to set up and get started

Unfortunally im not skilled enough to code this but I do have a bunch of computers laying around so I voulonteer to help test this if it happends