Here's an idea that popped in my head the other night... Given, I have a pretty tricked out setup, I download some unbox and itunes files which requires me to launch into an external player because of the DRM, I have a blu-ray requiring me to launch powerdvd to play them (again because of the stinking drm of course) and I use beyond tv for television because I needed to avoid spending all my time fighting with guide data and tuner support for a slightly temperamental tuner.
To the Point! I'm often not actually in Media Portal I have it running behind or "minimized" while I'm outside it. But people have written some fantastic plugins, like skype, and caller ids which alert the viewer when something awesome happens (like getting a call). Of course this alert isn't particularly useful if you are in another app and can't see it. So it would be fantastic if you could have an option of making alerts (or have the option available to developers) pop up "on top" of everything and "outside" media portal so you can see them in other applications. One further it would be great if you could open to plug in creators the option of passing a command through when the alert is triggered. I'm fuzzy on the details of this but you know like a ctrl-p or a spacebar depending on the app running so it will pause or mute or whatever like these alerts try to do in MP.
I know this is kindof a pain in the ass suggestion but I was kicking it around. I respect and admire the MP's team's efforts to make an all-in-one solution which essentially could operate as a shell, unfortunately I think because of things like blu-ray and drm'd (and less onerous things like emulators) content the ideal of staying in MP at all times is growing less and less achievable.
To the Point! I'm often not actually in Media Portal I have it running behind or "minimized" while I'm outside it. But people have written some fantastic plugins, like skype, and caller ids which alert the viewer when something awesome happens (like getting a call). Of course this alert isn't particularly useful if you are in another app and can't see it. So it would be fantastic if you could have an option of making alerts (or have the option available to developers) pop up "on top" of everything and "outside" media portal so you can see them in other applications. One further it would be great if you could open to plug in creators the option of passing a command through when the alert is triggered. I'm fuzzy on the details of this but you know like a ctrl-p or a spacebar depending on the app running so it will pause or mute or whatever like these alerts try to do in MP.
I know this is kindof a pain in the ass suggestion but I was kicking it around. I respect and admire the MP's team's efforts to make an all-in-one solution which essentially could operate as a shell, unfortunately I think because of things like blu-ray and drm'd (and less onerous things like emulators) content the ideal of staying in MP at all times is growing less and less achievable.