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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scythe42" data-source="post: 1107404" data-attributes="member: 95833">That's multi user usage and categories including categories among groups. Not UI related, but of course needs to be done.For example you come to a friend who runs MediaPortal. You can use your phone to control it (given he allows it) and it then even shows what you have seen and what not. Not saying it is a good idea, but you can have guests as well.Proxmity based playback? Notifications of recordings? Parental Controls? and whatever.All this is doable (just throwing around examples, that might not make sense in the end), But we need to get a UI concept first where we can embed all these ideas easily in.Once we have some basic UI, we prototype it for usage and can add how stuff is displayed and how it would work. But we still need to hammer out the raw things first before we can jump into such details.Playlists, latest, continue where left of and stuff like this would be a category like every one else in simple terms.The question remains how to we display various including dynamic categories without wasting a ton of space or creating huge menus or endless scrollable lists.About automatically update content based on selection as kind like a "preview" we all so far basically agreed upon as this is something really missing and make sense to keep it move lively, more accessible.That is one important building block we so far all agree upon! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite24" alt="(y)" title="Thumbs Up    (y)" loading="lazy" data-shortname="(y)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite24" alt="(y)" title="Thumbs Up    (y)" loading="lazy" data-shortname="(y)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite24" alt="(y)" title="Thumbs Up    (y)" loading="lazy" data-shortname="(y)" />Now is the question how do we display these categories and what do we put into the menus to access them easily.Searching would just be an overlay just like you know from smart phones as it is a "jump to anywhere" and need to be separated from the rest. Sure can contain search, favs, similar stuff and not limited to a search. (oh yes, and of course you can type directly on your smartphone or search from there. These are basic requirements for me).Again how to be access this easily and where do we put it? Sure we can assign tons of buttons or various swipe gestures.Such OSD -  like for searching - would make sense to place some not essential stuff. But again how do we display these? And what do we consider essential and what to we consider optional and not much used. Is full browsing a Series Library more common than selection unwatched items or favorites based upon rating? For me it never was. Most of the times I jump to the new stuff recently added (in my case automatically).Do you see where I am going here from a usage point perspective? It's not like we have to "TV Series -> Select Series -> Select Season - Jump To lastest unwatched automatically -> Press Play".Sure this seems the most logical way if you just want to organize stuff from a top-down perspective. But it is not good interface design.But isn't the actual usage pattern different? Just observe yourselves how you actually use MediaPortal and how many steps you executed each time to reach a point. This is what needs to be minimized and easily accessible.It's not like "start with last used window" is a solution. This is bad as you always start at a different location and probably never the one to use. You are immediately lost and need to find your bearings again. Jumping to the top of a hierarchy is also a poor excuse even though one that always works.But I am sure there is something better. If everyone really observes what he is doing and writing it down including the steps he did, we actually can get some base date for usage and find out where it points us. I know mine, but not what you guys are doing. So keep an eye on it for a week or two and share your reports. I am sure we find some usage patterns to give certain functions a priority among others.These are very important question that need to be answered for a usage and UI concept.As said, I'll try with the community to come up with something that breaks what we basically use since forever because it is not really efficient.That doesn't mean that a classical hierarchical view will not be available. But this is probably more an option for ppl. liking to do what they ever did.</blockquote>

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