Release plans for Beta 2 (0.2) (5 Viewers)

[Richtv]

Usability

Use a complementary background color and smaller font size for TV guide program descriptions, movie descriptions, and so on. Perhaps use dark font color for the text. Otherwise, everything just blends together.

Streaming radio stations: Provide on/off toggle next to stations. Currently, I can add the url for a streaming station and click the station descriiption to turn it on. But there is no off button.

Full screen mode: Provide the ability to minimize.

Pop-up menus: Provide the ability to switch modes (TV to Radio, TV to Weather) rather than navigating back through a sequence of screens. Or document easy method for programming remote buttons to do this.

Also, provide pop-up method to access brightness/contrast/saturation/etc. controls.

CC: Provide access to CC filters.


Performance

I know developers are looking at the AIW filters. As mentioned on posts elsewhere, you could take advantage of the VCR filters for recording. And if you could eliminate the need to connect the encoders and multiplexer in the case where you are only viewing live TV and not recording, that would reduce the CPU usage.

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Shuttle SB75G2, AIW 9800 Pro, P4 3.0 GHz, 160 GB WD SATA, 1 GB memory, Syntax Olevia 30 in LCD TV

 

[SCud]

Simple Things

Couple things I would rather have access to on MP is on the start menu, the time and date feature should be a feature so you can turn it on and off. Also the video, picture and music links could shows 3 folders inside the video, picture and music link as thumbnails. Also the actuall option highlighter should be a bit darker and have a more glass apperance. One last thing the time that gets displayed next to the playing thumbnail clip should also have the option of on and off. Otherwise fantastic work so far, keep it up.

 

[Anonymous]

Here are some ideas I've had after a few weeks using the last two releases of MP...

Usability

Consistency: In My Music and My Videos, don't say "switch view," but rather show the current view just as with "View:" and "Sort by:" -- likewise in My TV show the current channel rather than saying "Channel." And in all cases perhaps re-order these, to put what is being displayed at the top, and how it is sorted and displayed (list, icons, etc.) underneath.

In My Weather, the city chooser should look and operate the same as these other choosers: it should be a button with the city name in-between the smaller next/previous buttons. And if there is only one city available, the button should not be there at all. Also the chooser between "4 Day Forecast" and the individual days is missing the smaller next/previous buttons.

Context-sensitive Options: For example, in My Videos, why should I be able to sort by rating when I'm viewing actors? And when I am viewing years, sort by name correctly sorts the years, but sort by year does not. It would be good if unnecessary choices like sorting years by name and actors by rating could be eliminated depending on the current selection, to prevent confusion.

Help During Installation/Configuration: I don't have any problem with a separate configuration application, but one thing that I think would be useful is on-screen help for the various options. This is where MCE really excels, walking users through the setup steps. I had no idea whether I should be choosing VMR9 Windowless or Renderless, or that when I put a check next to the one radio station I entered as a test that it would start playing whenever MP started up, etc. Also an installation Wizard for setting up a schedule to download TV Guide info would answer a lot of people's questions.

Performance

A small thing, but perhaps download new weather info as a scheduled job in the background and/or when MP first loads, rather than when the area is accessed, to speed its display?

Stability

A big part of stability is fixing bugs, and fixing bugs means identifying bugs, and that means testing. In the 0.1.1.1 release thread, MrMario64 stated that there aren't enough testers. In the tester signup thread, however, the last message from frodo said that no additional testers are needed. I'd be happy to sign up as a tester if more are needed -- I'm good at noticing inconsistencies!

One other thing -- and I know this is really a new feature request -- is that many "feature requests" seem to be for features which are dependent on the skin, not the underlying MP code. Things like displaying or not displaying the clock, a button to switch between windowed and fullscreen views, and other appearance aspects (see much of SCud's and Richtv's posts above). It thus seems like it would be very useful if the skin engine could incorporate user-selectable options. The skin designer could define the options and the possible choices, and the user could pick their choices in the configuration application when they select the skin.

Also, it might be good for both usability and stability if MP shipped with only a single skin that had all (or most) features included, and then provided the option for people to easily download other skins, as Meedio or Sage do. That way people would know what MP is capable of, and it would be easier to debug problems if we were all using a single "reference" skin. Or at least, have a list of features a "reference" skin must include, and only include these skins in the MP download.

I hope this helps,

matt

 

[gds]

I'm still thinking about channel switching in the TV module. Some thoughts:
1- there is a real problem in managing channel switching if you have a satellite card. This way, you have a billion channels and you have to cycle them one by one. It would be grand to have an option to show on screen only the group/channel lists and the preview window and to be able to navigate through the group/channel lists without actually changing channel.
2- this maybe a mixed ui improvement/feature request: if we add to the channel db an entry for some features of each channel (like genre, language and any other relevant item) we could have a way to change the grouping of the channel dinamically based on these values, like we already do in the video section. Obviously, to achieve this result we should agree on the relevant items for this classification and for the appropriate values for each of them. Then everyone could contribute to the db by submitting appropriate catalogation info for the channels he watches (if there ain't a way to get them automatically).

 

[Anonymous]

Performace: better channel handling in the configuration menu, mp goes bezerk when having 1000+ channels in the tvdatabase.

Database layout could be a bit improved by dropping some of the extra linking tables wich should result in better performance.

Making mediaportal less independant on the dvb stuff, it should pick more stuff up out of the stream instead of working on the database all the time. Audio / language selection, ac3 pids, pmt pid, ecm pid, lnbKhz and lnb freq. should be auto picked from the stream instead of from the database.

Useability, making the channel lists display configurable on the number of channels displayed for ex display 20 channels instead of the standard 5. Same for bouquets.

 

[MonteGoulding]

Ok... I'm a bit hesitant to add my comments here as I'm a major MP newbie but here goes. I think this will all be in the Usability category:
- The number one usability issue with MP is documentation. One of the issues here is that setting up MP is different for every country you are in. My suggestion is to spread the documentation effort by asking for a documentation maintainer for a setup page per country. In addition I think a small explanation needs to be included in the config tool for all the settings.
- Next on my list would be PowerScheduler/PVR-Scheduler functionality. I believe this is critical if we are proposing this system as a replacement to a VCR or even commercial PVR. It needs to be tightly integrated into My TV. I see no need for a separate plugin here.
- I agree with the comments regarding separating out a background service for remote and recording functions. Recording should happen with MP closed and it would be great to be able to click on the guide button on the remote and go directly there etc including starting MP.
- seamless iTunes integration would be a big plus for usability and definitely be something that MS would never replicate ;-)
- I think the burner functions could be integrated into My Pictures, My Music and My Videos. It's certainly a logical process to look, select then burn
- Lastly I'd like to suggest that if you choose record every time on this channel or record every time on any channel a little message box comes up asking you if you want the program managed by MP as a series. This would involve doing an IMDB lookup and placing each recording into a series folder. Extra bonus points for burning a series DVD and generating a menu with episode details ;-)

Anyway... I'm sorry, there's a fine line between usability issues and feature requests in beta software. I believe most of the functionality of what I'm talking about is already there but perhaps spread out over separate plugins when it should be integrated into the core set of features.

Thanks for listening!

Cheers and keep up the great work! One of these days I'll learn C# and join in ;-)

 

[fathead]

The only thing I really feel MP needs is a clearer step by step guide to setup. A feature rich walkthrough wizard upon installation would be great, showing examples of what each feature does & what information needs to be entered etc. It took me ages of asking questions and playing around before I could get MP to function the way I needed it. With MCE I simply ran through the setup wizard & everything worked.

 

[Anonymous]

I guess it may have all been covered before but I, who mainly use TV, Radio & Weather, would like to have:

1. A way of turning off streaming radio in My Radio - only way I can find at the moment is to disconnect the internet connection or close MP.

2. A (mouse) button to back out of all windows - I navigate mainly with mouse but have to keep KB handy so that I can ESC from My Radio.

Otherwise I think that MP is the best thing that happened since sliced bread!!

 

[Maschine]

1. A way of turning off streaming radio in My Radio - only way I can find at the moment is to disconnect the internet connection or close MP.

That's "b" on your keyboard.

2. A (mouse) button to back out of all windows - I navigate mainly with mouse but have to keep KB handy so that I can ESC from My Radio.

Right mouse click into an empty space somewhere in MyRadio or any other window.

Maschine

 

[Anonymous]

1. A way of turning off streaming radio in My Radio - only way I can find at the moment is to disconnect the internet connection or close MP.

That's "b" on your keyboard.

2. A (mouse) button to back out of all windows - I navigate mainly with mouse but have to keep KB handy so that I can ESC from My Radio.

Right mouse click into an empty space somewhere in MyRadio or any other window.

Maschine

Thanks Maschine,

"b" does turn radio off (which is preferable to way I was doing it) but I do feel that a mouse button wouldn't be a bad idea for a user who doesn't want to use a KB.

I get no response to a right click - I know that my mouse is OK- could there be something in config that I've missed?