A
Anonymous
Guest
I've been using Media Portal for a few weeks now after trying Meedio, Sage and MCE 2005, and I'm really liking it. One suggestion I have, though, concerns the progress bar in the on-screen display. It looks nice, but it seems to take up a lot of space without offering much useful functionality or interactivity.
My suggestions are:
1) In general, merge the progress bar with the slider control, so that "handles" (something like those little triangles found on the ZapOSD in the MCE skin when paused during timeshifting) on the progress bar itself can be clicked or dragged to move within the playing media.
2) When playing stacked video files (video-cd1.avi, video-cd2.avi) the progress bar should represent the complete duration of the entire video, not just the currently playing file. The whole point of something like MP is to make things easier for users, and from a user point of view, the fact that a video is made up of several separate files doesn't matter. So we should be able to move around within the whole video, not just the current file, via either the progress bar or the FF/RW transport controls. This also means that the extra step of clicking on the CD representing the stacked file before playing the video can be eliminated: again, I think we'd want to keep the fact that a video is stacked as hidden as possible from a user who just wants to watch the video.
3) When viewing live TV and timeshifting is enabled, we'd need a third color to show the areas that are inside vs. outside the timeshift buffer (just like the ZapOSD in the MCE skin). A user should be able to click anywhere in that saved area to jump to a point in the past, and click/drag the handle all the way to the right or click the ">|" button to return to live TV.
My apologies if any of this has already been suggested or is already planned, I read through most of the forum topic titles and didn't see these ideas mentioned. If anyone else thinks they are good ideas, please let me know.
matt
My suggestions are:
1) In general, merge the progress bar with the slider control, so that "handles" (something like those little triangles found on the ZapOSD in the MCE skin when paused during timeshifting) on the progress bar itself can be clicked or dragged to move within the playing media.
2) When playing stacked video files (video-cd1.avi, video-cd2.avi) the progress bar should represent the complete duration of the entire video, not just the currently playing file. The whole point of something like MP is to make things easier for users, and from a user point of view, the fact that a video is made up of several separate files doesn't matter. So we should be able to move around within the whole video, not just the current file, via either the progress bar or the FF/RW transport controls. This also means that the extra step of clicking on the CD representing the stacked file before playing the video can be eliminated: again, I think we'd want to keep the fact that a video is stacked as hidden as possible from a user who just wants to watch the video.
3) When viewing live TV and timeshifting is enabled, we'd need a third color to show the areas that are inside vs. outside the timeshift buffer (just like the ZapOSD in the MCE skin). A user should be able to click anywhere in that saved area to jump to a point in the past, and click/drag the handle all the way to the right or click the ">|" button to return to live TV.
My apologies if any of this has already been suggested or is already planned, I read through most of the forum topic titles and didn't see these ideas mentioned. If anyone else thinks they are good ideas, please let me know.
matt
