TV display (plugin?) idea (1 Viewer)

[Odoyle]

I'm still building my frontend box to run MediaPortal so I'm a total newb and please forgive me if this is already available or has already been done, but I had an idea last week that I wanted to share with the MediaPortal community...

While watching SD television on my widescreen HDTV, I usually set the aspect ratio to 4:3 which puts up the gray letterbox bars on the side. I got to thinking about a more practical use for this space.

What if MediaPortal could display the SD 4:3 tv signal aligned to the left (or right) margin and display something pertinent like RSS data or weather info or anything else useful in the remaining area (once used to display gray or black bars, now one empty area if the displayed 4:3 signal is aligned to one edge)? To circumvent burn-in issues with certain technologies, the feature should be toggle-able (switch left, right, center) and the RSS display area should change occasionally.

So has anybody already written anything like this? Though it's been a while since I did any programming, I still have a working knowledge of PHP and a little C++. If nobody's done anything like this I'd like to get started on a plugin but I don't know where to begin. Is this even do-able?

edit: I made a little mockup image.

 

[revs]

I had a similar idea - but for the home/main screen.

I thought there could be a main screen that shows you loads of info - it could maybe activate after inactivity - like a screensaver.

On this screen would be an rss feed (scrolling news), small tv maybe, weather, mail count, etc..

kind of like a screen of various "widgets".

ill post a mocup if i get time.

 

[funkstar]

I like that idea, especially when viewing a new channel, as the information at the side is kinf of news as well

 

[mzemina]

It would be nice (feature-wise) to have an overlay which would allow the RSS feed to show over the TV/video in full screen. But your approach may work also. There is an overlay which work for callerID, it would be nice to allow weather also to appear as a small (height-wise) overlay (at the bottom) while the TV is running full screen.