[other] Usability : De-nerdify and Simplify (1 Viewer)

[aikeru]

Hmmm...

Hmmm...
Some interesting thoughts on this thread.

Perhaps what "everyone else" needs (those who don't want to deal with drivers and CODECs and themes and configuration) is a sort of "ubuntu-like" MediaPortal setup (or guidelines).
Correct me if I'm way off here but... I think what a lot of people forget when they approach a community-driven, open-source project is that you get what you put into it.

Yes, it's for everyone (who wants it), but it's not intended to spoon-feed you and dumb it down. Perhaps it's like iPhone vs. Windows Mobile (unmodded). The iPhone has a vastly superior UI experience and it's not like you can go into the registry and break it... but WM is designed to be more flexible (or less rigid) to anyone who is willing to put in hours and hours of work.

This might not be a very good analogy but I hope anyone who reads this understands the gist of it.

People look at projects like MP and think "Ooh, it's free!"
It's not free. You're exchanging money you would've spent on a device that requires little to no setup or expertise for time and hard work that you'll spend on configuring MP to do what you want.

I think the latter is a much more (potentially) "rewarding" experience as you understand what goes on under the hood and it can better meet your needs (so long as you are willing to put forth the effort). Not to mention being a part of the community, another thing people miss out on. Sadly, this is not the culture my generation is brought up in.

I also agree with splatterpop. Once it's done, hide away the keyboard, most anyone can (or should be able to) use it.

 

[tourettes]

I also agree with splatterpop. Once it's done, hide away the keyboard, most anyone can (or should be able to) use it.

My HTPC has had "missing" keybord for few years now

 

[HappyTalk]

I think the tv server and client config pages are more worthy of a rethink. Take TV Channels setup on the tv server there are 4 different tabs, one selects channels shown, one selects whats shown on the epg, one selects whats shown on each card, one selects whats shown in a group. They conflict with each other and make no sense. All you need is a single tab where you can see all channels (with an epg checkbox) and add/remove them from groups as desired.

I just spent 4 hours fiddling with this yesterday when adding a new card when it finally dawned on me the only sensible useage was to bypass the madness and ONLY use the groups tab, ensuring on the other tabs all channels are assigned to their cards, with epg on for all and let the groups do the filtering out of unwanted stuff (oh and don't edit or use the 'All Channels' group as it resets itself). Also I couldn't see how to access my 'radio groups' in MP, as on tv you do it via the epg, but I just remembered you need to click the 2 dots (parent folder)?

Another bugbear is the music plugin config, I gave up doing any config and now just use it as a simple file explorer for my music well organised into folders. If I had the time/energy I would construct a single media plugin from whence all music/photos/videos could be launched. I tend to have photos and videos from my cameraphone in single dated folders. I have to switch from the photos to video plug and back to view them all.

why is the volume control not visible WHENEVER it is clicked?

Lots of configuration options are good if they help, but I think they just clutter and confuse and most could be simplified with no loss of flexibility. Too many ways to try and do the same thing, none of which quite manages it. I believe there is ALWAYS a best way that solves a problem better for 99.9% of people. Adding really good defaults helps as well.

 

[kiwijunglist]

maybe in the future someone will make an installation program that will automatically go through the steps of installing/cleaning up codecs, installing mediaportal, installing common plugins, installing a skin, then taking you through a setup wizard to setup the tv tuning etc, designed for a standalone install. But there is no point in creating such an all encompousing installation wizard until mediaportal reaches it's final release.

 

[Berns]

HappyTalk,

The idea at the beginning of this conversation, was to find alternatives to deal with low friendlyness when using the system, mainly at startup or when reception quality from sat is low.

It is true that configuration screens could be improved. Currently the screens for channels, however, allow for maximum flexibility for multiple video sources (DVB and analog) to be shared among multiple clients. When not using the 4 screens this kind of flexibilility could be at risk. To my feeling, those configuration screens are there to be used by the the technical person sharing his toughts on this forum. These screens are visited once in a while to add or modify a channel, or to add a card. Unless one is in a setup phase, they are not visited at all.

At my place, the startup screens on average are shown twice a day, and affects all users.
Reception errors are rare. When they occur the keep users waiting for a long time to discover ... something ... is wrong.

An now top gear starts ...

Just wanted to add that the main client in the living room now is also fully remote driven (no keyboard and no mouse present at all)