[Partially in v2.2] Feature request: Configuration/settings using a remote and other feature things :-)

[Teddyboy]

Hi Paul,
I’m in a period of mourning with the imminent death of Media Center when Windows7 end of support begins at the end of the year.
Media center upon initial launch or after initial configuration allows you to adjust settings using only the remote and the onscreen keyboard. I was disappointed when I had to have a mouse and keyboard attached to configure cmc.

The software should initially walk you through first time configuration i.e selecting network shares for example. In media center, when you go into settings to pick folders where media resides it would have a list of available local folders or network shares to pick from. Once you pick your movie share then you would click next to pick you music share. Then you would click on finish to save and close out the configuration. I’m not asking to get rid of mouse and keyboard just to have this as a alternative.

Another thing that I find annoying is the ghosted osd at the very top of cmc’s library display. When you scroll up to it to search or filter it’s really big. I would like it to be hidden and only appear when I need it. In MyMovies all that is hidden in a drop down that only pops up when you scroll to the top and click on it.

The scrolling is not smooth. When browsing it jerks a little it should be silky smooth like media center or my movies is when navigating remote.

[Jamie]

I guess each person has their likes and dislikes. I think that the current cmc setup is a great leap forward from the former version. I like the mouse support as well and hopefully the whole app will have mouse functionality in the future. I find that after the initial setup that I use the setup screen in CMC very little. That was true for wmc too.

I do like the idea of a in onscreen keyboard though for people who do not like using the mouse but prefers the remote.

I also found that after I gave up wmc and used CMC in all my media activities that I got use to CMC and became familiar in how it works.

Regarding WMC, it is not going away in windows 7. MS is just stopping all updates to windows 7. It will still be functioning. You just need to shut off internet access to windows 7 in order to protect yourself. Also, for windows 10 there is still the WMC hack. The pain with that was that you had to reinstall it after every MS windows 10 feature update every 6 months.

My concern with WMC would be that Mymovies may drop WMC in the future. Following the mymovies forum, I get the idea that Brian Binnerup is giving up on supporting and keeping the WMC features in mymovies. Maybe I have the wrong impression with that. I do not really know.

Jamie

[Jamie]

For those who may question my impression that mymovies may stop support of WMC read Binnerup's response to someone who stated that search was too slow in Mymovies. Read his last sentence especially. I have also seen other remarks in other threads that supports my viewpoint.

https://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=45065

[Pauven]

Thanks for pointing out that post Jamie, I'd missed it. I just replied to it.

Paul

[Pauven]

I’m in a period of mourning with the imminent death of Media Center when Windows7 end of support begins at the end of the year.
Media center upon initial launch or after initial configuration allows you to adjust settings using only the remote and the onscreen keyboard. I was disappointed when I had to have a mouse and keyboard attached to configure cmc.

You can use the remote control for all setup EXCEPT when selecting drives\folders\filepaths. I know that's not quite where you want it to be, but it is really close. To do the drives\folders selection via remote, I'll have to program a fully custom file explorer GUI, and also I'll need to include network capabilities since most My Movies users will have data on a NAS type device.

This is a significant programming effort, and considering that most users will only have to use a mouse a few times for initial setup, it's hard to justify doing this over the other more functional improvements in the rest of the app.

To be clear, this is on my wish list too, but it is pretty much near the bottom of that list.

The software should initially walk you through first time configuration i.e selecting network shares for example.

I agree, and to be fair I sort of do have a walkthrough. The new user experience gives a list of steps to take, and points you in the right direction, and updates as you complete the steps. This is even translated to all supported languages.

If you haven't experienced this (I know you started with a much older version), you can either install a fresh copy in a new directory, or simply delete/rename the CMC.cfg file. When CMC doesn't see the CMC.cfg file it initiates the new user help screens.

True, it's not as fancy as WMC, but then again Microsoft is a $258 Billion company, with 134,944 employees, and my operation is approximately 99.99925% smaller. I think I've done pretty well with 0.00075% of the resource, and even though I do charge for CMC, please understand it is a Not For Profit operation, and all revenue covers my business expenses to develop CMC and gets reinvested into the product. All of my very considerable labor is free.

I explained all this to help set expectations. I'm flattered that you mention CMC in the same context with WMC - that is my goal after all - but I have to make hard decisions to set priorities for what to include, it's simply impossible for me to do everything in short order.

Another consideration is that I still hope to implement API integration with My Movies, and if I spend too much time creating a fancy first time configuration wizard, that may end up being throwaway work.

Another thing that I find annoying is the ghosted osd at the very top of cmc’s library display. When you scroll up to it to search or filter it’s really big. I would like it to be hidden and only appear when I need it. In MyMovies all that is hidden in a drop down that only pops up when you scroll to the top and click on it.

You're not the first user to complain of this. While I have made the icon bar more transparent over time, it seems it is still too visible for some user's tastes. I'm planning to make the transparency level user configurable, so you can set it to 0% (invisible) if that is your preference. Look for that in an upcoming version.

I have also begun to make the GUI skinnable, and CMC v2.1 was the very first version to expose some of this skinning ability. If you wanted to, you could copy the default CMC skins folder to make your own version, then replace the icons with smaller icons that you like better (keep the pixel dimensions the same, just shrink the artwork inside). I plan to improve skinning support in the future for things like custom colors and more, but there's absolutely nothing stopping you from playing with what's exposed in v2.1 today.

The scrolling is not smooth. When browsing it jerks a little it should be silky smooth like media center or my movies is when navigating remote.

First, it would be helpful if you were more specific about which scrolling is not smooth. I'll make an assumption that you are referring to scrolling the covers, and yes you are correct it is not smooth. In fact, it is not really scrolling at all, but simply shifting the covers over, column by column. This was a shortcut that allows me to ship a product that works great even on very low end hardware.

When I added the Music Library this past year, I included a lot of smooth transition animations. They are fancy, but they are a big challenge to program. My programming language only allows me to interact with the GUI from the main programming thread, so if I put too many animations in this main thread then they end up blocking other functions, which can make the GUI feel unresponsive and glitchy.

I think I did a pretty good job overcoming these limitations in the Music Library, though if you time your keystrokes just right you can get the GUI to freak out a bit, so I still have improvements to make there. I also did some cover scrolling animations on the Box Set view, and just like the Music Library if you move too fast you can freak out the GUI. I've also seen some poor performance on low-end hardware that I feel needs to be better before making this a core feature of the main cover rows.

I do plan to make cover scrolling smoother, and while I'll be applying lessons learned from programming the Music Library's GUI, this will still be a significant effort and a difficult challenge. And any time I spend on making scrolling smoother is time I'm not spending on adding functionality or implementing the My Movies API.

So again, I refer you to my comments about making hard decisions and prioritizing features. I share your desires, I want the GUI to be smoother, I want the GUI to be more customizable to please every user, I want the new user experience to be super simple, but I also want to finish implementing the core My Movies features (Aspect Ratio / Audio Track info, Similar Titles, further improve TV Series, etc.) and Music Library features (Playlists, Genres, Years, etc.), and dozens of other improvements that are planned.

Be patient and I will get to these improvements - and more. Just please understand that some of this flash and polish and a lower priority to other features.

Paul

[Teddyboy]

Paul I’m very patient. All I’m doing is pointing out what I see and it may or may not be relevant. It might be a priority for you, not a priority, or somewhere in between. Your just starting out and you’ve come quite a ways. I was referring to the cover scrolling. I would rather have support for the MyMovies api. You’re improving things and it looks good.

[Teddyboy]

I guess each person has their likes and dislikes. I think that the current cmc setup is a great leap forward from the former version. I like the mouse support as well and hopefully the whole app will have mouse functionality in the future. I find that after the initial setup that I use the setup screen in CMC very little. That was true for wmc too.

I do like the idea of a in onscreen keyboard though for people who do not like using the mouse but prefers the remote.

I also found that after I gave up wmc and used CMC in all my media activities that I got use to CMC and became familiar in how it works.

Regarding WMC, it is not going away in windows 7. MS is just stopping all updates to windows 7. It will still be functioning. You just need to shut off internet access to windows 7 in order to protect yourself. Also, for windows 10 there is still the WMC hack. The pain with that was that you had to reinstall it after every MS windows 10 feature update every 6 months.

My concern with WMC would be that Mymovies may drop WMC in the future. Following the mymovies forum, I get the idea that Brian Binnerup is giving up on supporting and keeping the WMC features in mymovies. Maybe I have the wrong impression with that. I do not really know.

Jamie

Hi Jamie,
Yes we all have are preferences. Windows7 is EOL end of this year. It’s time to move on. Sand boxing WMC is a nonstarter for me. I’d have to reinstall and let it update to service pack1. I used media center studio to trim away menus that I no longer use, but it’s a troublesome program. WMC stops working when I try to make changes which could be related to updates. Anything beyond service pack one seems to cause issues. I don’t have the time or inclination to sandbox it that way. If I had bought Windows7 embedded standard, then I could have really sandboxed it. Setting it up on the target platform with everything configured including service pack1 would have frozen it in time. I didn’t buy it when I had the chance now it’s impossible to find.

WMC 10 hack is just that. I don’t have time to babysit it.

I run on a domain, and I couldn’t join it to the domain unless it was fully updated because it thinks it’s a security risk. There are ways around it, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Paul’s program is one of many alternatives each with their own tradoffs and compromises. I think Brian is giving up on his front end WMC which is unfortunate.