Visual Movie Browser

[johnsonx42]

For me to find such a plugin useful it would have to automatically get info and artwork from an internet database... if I have to go find the info and artwork myself for each movie, it's never going to happen so I may as well just use the stock NPVR Videos plugin. Also playback of media files would be my primary desire; if it could also have entries for off-line physical media, that would be cool too.

[imilne]

@imilne: Something you may be interested in, JavaWiz is willing to turn over his code for someone to maintain it while he is unable to do so: http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...benefactor

Can't say I'm not tempted, but with my wife due our first baby in a matter of weeks, chances are my time is going to become very limited soon

[johnsonx42]

Can't say I'm not tempted, but with my wife due our first baby in a matter of weeks, chances are my time is going to become very limited soon

you have no idea. congratulations though!

[whurlston]

Congrats!

[JonnyCam]

The MovingPictures plugin in MediaPortal is awesome, and seems like a good implementation. (along with the TV Series plugin)
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/files/Do...gPictures/
http://code.google.com/p/mptvseries/

(I has considered a custom task to open mediaportal, just for movie watching - but the actual watching interface sucked compared to GB)


Unfortunately, coding is something I cannot really do, so am reliant on others hard work.
I think being able to display movies / tv episode as per date added etc would be great, so I can see what's new.

[axeman91]

The look of this plugin is almost exactly what I would want, but it would need automatic information retrieval similar to that in XBMC for ultimate satisfaction ;-)

[imilne]

To summarise some of the things that have been mentioned, there seems to be three elements required:

1) Navigation and display (of the metadata)
2) Retrieval of (or access to) the metadata
3) Access/play controls (eg for blu-ray)

Number 1 is the part I think I'd be capable of programming. With some help from one of the skinning gurus of course I'm of the opinion that it should keep the current file/directory based method of viewing files that the current video browser does. In fact, with the new UiList HORIZONTAL_ICON view mode, it may be possible to get close to some of the wishes in this thread with nothing more than skinning alone.

Number 2 is a tricky one. I personally don't have a problem with using an external tool to gather this information (eg Ember), but I can also understand how great it would be if the plugin (or nPVR) just did it all for you. However, I don't necessarily think such functionality should form part of *this* plugin. It might be better to be coded as a separate utility, or better yet, a DLL that any of the nPVR plugins or components could access, including the core ones from sub too. I'd love to hear sub's thoughts on this if he's reading.

This also ties into things like the Wiz code potentially being available (http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...benefactor) that already does some metadata scraping (although I've not used it and can't comment on it), and some of the ideas Hairy had here (http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...r-for-nPVR).

There probably isn't much to say about number 3, other than the obvious of making sure the plugin is aware of the special folder structures for DVDs and BDs that have been ripped. Another option for playback might also be to support handing off the files to a pre-defined external app (TMT, PDVD, etc) to play instead. For blu-ray anyway; sub's standard movie playback code is better than them for everything else!

Iain

(and thanks for the pregnancy messages; people keep telling me I'm in for a shock, but I continue to live in ignorant bliss for now )

[whurlston]

I started a plugin NPVR that will detect when a DVD is inserted into a drive and will read the disc to get the discID, then retrieve the metadata and poster from Windows metaservices and throw a popup. On the BD front, I have my BD movie library plugin for the old GBPVR. It uses a custom compiled dll of BDInfo to get the playlist info and cues the m2ts files for the longest playlist. It should be modified to load the mpls file instead (since the MPC source filters will use that for seamless branched titles). I can give you the source code for both projects if you want to combine them into something.

[jam_zhou]

I'm about to get a PBO and it can use YAMJ. If the plugin can use the the YAMJ metadata and directory format then this could make things a bit easier since you would no longer need to update the scraping code. To boot it would make it somewhat compatible with the PBO and similar boxes!

http://www.digitalera.co.uk/news/tag/yamj/

EDIT: Ooops...I think I should have said that Thumbgen would get the pictures and metadata...

http://www.acryan.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=5921

Note: the PBO can be customized to have acryan firmware and hence GUI.

[-Oz-]

I would love this plugin. i'm currently trying to get mediaportal to do TV well because moving pictures and mp TV series makes the media center look exactly how it should in my opinion; modern.

GB-PVR seems to have TV down a lot better