What UI would you like to see and how would it behave?

[Hairy]

I'll add these in seperate posts for the visual aides

The second alteration I'd make is to the OSD. I think most users see this element more than any other. I'd streamline it a little, right now it takes up about a third of the screen. I personally use the OSD (99% of the time) to check what time it is and to see how far into the video I am. With that in mind I've added a few screen shots (externally hosted) below. It follows what most media apps are doing with the OSD, it's focus is the timeline which should be two toned (played and to be played) have the title of the video and the current time.



To access further information you could push up on the remote when the OSD is active, this would bring up something like in the second screen shot.



From there you could access video description, media information (incorporate and enhance the video information pop-up that exists now, I'd also make the current metadata and image for video files available to the OSD), audio streams, subtitles, colour settings, now and next, guide, those kind of things - through a screen popup.

[Hairy]

I feel that the current UI/Blue skin is a little flat. The graphical elements are laid flatly one on top of each other. From a basic xml GB rendering point of view (excuse the descriptive language here I'm not sure what to call everything). I'd like to see more uniformity for options available. Specifically the colour gradient feature made available to all elements, including text. With this alone you could get away a little from how flat the graphics appear (the simple screen shot below use GB rendering for graphics, if you flick back and forth in an image viewer it's more obvious).





Also given that I'm (as most people know ) in the eye candy camp, I can't resist the opportunity to ask for some more transition and lighting effects e.g. rotation and fades - reflections and perspective shadow. Things like that give the UI a sense of depth and helps to bring it out of a flat 2D feel.

[LewE]

I second Hairy's suggestions about the OSD.

[Fatman_do]

I would like to control the selected buttons like in the "old days". i.e. turn the "Zoom" effect off/on.

[roy]

I would like to have an archive function in recordings, to move a recording to a predefined, or selectable, archive location, keeping the recording info. Primarily for moving recorded movies to the archive.

[McBainUK]

+1 for Hairy's OSD suggestions. This is a little like WMC and would allow access to a lot more info during playback.

From a user and consistency point of view, I'd like to see the other default plugins (video/music/pictures) operate a little more like the recordings plugin. Basically move the action buttons to a pop-up. That would free up a significant amount of screen real estate for much more useful information. A prime example is the "slick" view, I think this is a much better use of screen area, while adding a pop-up would alow the user to keep performing all the necessary actions (play/resume/delete etc.). I know this has been raised before and I think sub, you mentioned that there are technical reasons for this, but I think it would be a really useful alteration.

The difference between the Recordings screen and the Music screen is that there are no actions todo on a Recordings folder other then open it. With music you may want to play OR open or ?. The question is when to show the popup...? As for the technical reasons I'm not sure what that could be - is it because they Music/Video/Photos are just file browsers?

[herrmannj]

its not a simple question because there are a lot of plugins out there and the ui related things will be done by the plugins, out if subs range. Speaking for myself: I have replaced almost every build in feature with external plugins: tv-guide -> tv listings and so on. Sub, your programm is outstanding anyway because of its excellent framework it provide for plugins, build on top of it.

But I would really like to see a lot more stuff like coverflow-style-elements and I also would strongly suggest to make the entire UI (surface-)touchable (as we will see a lot of touchscreens coming up now), maybe multitouch compatible. I know that can be difficult in therms of compatibility with existing plugins.

[Deusxmachina]

Not strictly UI I guess but... DB driven versions of the Music, Videos and Photos librarys. One area that when I look at other HTPC software (XBMC, WMC for example) always seems to be much better than GB-PVR's offerings.

Wondering if you could do something like the "TV Listings/MyMovies"? I think it is from MediaPortal, which I found to be "ok" but not nearly as workable or intuitive as I expected, or the listing/database method in XBMC, which is better. You know, like if you have a few seasons of a TV show on your drive, you can have them pretty much automatically sort themselves by season and grab episode data and pictures from IMDB or wherever.

I know GBPVR has a plug-in that does it, but it caused problems for me, and the way the data is presented/sorted in other programs (mainly XBMC) is just "slicker." I really think the IMDB "fetching" and database listing thing is a main thing that hurts GBPVR's popularity with the masses. They like to have their movies and other DVD rips on their drives and auto-sorted and look pretty with fancy auto-downloaded background art and episode summaries, but GBPVR isn't so great at that.

Having said that, that's probably the only main feature I miss in GBPVR that other programs do better. But those programs tend to be worse at other things, specifically the big one for me: recording TV. (and worse at using extenders, and, and, and....)

And on that note, maybe other people like it, but when other programs bring up IMDB or whatever data file manager, or when simply listing your files on the screen, some of those UIs have the static background picture taking up 75% of the screen! Hate that. They have a fancy-dancy picture of the TV show or DVD cover for a background, but then to not cover up the fancy-dancy picture, the actual list of the files is stuffed in one small corner of the screen. If I'm looking for a file, a background or cover art picture would be nice, but the name is more important. I suppose that's just a skin issue, and some do give you the option of having the file manager part bigger and the cover art picture smaller.

I can see going with more popup menus for more options, but if going that route, I think always keeping the first option as "go back one screen" or something would be a good idea. I say that assuming you want to keep mouse use a two-button affair. Or maybe do whatever with menus but have the middle mouse (scroll) button be for "go back one screen." Most mice at least have three buttons nowadays. Or, for mouse users, just keep a small button like that on the UI somewhere like Windows Media Center (although that button is pretty big). That'd be good enough for mouse use.

I can't tell you how annoying using MediaPortal can be with all the popup menus and no true "go back one screen." You can use HIP or whatever to program an extra mouse button to do it, or use the keyboard because the MP guys apparently hate mice, but the way you can so easily get lost in the menus there can get pretty annoying. And then sometimes its "go back one screen" is actually "go back one screen in this new part of the menu but not really go back to the previous screen you were just on," it being more like a lesser version of a Home key.

Another thing about the "IMDB database" type stuff is if that auto-file-managing can be kept under its own option/tab. Because not everyone wants to use something like that all the time, at least for TV. I think it's great for things like movies and full TV seasons, but after loading my current files into XBMC to play around with that function in there, I instantly hated having my newest TV recordings lumped in there, too. I could still access them separately and more normally through the basic file manager, but, I tell ya, turning GBPVR back on and seeing the files in the "Ready" Recordings menu is so much easier for new recordings. XBMC doesn't have to worry about things like that since it's not made to record TV.

I can see people digging a "slim OSD" taking up minimal space if the person likes to leave the OSD on the screen all the time. There's already a "minimal OSD" checkbox in settings, so even if you beefed the OSD up a bit, I'm guessing it wouldn't be overly hard to give the user a way to switch between "slim OSD" mode and "full" mode. Or maybe it would be hard; I don't know.

As for a "minimal/slim timeline," especially since GBPVR can do the greatness that is mouse-click anywhere in the timeline to go to that spot, the timeline needs to be a good length like it currently is. I only mention this since I've seen some skins in other programs where the timeline is only in a small corner of the screen, which is good enough to see if you're around the middle of the show or not, but it's terrible for interacting with the timeline, even if it's just to see where the commercial breaks are with ComSkip.

[sub]

Good feedback guys. I agree with most of the feedback (except for you post #42 ...what can I say, I prefer the flat/translucent look)

[Hairy]

except for you post #42

OH!, that's just cold sub - you gotta throw a bit of shape on it bro!