My wishlist

[madcat]

Hi,

I'm failry new to GBPVR (2-3 months). I bet some (most? all?) of the following items have been discussed over the forum, but in any case, I wanted to add my view of things.

First of all, GBPVR is amazing. I have tried some other HTPC solutions, but none of them got close. This is the only one that gets the WAF pass. The only comment here is that MCE looks much sexier (even when we add the skins to the game). That whole swoosh-swoosh menu animation does it (to me, at least). But it just didn't work!! not to mention the lack of flexibility and configurability that GBPVR has.

Now, to the list. It's not a whole lot, more to do with end-user usage:
1) volume up/down visual feedback (I know there's a plugin)
2) brightness (and anything else possible - contrast, etc.) control, plus visual feedback
3) channel favorites - to be able to use the GUI to create "favorites", or "channel-lists". That is, create a list, and add/remove channels to/from those lists, all using on-screen menu (well, at least to be able to use them, maybe a second best would be to create/edit using the config.exe). This lets you "zap" through reduced lists.
4) show types, more general? In the channel list in the Config, one can choose colors, but the show types are very specific. Would be easier to group them into 10 types, e.g. movies, comedy, drama, etc.
Myabe even add pre-set colors?
5) search/browse by genre (see above) - to be able to search or browse the Guide using specific genre (details below)
6) auto update to the GBPVR itself (or at least notify in the main menu when there's a new version?)
7) last XML update (at least from file time-stamp) on top of Guide.
8) Phone-like keyboard using remote (I started a thread on that, using numeric keys 2=ABC, 3=DEF, etc.)

Regarding the EPG items (4, 5) - a year ago I was using cable provider in a different country (I never used the digital box here in CA), and they had a very nice EPG:
You could browse the timeline, as in all EPG, but you could browse by category hierarchy:
Movies
Reality
Sitcoms
News
etc...

Then, if you choose "Movies", it will show
All Movies
War films
Drama
Oldies
Comedies
Documentary
etc.

Then when you choose a sub-category, it will list the timeline, but only filtered to that sub-category, so you can browse the week ahead only for war-films, if that's what you fancy.

What do you guys think?

[sub]

4) show types, more general? In the channel list in the Config, one can choose colors, but the show types are very specific. Would be easier to group them into 10 types, e.g. movies, comedy, drama, etc.
Myabe even add pre-set colors?

Unfortunately these are not under my control. These are determined by the broadcaster and/or EPG source. Some countries seem to general ones, some use very specific ones. These genres also vary widely from country to county. I just store and present then exactly as they supplied in the EPG.

[madcat]

Ok (I thought it may be so).

So, to that point, maybe if we had a file describing more generic groups.
With a GUI that for example, I can right click on a show (in Config.exe that is), and assign it to a more "generic" types - then also controlling the color on the more generic type.

Maybe someone can come with a different way, but today, for me for example, there are more than 100 types (not to mention, that to my point #5, there are no sub-categories).

Just for example, if I do:
>grep categor main.xml | grep -i sport | sort | uniq
I get
<category lang="en">Motorsports</category>
<category lang="en">Playoff sports</category>
<category lang="en">Sports event</category>
<category lang="en">Sports non-event</category>
<category lang="en">Sports talk</category>
So maybe that could be the main category and sub-categories in this case. Not sure how to automate/generalize this.


What about the other points?

[sub]

Ok (I thought it may be so).

So, to that point, maybe if we had a file describing more generic groups.
With a GUI that for example, I can right click on a show (in Config.exe that is), and assign it to a more "generic" types - then also controlling the color on the more generic type.

Maybe someone can come with a different way, but today, for me for example, there are more than 100 types (not to mention, that to my point #5, there are no sub-categories).

Just for example, if I do:
>grep categor main.xml | grep -i sport | sort | uniq
I get
<category lang="en">Motorsports</category>
<category lang="en">Playoff sports</category>
<category lang="en">Sports event</category>
<category lang="en">Sports non-event</category>
<category lang="en">Sports talk</category>
So maybe that could be the main category and sub-categories in this case. Not sure how to automate/generalize this.

I knew you'd come back with something like this. To be honest, I'm not that keen on implementing this sort of thing. It just makes things messier.

What about the other points?

The other points are reasonable request, and worthy of being on the wishlist

I couldnt tell you at this stage if/when I might implement any of them though.

[sub]

2) brightness (and anything else possible - contrast, etc.) control, plus visual feedback

If you're using VMR9, you can probably already get this. Press '1' then 'F11'.

[madcat]

I tried, I got "Overflow error".
In Config, it is set to "VMR9 Custom renderer".

(just to confirm - "1", then "F11" during Live TV for example?)


I have close-to-zero knowledge when it comes to overlays, VMR (what does VMR stand for?) etc.

[sub]

"Video Mixer Render". VMR7/VMR9/Overlay are all renderers. This is the thing that is responsible for drawing each frame of video on to your screen.

Maybe try it with VMR9 instead of VMR9 Custom. It might help.

[madcat]

Will do the moment my kids get of the Time-shifted Tv... (talk about WAF..., they are 4 and 6!)

By the way - addition:
9) In the "show progress bar" (the thing at the top with the red and green area that shows the show start, length, etc.) - it shows in red the time past, and in green the time ahead recorded, right? but it doesn't update in real time (e.g. when I press pause in live TV, it records forward, so it would be nice if you could see the green part getting bigger).

[MixMan]

I got overflow error with the 4 year old Intel 845 onboard graphics, but when I put in a newer ATI card thats DirectX9 compatible and now OSD brightness/color adjustments works.
Try upgrading graphics driver or graphic card....it worked for me.

[sub]

9) In the "show progress bar" (the thing at the top with the red and green area that shows the show start, length, etc.) - it shows in red the time past, and in green the time ahead recorded, right? but it doesn't update in real time (e.g. when I press pause in live TV, it records forward, so it would be nice if you could see the green part getting bigger).

This is a limitation of VMR. You cant update the on screen graphics unless the video is playing. The VMR9 Custom renderer doesnt have this limitation.