Brain Storm Plugin Ideas???

[colin]

Quote[/b] ]As for the plugin to receive email. I have a PIM plugin available in the WIKI pages that does that. It would not be hard to modify it to send email either. By default it integrates with outlook (not 2003). Can be extended with your PIM manager of choice.

Well i have been working on an email plugin for a looonnnggg time now and i just do not have time to work at it. Shame as i actually have a design for it. Thinking of taking a day of work to work on it ( i have leave to use up). This works with pop3 servers, etc. as I would not go near outlook.

I'll dig out what i have done on it, and see if anyone wants to work on it with me,

Colin.

[darrin75]

I was really just trying to get brain storm ideas going, defrag was just a quick tip to get things going not really a realistic idea..

[jasonf]

This thread sounds like it should be in the Wishlist forum. But, here's my thought...

Not sure if this could be done entirely within a plugin, but how about a snapshot of what's on a group of channels (i.e., change channel, take snapshot of the current frame, display as a thumbnail on the screen, move to the next until the screen is filled with thumbnails). You see this in other PVRs, mostly integrated with the live TV channel changer.

[KingArgyle]

Well, take a look at Meedio for some really good ideas for some plugins, not all are great, but some I think are really useful. An example:

1. A movie intro/trailer plug in. Allowing for playing of specified or random movie trailers before your main video starts.

2. Intro Slides to go along with your movies. Make your Home Theater into a true movie theater.

3. Enhancements to Video players and Music players. Again, lots of examples on Meedio for this and myhtpc before that.

4. Database enhancements for Videos to include more detailed description downloaded from various internet data bases. The DVD Profiler is a perfect example of one that has been done for GBPVR, but it requires you to have DVD profiler when you can access XML feeds from Amazon to do the same thing.

5. From a developer's perspective. Web Services for GBPVR, allowing for interaction across the internet or network without having to have the GBPVR dll's installed. Personally this is on my list to look at eventually. BTV 3.5 has something similar but the licensing restrictions make it almost impracticle to use or implement anything useful.

An example use, would be to have a Meedio plugin call a GBPVR web service to retrieve information about upcoming recordings the service has scheduled, and any that are currently happening. This information could then be displayed on the screen. Meedio is installed on a seperate machine, and GBPVR is on it's own machine...Web Services allow the two talk to each other through a common interface. Whether they are on the same network, or even over the internet.

6. An on screen Skin Designer, allowing for quick drag and drop manipulation of skin files for a page, or just quick editing of the current Skin for a page. (Ala XLobby).

I think sub is proceeding in the correct direction by concentrating on the recording aspects of the software, and by giving a fairly robust API to interface with the application.

[reven]

Quote[/b] (jorm @ Nov. 19 2004,10:30)]> oh if you really want to make a plugin and need an idea how > bout making a plugin to edit out ads in recordings, like
> mythtv has  now that would be useful.
You can already skip the ads.

skip ads is one thing, but being able to remove them is another, so it would be easier to burn them to dvd without the ads, and would free up space.

im thinking along the lines that hopefully a plugin will be made to burn mpg files to dvd video eventually, so removing the ads is key, and hopefully using the gbpvr interface. hard part is trying to find a command line program to burn mpg2 files to dvd or a program which takes command line switches.

the upcoming theatre plugin has the ability to view trailers (well i think it does), which is a really good idea.

[reven]

Quote[/b] (colin @ Nov. 19 2004,12:53)]

Quote[/b] ]As for the plugin to receive email.  I have a PIM plugin available in the WIKI pages that does that.  It would not be hard to modify it to send email either.  By default it integrates with outlook (not 2003).  Can be extended with your PIM manager of choice.  

Well i have been working on an email plugin for a looonnnggg time now and i just do not have time to work at it.  Shame as i actually have a design for it.  Thinking of taking a day of work to work on it ( i have leave to use up).  This works with pop3 servers, etc. as I would not go near outlook.

I'll dig out what i have done on it, and see if anyone wants to work on it with me,

Colin.

this sounds really good, i hope the design is like the mediaportals email interface, which i think is really good, just needs a reply feature (with an opitional onscreen keyboard).

how about this, since there can be so many buttons on the main menu (even with the new submenus) how about combining some of the similar plugins into a single plugin, like a news plugin which has
- rss feeds
- traffic report
- possible weather
- comics

[Huw]

Quote[/b] ]how about this, since there can be so many buttons on the main menu (even with the new submenus) how about combining some of the similar plugins into a single plugin

I think this is a good idea, I have encorporated the shutdown pluin into my sysinfo plugin, for that reason, menu's getting pretty cluttered trying all these plugins

[jorm]

Didnt sub mention sub groups for plugins, so the main screen does not become as cluttered?

[jorm]

Colin,

If I new outlook 2003 was such a pain with their security features I would not have integrated with outlook either see the PIM plugin.

Jorm

[reven]

Quote[/b] (jorm @ Nov. 20 2004,08:33)]Didnt sub mention sub groups for plugins, so the main screen does not become as cluttered?

sub did a more like submenus(sub, submenus, ha thats funny) which still uses the main menu, its better, i think, to have multiple things in one area, if they fall into the same group. like "news" mentioned above, have side buttons with a display in the middle. (like weather has with forecast etc). sub wouldnt (well i dont think it would be possible) be able to do it this way, has to use sub groups for menus. its not really a clutter thing, more of a logical thing, being able to access multiple things in one area, so you dont have to jump back and forth if its a similar task. im hoping that one day he will do a "My TV" one like in mediaportal, and combine live tv, tv guide, search guide, recordings into a simliar thing. the rest is up to us.