Meedio Scales nicely on a large monitor

[KiwiKid]

I've just loaded a trial version of meedio - along with their final release of the TV module. It looks real nice I have to say on my 19" monitor - the only HTPC S/ware so far I've used that seems to scale for higher resolutions.

Pity I couldn't get the TV guide working - even though the channel numbers are present - no info - weird!

Meedio has made big leaps since I last looked at it.

[dottore]

i edited the main skin.xml-file and set the background-size to 1024x768. it looked nice! now i'm asking, if it would be better to make the skins "oversized" so they look nice on every monitor including tv-out or if it slows down the system too much...

[KiwiKid]

I don't know if I'm the right person to ask. Firstly, I don't have a HTPC - just the S/ware loaded on my normal PC for playing with purposes - dont even have a capture card - but I'm heading in that direction. I've been researching HTPC for a while, but still have to finalise my setup.

One thing I can say - Meedio looked great right from the beginning. GB-PVR and Media Portal both have issues on my setup using a 120DPI and large fonts - mostly in the config area. GB-PVR is the worst out of the 3 for looking good in my particular setup, but I've found it the easiest to setup and naturally there are a lot of Kiwis here

[sub]

You can make a skin for whatever resolution you want. The default ones are optomised for viewing on a TV across a room, and use the same resolutions as regular TV, but there is nothing to stop you creating a higher resolution skin.

[daphatty]

*WAVES ARMS FRANTICALLY IN THE CROWD*

I would love a higher resolution skin (BlueMCE2 for example), especially one designed for 16x9 screens. My HTPC is more than capable of handling such loads. Just let me know if you need someone to test it for you!

[KiwiKid]

That's really the crux here isn't it - the default skins are optimised for TV viewing - and since I don't really have a real HTPC setup I'll just have to stick these issues out until I do - or get myself a capture card so I can plug in a TV monitor.

One step at a time

Just for interest, why would Meedio scale so well in comparison to GB-PVR and MP?

The other thing is I haven't fully sorted out how to get GB-PVR working properly yet so creating a skin is well down the list - if I ever figure out how :confused:

What I should of done was buy a 15" monitor and stay in the 1024x768 res instead of the 1280x1024 res this 19" runs - then there would be nothing to even comment on

[sub]

Just for interest, why would Meedio scale so well in comparison to GB-PVR and MP?

Just because they designed it to scale dynamically. GB-PVR isnt designed to dynamically scale at all. It just stretches the images to fill the screen. It looks ok, but 720x480 stretched to 1280x1024 is never going to look as good as something designed for 1280x1024.

While GB-PVR wont dynamically generate 1280x1024 screens for you, you can always create a 1280x1024 if you want it to look great at that specific resolution.

I had to be realistic when I started this project. I was one developer chipping away in my spare time at a potentially huge project. If I'd decided to implement some grand skinning mechanism, I would have spent the first four months working on a skinning engine, and there is a good chance this project would never have eventuated. Instead I opted to do the minimum I had to, so that I could focus on the important stuff.

It may not be obvious to everyone, but the skinning has improved immensely over the last year, and I'll continue to improve it. Originally you had you had to make images for everything, which was way beyond what most people were able to do. These days we have a pretty good XML language for describing composite images and fonts etc.

In the grand scheme the current approach is "good enough" to get by, but I recognise there is quite a few improvements that I should make when I have time available.

[KiwiKid]

Hey Sub - glad you did it that way so now we have a cool product to play with. I'm not overly concerned about the skin size - really!! . My real problem is I don't know a lot of the answers about all this stuff, so I comment to find out the answers.

It'll be cool when I get into a real HTPC (we're in the process of selling our house and relocating so it'll be after that) and I'll put a 15" LCD on that for adjustments so there won't be any problems then - well we hope not. It'll be back to "User Error" - which seems a pretty common problem around here .

[dottore]

yes, i know, in the beginning everything was a .png ;-) skinning has improved a lot. the plugins use the same skinning-"philosophy" as the core-features now.

sure it can be improved, but i think, a stable gbpvr is better than an even nicer looking gbpvr ;-)