PCH Screen saver possibility

[mvallevand]

There has been concerns raised because of the lack of a screen saver while music plays on the PCH and I was wondering if this demo made using mvpmcx2, GB-PVR, the normal NMT player combined with a picture slide show would be sufficient especially for plasma owners?

http://www.youtube.com/v/qpKI36qYobA

Note I choose the fish theme because NMT/myiHome users would know it but in reality I'm pretty sure any jpegs could work.

Martin

[sub]

I must say I'm not particularly fond of the way they do that slideshow picture fading in, then disappearing. It looks pretty rough, and would probably drive me bonkers.

You could probably dynamically have the web server generate cover art for those pictures based on the music that was currently playing, but I dont know if it'd look that great overlaid like that, and with the fading/disappearing thing I mentioned.

[psycik]

Is there no possibility of gbpvr retaining control while music is playing, so that your (sub) or my interface could be shown in all their album arted glory?

[mvallevand]

Honestly, I didn't think this feature would win any popularity contests or I would have just released an update instead of the demo. Right now I am trying to find out if it is even worth going to the trouble of documenting. I think it could be made a little better by replacing the popcorn background (which is is easy) but it certainly isn't eye-candy. But it might still be a necessity for some.

On a side note my wife prefers the fading photo slide show in WMC to GB-PVR's and I don't, so some of this is personal preference. If Syabas provide me with a way to turn off the fade I would.

psycik, yes mvpmcx can regain control, in fact I'm test MLPanel with Internet radio and it works pretty well. There's a couple of big caveats here so you should read about the HDMI problem here http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=34830

Even if that is resolved (very unlikely) or non-HDMI audio is used, it doesn't help ML2 unless sub does some work on getting the current song info from the recording service to pvrx2.exe. If multiple mvp' server were being auto-started this would require some thought.

Martin

[sub]

Is there no possibility of gbpvr retaining control while music is playing, so that your (sub) or my interface could be shown in all their album arted glory?

Unfortunately I suspect not in the near future.

[psycik]

Are there any other methods that could be used? What other music servers are available on the PCH?

slimmserver etc? I'm not sure if I'd look at something like that, but it's a possibility...

[sub]

I'm not aware of any way to play music files on the PCH that doesnt use this screen (showing filename, tags etc).

[mvallevand]

There are three native look on the PCH during audio play

- the popcorn logo with the filename, type and tag info
- the theme based fish slide show with UPnP/myiHome
- some cheesy static image files while internet radio streams from their portal.

Martin

[psycik]

psycik, yes mvpmcx can regain control, in fact I'm test MLPanel with Internet radio and it works pretty well. There's a couple of big caveats here so you should read about the HDMI problem here http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=34830

Martin, this comment of yours interested me.. Is this the MLPanel that I used to ship, or the new one that ACTCMS is working on?

I'm guessing most people don't want control over the music, since the pch will handle that, just the pretty pictures.

[mvallevand]

I meant ACTCMS's new one.

Martin