N-PVR 1.5.21 Small Visual Anomalies And Other Things...

[IanSav]

Hi,

Here are a few visual anomalies I have noted with the 1.5.21:
- Using ALT-ENTER to switch between windowed mode and full screen, when returning to windowed mode (from full screen) the window does not always appear in the same position as it started. This is not a solid failure and I am yet to find the trigger to cause the problem. If the problem occurs the window usually jumps up and too the right.
- Using the MAXIMISE control on the windowed N-PVR window enlarges the window to fill the screen but it removes the title bar and the mechanism to restore the window. The taskbar stays visible but the N-PVR icon loses its control menu.
- Should ALT-ENTER and MAXIMISE do the same thing? (They currently don't.)
- When using the default skin the time display at the top right of the main menu has the AM/PM indicator cut off at the right hand edge of the screen.
- Since upgrading to 1.5.21 the very left item of the main scrolling menu is missing. The right side is correctly shown as a darker, more transparent, item. The left most menu item is now totally missing.

I don't know if anyone else is seeing any of these things but I thought it worth reporting in case it supports other people's observations. I am using Wiindows XP, with ffdshow and the N-PVR default skin.

I would also like to ask if anyone has seen a N-PVR crash if the UI is active watching a live TV program when the EPG update starts? I update the EPG from the DVB-T signal.

May I also ask a couple of wishes? Can the tray menu include an item for the background recording service. The item can show a tick or other prompt to show the service is running and then selecting that item will toggle the run status of the service. The tick could be coloured green if the service is running and red if it is running and active (a recording is in progress). Also, can the SETTINGS item be added to the tray menu.

Regards,
Ian.

[IanSav]

Hi,

I have my EPG updates timed to run at 5:00 PM, come that time this afternoon I was watching Live TV and N-PVR started reporting exception errors in an ever repeating loop. I had to kill the process to stop it.

Regards,
Ian.

[sub]

There is definitely some known issues with the automated EPG update occurring while watching tv or recording. You'd be best to keep your epg update for some small hour of the morning when the machine is unlikely to be in use. If all your channels are using xmltv, then it shouldnt be a problem.

maximise and alt-enter are supposed to do the same thing, but I know there is a problem with this. Its on my todo list to fix.

I can see the am/pm indicator here. Are you on a 16:9 or 4:3 display?

[time_lord]

- Should ALT-ENTER and MAXIMISE do the same thing? (They currently don't.)

Well I don't know... in the windoze world, should a maximised (windowed) application be the same as when you press alt-enter, which is really a full-screen mode? In a practical sense I'd think yes, but I'm not sure what windows programming guidelines (if such things exist) would have to say about that....?

[IanSav]

Hi Sub,

There is definitely some known issues with the automated EPG update occurring while watching tv or recording. You'd be best to keep your epg update for some small hour of the morning when the machine is unlikely to be in use. If all your channels are using xmltv, then it shouldnt be a problem.

In Australia most the EPG data is available via the EIT data stream. I set the update to the afternoon as that is when the evening viewing schedule is its most accurate. (Though this is also the update time that causes N-PVR the most grief with overlapping EPG entries. The inaccurate entries from the previous days are overlapped with the slightly time shifted more accurate data for that evening.)

maximise and alt-enter are supposed to do the same thing, but I know there is a problem with this. Its on my todo list to fix.

I await a future build when this is sorted out.

I can see the am/pm indicator here. Are you on a 16:9 or 4:3 display?

I am doing this testing on a PC with a 4:3 display. This also seems to give N-PVR some grief as it sometimes draws the window as 4:3 and occasionally as 16:9. I don't know why the different window sizes are chosen.

Regards,
Ian.

[IanSav]

Hi Sub,

I have some updates on this report...

- When using the default skin the time display at the top right of the main menu has the AM/PM indicator cut off at the right hand edge of the screen.

This is not a solid problem but does appear to be exacerbated when I resize the N-PVR window on my desktop. Even though N-PVR is configured for 16:9 operation I am currently using a 4:3 screen. After N-PVR starts any attempt to resize the initial 16:9 aspect ratio window causes the window to jump to a 4:3 aspect ratio. After these jumps the end of the time string is sometimes clipped from the display.

By the way, moving the window does not change the aspect ratio only resizing the window triggers the problem. I suggest that this is the real bug that I should have been reporting.

- Since upgrading to 1.5.21 the very left item of the main scrolling menu is missing. The right side is correctly shown as a darker, more transparent, item. The left most menu item is now totally missing.

I have found what I did to produce this problem. When I was testing out the new menu options I used the Plugins Settings screen to *only* enable "TV Guide", "Recordings", "LiveTV" and "Exit". That is, I only left 4 items for the main menu. These changes do not take effect until N-PVR is restarted. When I restarted N-PVR I had the menu "issue" as reported. Given that the main menu display is for 5 items the program only had 4 items to display it appears to simply leaves the left most slot blank. My error was forgetting I had played with the main menu contents but did not reset them.

Regards,
Ian.

[sub]

I have found what I did to produce this problem. When I was testing out the new menu options I used the Plugins Settings screen to *only* enable "TV Guide", "Recordings", "LiveTV" and "Exit". That is, I only left 4 items for the main menu. These changes do not take effect until N-PVR is restarted. When I restarted N-PVR I had the menu "issue" as reported. Given that the main menu display is for 5 items the program only had 4 items to display it appears to simply leaves the left most slot blank. My error was forgetting I had played with the main menu contents but did not reset them.

Ah, ok. Unfortunately you'll need to live with that one - you'd need to have at least 5 items or more for it to look reasonable. Its hard to come up with menus that look reasonable with that much disabled.

[IanSav]

Hi Sub,

Ah, ok. Unfortunately you'll need to live with that one - you'd need to have at least 5 items or more for it to look reasonable. Its hard to come up with menus that look reasonable with that much disabled.

I need to remember to reset things I play with soon after I play with them so that after some time later I haven't forgotten what I had previously changed.

Was the aspect ratio issue a real bug, or something that you can/will address?

Regards,
Ian.

[sub]

Was the aspect ratio issue a real bug, or something that you can/will address?

I couldnt picture what you were talking about. Maybe try going into the settings screen and trying some of the other UI rendering resolutions to see if they help with the text clipping. I only really test on 16:9, and I know things are really cramped on 4:3.

[Jaggy]

The default skin is more than cramped as it is right now it actually cuts text off all over the place when using it in 4:3 mode.........it really isn't a 4:3 skin at the moment & I have mentioned this a number of times already.