Suggestions from the Annoying New Guy

[Necro]

So, so far I've gone through SageTV, GBPVR, and MediaPortal.

I've found that Media Portal doesn't run as a service, so it only records when it's running which tosses that right out. SageTV (aside from being stupidly expensive) is basically a damn beta testing thing thats not customizable at ALL (there customization software has been 'beta'-ing for over a year and a half by the look of forum posts which discuss it) - but has really nice features.

GBPVR seems to be in the middle.

Some of the features I'd like to see that I think are cool:
- Search by genre. If no genre, just sort into a no genre group.
- Search with more then the first letter (2-3 bars or keypad for entry).
- Improved EPG with coloring by genre.
- Documentation on skinning
- Multiple disk support.
- Graphics system overhaul (I think this is the biggest for skinning, speed, etc.)

This is just from a guy, who is trying to get his HTPC setup and is testing everything out. This is what I see at the moment .

I think the program is great so far...I just need to get the damn thing setup right and looking right for me .

[sub]

- Search by genre. If no genre, just sort into a no genre group.
- Improved EPG with coloring by genre.

GB-PVR is not built for the US market, so I dont want to write functionality that only works for USA based zap2it users. XMLTV used by the rest of us rarely has genre information available, so there is no functionality that uses this.

- Search with more then the first letter (2-3 bars or keypad for entry).

You can either press the blue button in the search screen to do a free text search, or use one the other search plugins like XSearch.

- Documentation on skinning

Nah, I cant be arse writing documentation. I'm trying to keep the project fun. Documentation isnt fun. That said, I think the skinning is pretty straight forward, and most people manage to work it out without too much difficulty.

- Graphics system overhaul (I think this is the biggest for skinning, speed, etc.)

This probably isnt going to happen in a hurry. I'm slowly improving things all the time, but I'm not going to 'down tools' on the rest of GB-PVR to dedicate massive amounts of time to skinning. Skinning is just not important enough to me - functionality/stability is.

The skinning probably isnt as flexible as some people would like but I dont think its bad. The composite images have proved pretty powerful since they were introduced, and are a great improvement on the image based skinning we had before it. I'll continue to implement these sorts of improvements as time goes on.

[Necro]

The issue with the skinning documentation is that there's no clear definition of what things are named, where select items are, whats not skinnable, etc. Possibly opening up the wiki to allow free editing of a skinning section might be useful and people would be able to document things on their own. Even by allowing anyone to login would help.

As for skinning/improvements, I simply meant speeding the graphics up. It seems insane for them to be slow when other programs using similar/more complex graphics can do it faster. I know jack about graphical programming however, so I was simply under the assumption it would be using a different function library or something of the sort.

And I suggested these things because GBPVR is pretty much the most stable thing I've seen thus far and these are the few things I like from other programs. Your doing this for free, I have no right to ask for jack .

[groover km]

Don't want to hijack the thread, but for what it's worth...

What Sub says regarding keeping gbpvr open to use zap2it/ xmltv/ whatever makes perfect sense adn I'm certainly not gonna argue...

...but I would love the ability to set searches and/ or reminders (always look for Michael Caine films, or tell me if Toy Story 2 appears in the schedule, for example), showed genres (what films are on at 10pm tonight? sort of thing), list programs by channel* rather than in a time/channel matrix...

A very selfish US-centric view I know, but maybe a plugin begging to be written?

*I'm pretty sure guide 2J allowed this, but I never had much luck with it; maybe it's time for another try...

[reven]

As for skinning/improvements, I simply meant speeding the graphics up. It seems insane for them to be slow when other programs using similar/more complex graphics can do it faster. I know jack about graphical programming however, so I was simply under the assumption it would be using a different function library or something of the sort.

this will probably be due to the fact those programs are using DirectDraw (or DirectX/OpenGL), and gbpvr uses GDI+, which i think it has to for xcard,mvp,350 since GDI returns images from most method calls, and DirectDraw etc draws directly to the graphics card.

[stefan]

You can either press the blue button in the search screen to do a free text search, or use one the other search plugins like XSearch.

GBPVR never stops amazing me. There are new things (well, at least things I didn't know about) around every corner =)

[Necro]

Don't want to hijack the thread, but for what it's worth...

What Sub says regarding keeping gbpvr open to use zap2it/ xmltv/ whatever makes perfect sense adn I'm certainly not gonna argue...

...but I would love the ability to set searches and/ or reminders (always look for Michael Caine films, or tell me if Toy Story 2 appears in the schedule, for example), showed genres (what films are on at 10pm tonight? sort of thing), list programs by channel* rather than in a time/channel matrix...

A very selfish US-centric view I know, but maybe a plugin begging to be written?

*I'm pretty sure guide 2J allowed this, but I never had much luck with it; maybe it's time for another try...

The main issue I have with 2J is the inability to tweak what you search for - so you have to select through titles, descriptions, then subtitles, etc...to get to Genres.

Also, I just checked out MediaPortal tonight - it uses XML information and gets Genre's and stuff from there...is that data just not available in other countries and it's only there for the US when grabbed via XMLTV also?

Reven: That would make sense, except that SageTV doesn't have the issues and it outputs to the MVP also. Most likely something similar though I would guess.

Stefan: Only issue is you need to use a keyboard to input from there, from what I saw . I think I'm going to try to get Guide2j/X(everything) working

[stefan]

Also, I just checked out MediaPortal tonight - it uses XML information and gets Genre's and stuff from there...is that data just not available in other countries and it's only there for the US when grabbed via XMLTV also?

Well, genre information (and much other info) is generally not available in many countries outside of the states (and canada?).

[reven]

Reven: That would make sense, except that SageTV doesn't have the issues and it outputs to the MVP also. Most likely something similar though I would guess.

have you seen the SageTV interface, its rubbish, it doesnt do anything fancy at all, if you compare it to the blue skin (which also doesnt do anything fancy) they're just as quick as each other. if sage had more complex skins you would notice slow downs, and of course sage is written in java and gbpvr written in C#, so they dont use the same graphic engines.

[Cosworth]

As for Genre info, I've been missing this too. O2grabber which support scandinavian TV includes genre info with the generated xmltv file. So it's not only the US.

I wouldn't colorise all genres though, as you get quite a mess. So it should be a configurable colorisation (e.g. color movies & nothing else)