bluefin wrote:

requis wrote:

Any hope of a No menu MPLAY?

I may have asked a number of times...still holding out!! You read it here first I will pay $50.00 USD for this feature!

Simply loads cover art, and allows you to Scroll through the cover art in say a Movies Directory behind the scenes, in other words let me set-up the directory or you tell me what it has to be from a file structure perspective and I will make it happen on my end. When you select the cover art and press play or select a movie, bingo plays the movie...none of that text that pops up in the right hand corner. No file structure to browse from, no fancy themes, NADA. Thats not to say I don't like what you have done, its just ackward and not the way movies were intended to be selected.

Note I have two sides to every DVD front and Back cover art can this be supported??

To summerize:

jpeg Images or thumbnails of available movies scrolling across the bottom (just the front of the cover art or movie). In the center perhaps some form of highlight to indicate which movie your on. Above this in a significantly larger format the Movie cover art (front and Back) that appears in the selector below. The two cover art images should simply be the majority of the available Screen size. If you can leave an area off to one side to import text that describes the movie. You will not only receive my donation but an additional $25.00

REQUIS

You know, if I am reading your post correctly, what you are asking for is a more friendly interface that is less intimidating for say the wife or the kids...no crazy files paths displayed in the menus, or when playing the the actual file (i.e. upper right hand corner). IF this is correct, I would further add that you are requesting an interface that is less "file-centric" and a bit more "movie-centric" and overall less intimidating for the lay user.

I think TheEndless and marcelo3d made great strides towards this by introducing the "-browsedir" and "-nomenu" flags that essentially allow you to go directly to your list of movies and scroll and select.

As far as I am concerned, your comments are curiously timely. Last week, I dreamed up the following screen shots of a more "movie-centric" interface. Notice that these renderings are void of any file paths, directories, sizes, and so forth...JUST MOVIE TITLES. Furthermore, I dreamed that there was a little more info about each movie (i.e. rating, genre, etc.) instead of the file size. Also when that movie is selected, it pops a screen that diplays more detailed info about the movie. See ScreenShots below:





Let me know if we are headed in the same direction. I have already had some communication with TheEndless regarding this topic and I would be happy to share if we are on the same wavelegnth.

Also, thanks for the tip on DVD Profiler. Wondering if you know what the difference between the free version and the "not-free" version is. Looks like what I have been looking for. Wouldn't it be killer if this could integrate with DVD Decrypter? (although I just read they were shut down last week).

__________________________________

TheEndless and marcelo3d have created an INCREDIBLE little app for and otherwise not so interesting roku HD1K. I will tell you that it wasn't until I heard about Mplay that I decided to purchase my HD1K. After showing Mplay to two of my good friends, they also promptly purchased HD1K's with as much enthusiasim as me (TheEndless and marcelo3d should get a comission from Roku on people like this). Now I see the vision and the potential for the HD1k as becoming the most important piece in my modest home theater.

For me, here is the dream...(1)drop in a DVD to rip, (2)and while DVD Decrypter is ripping, the dvd cover art and title info is automatically fetched via dvd profiler (3) and then browse for a movie in Mplay via a "movie-centric" navigation menu

This is a pipe dream of course and of course I am CRAZY grateful for what Mplay already does. But hey if there is more interest in a something like this we should take it to another thread and start to gather $$$ pledges. Count me in if we are envisioning the same thing.

I really think ROKU needs to step up to the plate either with actual cash or inkind gifts such a a free Rev B Photobridge for testing purposes (maybe they have and we are not aware.)

marcelo3d wrote:

(TheEndless got nothing. As realtor say, location, location, location )

Wow, it is great to see that people are excited about this kind of "movie-centric" interface. As I said in my initial post, I had already talked to TheEndless about this offline, but I didn't share what we talked about primarily becuase I wasn't sure if anyone cared...but essentially, he said what marcelo3d says above; and that is, that they would rather someone else develop an interface that ran MPlay in the background. So I guess we need to recruit some tallent to do this. I myself am not a developer, but I am decent at layout, graphics, skins etc. (not a pro, but decent)... so tonight, I will work on some more screen shots and develop a screen shot prototype of a "movie-centric" interface. From there, perhaps we can peak the interest of those some others to help make the screenshots funtional. The guys working on the SDesk app are doing something similar in concept, but I'm pretty sure they are headed in a slightly different direction.

I am curious to know the feasibily of creating such a front end for MPlay. It is always easy for non-developers to say "I'd like this and that" without really knowing what it takes to get that kind of funtionality off the ground. So please, if you are a developer reading this thinking "...man these guys have no idea." Let us know.

I have thought through some of the implicaitons of designing a system that works like the screenshots above. The biggest hurdle I can see is, where do we store all of that data related to movie titles (i.e. rating, run time, synopsis, genre etc.)? Naturally, a database right?? But from what I gather, database driven apps for roku are not possible. So here is what I came up with:

1) A thin-Client method that stores the info individually within the movie folder, kind of the way the folder.jpg coverart files are currently being handled.

2) A webservice like WeatherSix that hosts the data online or on a localhost within your network. The application would then call the data from its external location to be displayed on your tv, plasma, projector, whatever, (much the way weatherSix works).

Anyhow, these are just a couple of thoughts on how to handle the data. In the meantime, please post here and let us know if you think this kind of application would be helpful.