Dnia 2009-07-02, czw o godzinie 09:36 -0700, Kevin Fox pisze: --8<-- > > See my last comment above :) > > I guess I didn't ask my question clearly, so I'll try again. > > Are we designing the Widgets that any PVR plugin will use, IE, > Moovida's > PVR Widget set, For example, "The EPG widget" in the same sense as the > Moovida Player widget, or are we designing a UI just for our PVR > plugin?
We're trying to design the User Experience we would like for a (any) PVR plugin to have. --8<-- > Sorry. didn't give enough context. From within the player, would you > be > able to pop up the EPG, leaving the player in LiveTV mode? Yeah why not. I think that's a bit too detailed for now, though :) Some user workflows need to be designed, of course, maybe this will get in one of them. --8<-- > K. Since we are talking about coming up with what a user would expect > out of the box, most people watching live tv now a days will expect a > full program guide because that is what their tv's give them now. If > we're going to make the live tv experience as good as possible for > someone that has never used a pvr before, its a requirement IMHO It's not necessarily like that. You don't have to implement it the same way others do. If you have a catchy enough idea you can present it to the user. And we're not talking Full-EPG _or_ Now & Next, both are needed and should be implemented. I thought of the Now & Next as a replacement for Watch TV, not as a replacement for the Programme Guide. --8<-- > Ah. If you go to Music -> Library, in the right top corner there is > two > buttons, List and Grid. I see the two EPG's as this same thing. Two > different views of the same backing store. The same button on a remote > that switches between those views for music (if the remote has one) > can > switch between the views in the EPG. Yeah the problem is in Music -> Library you're at most two clicks away (one in list view, one or two in grid view) from the top bar. When you have the full Programme Guide you'd have to go to the first available channel to go further up. Just imagine what David said - you have six buttons - up, down, left, right, ok, back. The first two are used to change channels, the next two are used to move in time. OK is used to select an entry and back is used to go out of the EPG. You're out of buttons... --8<-- > Its not really important I think. It is a capability that is gained by > having both EPG types available and easily switchable between. If I > can > find a bit of time I'll try to sketch it out. See above, difficult to solve with just 6 buttons, but could be available optionally. --8<-- > Nice UI, but then there is another concern. Which copy are you > deleting > and where does it reside? (BTW, I really like this idea if the UI > implications can be worked out) There's only one copy - the recording. It's just available from both 'Recordings' and 'TV Shows' menus. If you delete it (we don't have deletion in TV Shows ATM so it would probably need to be deleted in Recordings) it disappears from TV Shows as well. Actually 'moving' the episode from Recordings to TV Shows would, in my opinion, require at least recutting the recording, possibly transcoded, too, so I'd leave that for a later date. > Say you have a copy of a TV show on your laptop PVR and on your TV PVR > machine. Both items are named the same since it is the same show. Is > it > in the list twice? If not, which one is deleted? If so, how does the > user know which one is going to be deleted? I think that depends. In the ultimate UX heaven I'd like it to be like so: - if it is exactly the same file but 'cached' on your laptop it only shows once with an indication where it's from and if it is available offline with an option to have it cached - if it is not, it shows twice with an indication where it's from and the ability to remove any of them - the above is subject to what I wrote below about merging media sources > So, here's my problem with the whole thing and maybe we can hash this > out... > > Currently there is this separation I think between Moovida the local > instance and other machines on the "network". Say I have a UPNP server > MediaTomb on my network. Currently its Movies, TV Shows, Music, and > Pictures do not show up in Moovida's Movies, TV Shows, Music, or > Pictures menu's. They only show up when you select "Other computers" > -> > That UPNP servers name, then you see the movies, tv shows, music, and > pictures. > > I kind of think of the pvr stuff working the same way. In "Other > computers", you will see, "MythBackend - FOO". It speaks the Myth > protocol instead of the UPNP protocol for example. If there is more > then > one myth server on the network, you support them all using that UI, > right? > > Now, the feature your wanting for PVR menu merging to TV Shows/Movies > also applies to UPNP too, right? I may want to store TV Shows not only > on my local Moovida client, but also on my big storage server using > MediaTomb. Or Movies stored on my Laptop shared out using UPNP from > Moovida. Or I may have a local UPNP server that I want everything > automatically merged in. > > So, is the Movies/TV Shows/Music/Pictures in the Moovida menu Purely > for > displaying what is locally managed by Moovida only, or... > > Is Movies/TV Shows/Music/Pictures a meta menu of sorts that aggregates > all available media discovered? > > All PVR's TV shows on the network. All UPNP stored files. DAAP music > shares on the network? Making it easy to just play media instead of > hunting for it. > > Instead of all, maybe its just a merging of selected hosts? Yes, I would love that - aggregate any available media source you want into the general library. With the added capability of caching selected media locally. From any source you don't want to be aggregated you could not cache but copy media to local storage. Separate from that you would still be able to access any plugins in the standard way. Sec, I have to wipe my face, I've started drooling at the thought... --8<-- > I'm more in favor of asking the user what to do then decide that for > them. If all tuners are busy when you start live tv, it should tell > you > that, tell you which tuners are busy recording what, and ask you which > recording you want to cancel if you want to continue going to live tv. What do you think about my proposal to bother the user only when there's no other option? --8<-- > Unfortunately, there will always be some trade off between schedualed > recordings and live tv. For example, PiP. Unless you dedicate two > tuners > for watching live tv, PiP wont always work. Do you sacrifice the live > tv > pip feature in exchange for more recordings? I'd say yes, but I > believe > way more in scheduled recordings then live tv... PIP? Like I don't have enough to pay attention to ;) > Hmm.... Maybe what we want then is a configuration option for live tv > vs > scheduled recording balance. > > Favor: > Live TV - dedicates one or two tuners to live tv playback. The > schedular > gets the rest. > Intermediate - dedicates just one to the live tv playback and never > interrupts a live tv recording with a prompt to the user. the tuner is > dedicated to live tv. > Scheduled recordings - Behaves much as myth does now. The scheduler > gets > to decide. It still prompts the user, but if he doesn't answer, the > scheduler gets it and the live tv gets canceled. I still don't think there's a need to dedicate anything only we need to define the scheduler's preferred behavior. What you propose above may be a power user choice, I would not present this level of complication in the standard UI. I think the scheduler trying to duck as much as possible is the best of both worlds. Only bother the user when there's danger of missing a recording completely. We could have the UI show a notification that there's a recording scheduled and if the user wants he can see additional details and decide what to do. I think this way we would only loose one thing - the 'not caring' part. On the other hand there would still be a timeout on the notification so we could give the user (maybe just the power one) the choice what to do in case of timeout - start recording or leave TV on. --8<-- > Consistent or easy? It makes it easy to never have to prompt the user, > but it is not necessarily better. Prompting the user is much harder > because it involves a lot more coding/UI work. I don't think David does anything easy for the coding/UI part. I think he means easy for the user. As in blonde-mode. > Ah, but here's my issue with it. YouTube is both a class, and an > instance. There is ever only one YouTube in existence. You might have > multiple PVRs in your network of the same type. So your plugin is a > Class, but where do the Instances reside in the UI? > > There is a slight UI quirk here that I'm trying to figure out. And > thats, there is no UPNP plugin listed in the library, but there is a > menu item "Devices & Shares" -> Other Computers that is all the UPNP > hosts on the network. PVRs are just another type of "Other Computer" > so > maybe they should show up there. Yeah, definitely. With the added possibility of merging it in the main menu, just as David mentioned you'll be able to put any of the plugins as a main menu entry. -- Michał Sawicz <[email protected]>
