bledsoe:

Just to be clear, I mean choosing the random function after selecting a show, and let it choose from all available episodes from all available seasons of this show.  I'm not meaning something that would pick a random episodes from all available shows - I would like it constrained to only episodes from an already chosen show.

How about a "random all" or "random show from this series"? Some days I can't decide what to watch-and having the option for it to choose something from any series would be useful (like shuffle on a MP3 player).

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Antec FusionV2 (Black)
Asus N4L-VM DH board (T7500 Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, Vista Ultimate)
ATI HD 2650
Hauppage HVR-1600
HDHomeRun
Sony XL1B2

Any additional random functions would be cool, but I just wanted to make sure that my request was for a random episode from an already chosen show.  I can't see myself ever using a "random all" function, but some other people might.

ahelseth:

Just trying to get the installer working now and I'll email download links to those who asked

Gonna play around with WiX a bit longer to see if I can get it going, otherwise I'll just post it as is for the time being and let you sort your own SQL database.

I'd like to have a link to the apps download when you've completed it.

Jazzgreats@comcast.net

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System Specs:
Pentium 4 Processor 3.06GHz
2 GB RAM
GForce 8500 GT 512Mb
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer
40 inch Zenith DVI
Vista System Rating 4.5

Hi ahelseth, this looks like a great plugin, but looks ever similar to "More TV" or the old "Saved TV" app,  is it the same ?

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Richard Miller Media Center MVP 2006

Not the same, but works (sort of) on the same premise and "born" here due to [Saved|More] TV not being fast nor pretty enough for my liking. Some of this was obviously due to the fact MCE2k5 would only let you create hosted html applications (which is also why I do not use MyMovies).

Shortly after I made my first post on the subject it looked as thought Andy was going to release a MCML/MCPL application to do the same sort of thing, so I waited, then I waited some more but ... nothing.

There was also talk about BigScreenTV (from mobilewares), which I was real excited about. Unfortunately he decided to [drop|ice] the project due to legal questions over the metadata.

So I finally gave up, sat down with the Media Center SDK and started having as much fun as having some root canal treatment at the dentists.

Just a week or two after I started looking into this properly Andy C. did release a beta of More TV for Vista, and whilst it works, it's still rather slow for my liking (seems the cache doesn't work?) so I decided to push on with my own code anyway.

Which brings us pretty much up to date I've now got a releasable betabuild which does what (me, myself and) I expect from an application like this. Just sorting out installer troubles now and I'll hold a closed beta to iron out (hopefully) most of the bugs before doing a general release.

Also, I guess Saved TV, More TV and BigScreenTV was more so aimed at the "I wan't to organize my recorded tv" crowd, whereas this will initially be geared towards the "I taped it of the Internet" kinda people.

Finally, a little update on release of this. I had hoped to get it out tonight, but as I've never looked at WiX until a few hours ago that's unfortunately not happening. I'll be away for a couple days now so I'm guessing I won't get emails out to the testers until Wednesday (or Thursday at the latest) CET.

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don't disappear on us now ;)

Could you add a strip into the main start menu instead of in the tv and movies section? My Movies did this and it makes it alot easier when you are using several plugins than having to go to the program library each time.

I havn't used MyMovies much in Vista, but I have never seen it add a entirely new strip to the start menu.  I've only seen it add a link within the TV+Movies strip.  Correct me if I'm wrong please.

bledsoe:

I...  Correct me if I'm wrong please.

Consider this a correction:-)

There are a few plugs which create a new strip. In fact, I was one of the initial whiners about My Movies not being on a separate strip (had already set up My DVDs by the time My Movies implemented a new strip, so stuck with it....)

MS seems aware of the Main Menu mess and apparently looking into providing customisation options (see http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/202277.aspx)

If we can customise the Main Menu, all of these issues will go away.

I totally agree!  One of my biggest complaints about VMC is all of the things in the main menu I want to delete.  This is one of the main reasons I think there are not more adopters of media center, as IMO there are several duplicates listed in the menu, as well as more than one way to get to the same content - example: the online content.  Cleaning this clutter would be awesome!

They added it in the latest release 2.31 Pre Release 4

byrnsey88:

They added it in the latest release 2.31 Pre Release 4

I stand corrected.  I havn't updated since 2.3 final.  I've actually switched & started using the updated more TV app for Vista as of now.

Any progress on this?  If you're stuck on something, please post any questions and I'm sure that we can help you out.  I know I'm not the only one who is anxious to start using this plugin.  Thanks!

Hi guys, quick update on this.

Ended up being away a little longer then planned, but back in the thick of it now. I sorted out the installer issues which were holding me back last week (I ended up doing a separate bootstrap to check for and if needed install the .net framework, sql express and windows installer 3.1 - not a final solution, but it works for now).

I've currently got some performance issues (Finally added the check for new episodes on startup code) which means it now takes around a second and a half to go from the season selection screen to the actual episode listing. This is obviously not what I've advocated all along so this has to go. I'm looking into rewriting the whole add/check show/episode code to run as a background service (or better a background app in VMC), but haven't made a move on this yet.

Anyhow, I'll release what I have at the moment for you guys to play around with. There are a few known issues, namely;

• Will only match S01E01 or 1x01 filenames at the moment - meaning 101 will not be found.
• Adding shows (well, actually adding the episodes) takes quite some time at the moment. This is due to the code not being optimized, but also because my backend datastore seems to suffer from some thruput issues at the moment.
• Moving from Season -> Episode screens currently takes a couple seconds (on a 22-24 episode season) as it iterates through all the files to check if there are new ones.
• Season images for series where no images exist will currently only provide a blank "line" rather than a blank image. This is due to me losing some code yesterday (was CTRL+X'ing the code to move into a separate method, hit F6 to recompile and as I hit CTRL+V to paste it into the new method the laptop crashed on me). If anyone knows of issues with Dell Inspiron's suddenly powering-off (seems to only happen when I hit CTRL with some "force") please let me know.
• Show banners for shows where no banner is available currently shows up blank. Have a method that will create image on the fly, but it's not implemented yet.
• Deleting a Show from the database will currently leave the season and episode information in place. Not a major problem, but it means the database can grow rather large if you add/delete/add a show several times.
• If the backend datastore is unavailable it will pop up a dialogbox telling you what went wrong, unfortunately the program will still crash and return you to the VMC main interface.
• If halfway throughout the add show process something fails it will not rollback the changes to the database, leaving you with no means to re-add the show or episodes. However, once you browse to the season interface for the specific show it will start adding the episodes. At this point it'll seem like the app has crashed, but check your network throughput and you should be able to see it is still working on things.

I'll welcome any sort of feedback, but I would be very much appreciative of layout UI issues from peeps running on 4:3 screens (if there still are any) as I've only got 16:9|10 myself.

I'll package up the install and email links later today. Those of you who applied to be testers but have not provided me with an email address - now's the time to do so :)

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Oh yeah. Menu is added as a separate strip allowing you to go to main menu, search, settings etc.

This works on 32bit editions only at the moment. Will add 64bit further down the road, just havent looked into the WIX code to do this yet.

btw: myMovies still haven't moved to a MCML interface have they? (must go check :p)

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