development of htpc functions?

[willo]

What's the plan with htpc functions? Currently I find that DVBViewer Pro is the best tv app at least on Windows platform, for that there are no major things missing. But its htpc front end functions are rather rudimentary. Are there plans to radically improve this area in the near future or am I better of if I try and make DVBViewer to play along with some other front end (probably good ol’ Meedio)?

 

For any front end to be of any use to me, it would have to have at least the following:

1) It has be fast even with large collections of tv recordngs, music etc. To achieve this, the only way is probably to use real database to hold all metadata (no direct reading from the files which is uselessly slow). Furthermore, I have several machines from where the media files are accessed from and separate file server on which media files are stored, so there should be possibility to use one database from several computers and a possbility to refer to files with unc-paths is a must. Ideally I would like the system to connect to db with standard odbc which would allow user the choice of db. Helium Music Manager works that way allowing users choice between Access db (easy), SQL Server (performance) or some other db's such as mySQL.

 

2) Since pretty much everyone has individual needs, I can't see how a fixed grouping could ever work. I mean if the system has fixed libraries for movies, pictures, tv etc without the possibiliy to adjust them, I see no way of achieving satisfactory functionality. My ideal grouping would be something like:

 

- movies

- movie news

- dvd player (disc player)

- dvd library (offline library imported from dvd profiler)

- online movies (recorded movies etc)

 

-tv

- epg

- live tv

- tv series

- recordings (other recordings except for tv series or movies)

 

-music

- music news

- cd player (disc player)

- cd library

- music videos

 

-pictures

 

-utilities

- news (rss)

- web browser (not a must)

- weather

- settings

 

3) IMHO the front end should have separate person (actors/directors/musicians etc) database that could be linked from/to other libraries. So that we could link actor on series page that would jump to actor's page that would list everything on which the chosen actor has appeared. Furthermore, the listing should be active as well (meaning that all the series/movies that are present in my collection) would be linked as well. Dvdprofiler has that linking part covered, however it does not store any other data for actors.

 

4) Managing metadata for tv series is usually crap, at best. So far the best system to manage tv-series I've come across to was Meedio's TVOD-plugin. Unfortunately that relied on grabbing the data from www.tvtome.com that does not exists anymore (it was replaced by www.tv.com). The plugin never got repaired. Instead it got replaced with meetvshows plugin, that is not bad either, but importing speed aside, is not up to TVOD level feature-wise. Basically there should be ability to import metadata such as episode description, guest starts etc from www.tv.com (or other sources if there are better alternatives. Some of the same data can be gotten directly from epg for new recordings but not all.

 

5) Music module should have artist level data as well as release level data. Relying on tags alone is very good for track level (and for release level to some extend) but it falls short when it comes to artists level data. For this reason there has to be proprietary system to store artists data. Helium Music Manager's (www.helium-music-manager.com) Music Information Browser (MIB) is very good in this respect, although it misses track level details screen and its GUI is not build for htpc use in mind.

 

Another sore point when it comes to music is management of Music Videos. This is understandable as common video containers (avi, wmv, mpg) do not include nearly enough metadata fields to hold all the same info as music files. And even if they did (avi actually contains much more metadata than is usually shown, see abcAVI Tag for example, the fields are geared for movies, not for music. Besides, there are no good video taggers that I know of). So probably the best bet would be to:

-import music video files using some king of pattern importer that makes it possible to pull some data (such as artists and title) from the file name

-then link artists to artists library

-it might be nice to even copy over some info from the music file library so that music videos would have info like genre, year etc as well.

 

Obviously, music player need to be able to show plenty of info as well (such as lyrics) and needs to be ably to play all common formats (including lossless formats like ape, flac and alac).

 

6) Libraries should allow several ways to browse your collection (such as organised by title,. by genre etc) and should also include fast search functionality. If real db is used (see point 1.) this part is pretty much trivial, if data is read directly from files this is far more difficult (and pretty much impossible to achieve with acceptable performance).

 

7) I have yet to see htpc app that would have pictures module that would be anywhere close to acceptable. Since images have had standardised metadata systems (exif, iptc, xmp) that have been widely used (by pros that is) for years, I really can’t understand why the heck no htpc app is making use of them. Obviously image module should have search functionality as well.

[hackbart]

Hmm i started an answer right now a couple of times and i'm still not sure what to write. The meta data is stored in an sql based database as well as the other informations, and you can import internet epg information. I remember there is a plugin in the members section for such a thing. Hey you can even restructure your menu system with the menu creator tool which is also available in the members section.

The other stuff you mentioned is resp. can be done with the plugin interface.

 

Christian