2012-03-06, 20:16
I've been a heavy WD TV user for about 4 years now. But for my current setup, I build a PC with HDMI that is connected to my projector. I always heard good things about XBMC, so I decided to give it a try.
Let me start by saying that what the team has done with XBMC is marvelous. The quality of the whole thing is exquisite, with the real gem being the scrapping, and subsequent display, of the series/movies/music information. That is stunning.
I consider myself an expert in computers in general, as I have been working in the field for more than 25 years, doing development, support, etc.. I’m not saying this because I want to rave about myself, but because some of the things I found confusing need to be put on perspective.
I'm using EDEN RC2, under Windows 7 64 bits, and I have 4 external hard drives, 2 with series, 1 with movies, 1 with music.
I have added each hard drive as a source to XBMC under its respective category: SERIES1, SERIES2, MOVIES, MUSIC.
As I said, the most important part for me is the information scrapping/organization. Without them, XBMC would be a very pretty face, without soul. So, lets start:
VIDEO MANAGEMENT
1) TITLE SORTING INCLUDING EPISODE NUMBER: on the SERIES LIBRARY, there is a sort option to show by Title. That is the best one for me. But there is a problem. On some series, Desperate Housewife for example, the scrapped episode titles do not start with the episode number, so you end up with all the episodes sorted alphabetically. What would be great is that the Title sort would sort by "episode - title", or create a view like that.
2) WAY TO SHOW/FILTER FOLDERS WITH UNRECOGNIZED EPISODES: on the FILES category, there should be a way of just showing the folders that did not get recognized, or folders that have unrecognized video files inside. Sometimes XBMC would not recognize all files, and is not simple to spot, so to try to fix it.
3) BACKGROUND MANUAL REFRESH: When right clicking on a series folder, and doing a manual refresh, it goes to the foreground, the scanning, and you cannot do anything else. It would be great if that gets done on the background.
4) UPDATE LIBRARY VS SCAN FOR NEW CONTENT: When you right click on a video folder, you have 2 options that look too similar: "Update library" and "Scan for new content". It is not clear by the names what the differences between the 2 are. Actually, when you select update library, the background operation says scanning for new content! It appears that update library would check all the sources, and that scan for new content would just scan the right clicked folder, but I’m still not sure. I think a more descriptive re-wording of these two options is needed.
5) CHANGE CONTENT OPTION: Change content type would be a better name, as currently is not clear what it does.
6) SHOW YEAR ON MOVIES LIBRARY: The movie views should include the year to the right, like when you group by group of movies.
7) NICE TO HAVE: An option to sort by year and an option to sort by movies/series ponints/ranking would be great.
8) ADDING UNRECOGNIZED SERIES TO THE LIBRARY: How do I add a series that was not recognized to the library? I cannot seem to do that. Let’s say series XYZ is not recognized, I want to manually add it to the library, so that that the XYZ name is shown on the library, and when you go inside XYZ on the library, it at least shows the file names.
9)LIST UNRECOGNIZED VIDEO FILES UNDER THE LIBRARY VIEN: I have the Mazinger Z series. It was recognized, but not the episodes, which I do not know why. So now I see an empty folder on the TV SHOWS entry. Ideally, XBMC should show all the unrecognized video files under a recognized series folder. This is related to (8).
10) QWERTY KEYBOARD: When entering information, the on screen keyboard should be qwerty. It is not, and it reminds me of the first Garmin GPS.
MUSIC
While at first I do not anticipate using XBMC to play music, I use fb2k, I wanted to have my library in it anyway. My music is organized as this:
M:\MUSIC\ARTIST\ARTIST - YEAR - ALBUM\#. TRACK
That said:
1) JUMP TO KEY: If looking at the list of folders (under files), if I press K, I want it to go to the first K starting folder. I have more than 300 folders there, so it takes a lot of scrolling otherwise.
2) SORT ALBUMS BY RELEASE DATE: inside an artist, the albums are sorted by title, and not by year. Albums sorted by year, would be nice.
3) PENDING OPERATIONS COUNT WHILE UPDATING LIBRARY: I'm not sure, but it seems like the music scrapper first goes through all the files, and then starts looking for artist data, and then album data sequentially. It would be great then to show the total number of artist songs done/pending. Where it says "Downloading Artist data (50 of 280)", and then "Downloading album information (200 of 631)" or something like that. As it is today, you have no idea on how much work is missing.
4) FILE PATH UNDER SONG INFO: Under song information dialog, it does not shows the file path, just in case you want to check something, like it does on videos.
GENERAL
1) BACK BUTTON BESIDES HOME: The right mouse button is a little confusing cause some times is a context menu, and sometimes is back, and sometimes is both. We already have a home button, why not add a back button that always goes back one level, as in a browser, just besides the home button? That way, the right mouse button can always be a context menu.
2) GO BACK AT CENTER SCREEN: When returning, let’s say from an albums folder to the general artist folders, the last selected artist folder is shown at the bottom of the screen. It would be better if it shows in the center of the screen.
Please, do not take all this as a criticism, but as constructive suggestions.
THANKS for a WONDERFUL program!
EDIT: make it all more clear (I hope).
Let me start by saying that what the team has done with XBMC is marvelous. The quality of the whole thing is exquisite, with the real gem being the scrapping, and subsequent display, of the series/movies/music information. That is stunning.
I consider myself an expert in computers in general, as I have been working in the field for more than 25 years, doing development, support, etc.. I’m not saying this because I want to rave about myself, but because some of the things I found confusing need to be put on perspective.
I'm using EDEN RC2, under Windows 7 64 bits, and I have 4 external hard drives, 2 with series, 1 with movies, 1 with music.
I have added each hard drive as a source to XBMC under its respective category: SERIES1, SERIES2, MOVIES, MUSIC.
As I said, the most important part for me is the information scrapping/organization. Without them, XBMC would be a very pretty face, without soul. So, lets start:
VIDEO MANAGEMENT
1) TITLE SORTING INCLUDING EPISODE NUMBER: on the SERIES LIBRARY, there is a sort option to show by Title. That is the best one for me. But there is a problem. On some series, Desperate Housewife for example, the scrapped episode titles do not start with the episode number, so you end up with all the episodes sorted alphabetically. What would be great is that the Title sort would sort by "episode - title", or create a view like that.
2) WAY TO SHOW/FILTER FOLDERS WITH UNRECOGNIZED EPISODES: on the FILES category, there should be a way of just showing the folders that did not get recognized, or folders that have unrecognized video files inside. Sometimes XBMC would not recognize all files, and is not simple to spot, so to try to fix it.
3) BACKGROUND MANUAL REFRESH: When right clicking on a series folder, and doing a manual refresh, it goes to the foreground, the scanning, and you cannot do anything else. It would be great if that gets done on the background.
4) UPDATE LIBRARY VS SCAN FOR NEW CONTENT: When you right click on a video folder, you have 2 options that look too similar: "Update library" and "Scan for new content". It is not clear by the names what the differences between the 2 are. Actually, when you select update library, the background operation says scanning for new content! It appears that update library would check all the sources, and that scan for new content would just scan the right clicked folder, but I’m still not sure. I think a more descriptive re-wording of these two options is needed.
5) CHANGE CONTENT OPTION: Change content type would be a better name, as currently is not clear what it does.
6) SHOW YEAR ON MOVIES LIBRARY: The movie views should include the year to the right, like when you group by group of movies.
7) NICE TO HAVE: An option to sort by year and an option to sort by movies/series ponints/ranking would be great.
8) ADDING UNRECOGNIZED SERIES TO THE LIBRARY: How do I add a series that was not recognized to the library? I cannot seem to do that. Let’s say series XYZ is not recognized, I want to manually add it to the library, so that that the XYZ name is shown on the library, and when you go inside XYZ on the library, it at least shows the file names.
9)LIST UNRECOGNIZED VIDEO FILES UNDER THE LIBRARY VIEN: I have the Mazinger Z series. It was recognized, but not the episodes, which I do not know why. So now I see an empty folder on the TV SHOWS entry. Ideally, XBMC should show all the unrecognized video files under a recognized series folder. This is related to (8).
10) QWERTY KEYBOARD: When entering information, the on screen keyboard should be qwerty. It is not, and it reminds me of the first Garmin GPS.
MUSIC
While at first I do not anticipate using XBMC to play music, I use fb2k, I wanted to have my library in it anyway. My music is organized as this:
M:\MUSIC\ARTIST\ARTIST - YEAR - ALBUM\#. TRACK
That said:
1) JUMP TO KEY: If looking at the list of folders (under files), if I press K, I want it to go to the first K starting folder. I have more than 300 folders there, so it takes a lot of scrolling otherwise.
2) SORT ALBUMS BY RELEASE DATE: inside an artist, the albums are sorted by title, and not by year. Albums sorted by year, would be nice.
3) PENDING OPERATIONS COUNT WHILE UPDATING LIBRARY: I'm not sure, but it seems like the music scrapper first goes through all the files, and then starts looking for artist data, and then album data sequentially. It would be great then to show the total number of artist songs done/pending. Where it says "Downloading Artist data (50 of 280)", and then "Downloading album information (200 of 631)" or something like that. As it is today, you have no idea on how much work is missing.
4) FILE PATH UNDER SONG INFO: Under song information dialog, it does not shows the file path, just in case you want to check something, like it does on videos.
GENERAL
1) BACK BUTTON BESIDES HOME: The right mouse button is a little confusing cause some times is a context menu, and sometimes is back, and sometimes is both. We already have a home button, why not add a back button that always goes back one level, as in a browser, just besides the home button? That way, the right mouse button can always be a context menu.
2) GO BACK AT CENTER SCREEN: When returning, let’s say from an albums folder to the general artist folders, the last selected artist folder is shown at the bottom of the screen. It would be better if it shows in the center of the screen.
Please, do not take all this as a criticism, but as constructive suggestions.
THANKS for a WONDERFUL program!
EDIT: make it all more clear (I hope).