[Mudislander]

Convergence – A Vertical Skin for Eden based on Confluence

Convergence is based on the default XBMC skin Confluence incorporating many of the now popular tweaks, addons and scripts all based on a highly customizable vertical Home menu with a more transparent look to enable a better view of background fanart.

The repo installer can be found Here, which needs to be downloaded and loaded onto XBMC via the menu option to install addon from zip file.

Convergence offers support for the following -

• Add Playlists,Favourites,Plugins or Scripts to Home menu.
  
• Ability Change Default Actions of Home screen buttons.
  
• Cinema Experienceafter installation can be run straight from the Home Screen.
  
• Weather info supplied by Weather Plus Addon and is installed automatically
  
• Artwork Downloader is automatically installed and used for extra fanart.
  
• GlobalSearch script is also auto installed and can be run from Home Screen.
  
• Artist Slideshow slideshow is utilized by the skin to supply background images in music visualization.
  
• Watchlist is run by the Home screen widget “Suggested Items”.
  
• TvTunes TvTunes is another script installed and run by the skin.
  
• Support for MovieSetsScript has been built into the skin, but needs a manual installation.
  
• Weather Fanart PDA Style backgrounds supported by Home Screen weather widget.
  
• After instalation by user Random and Latest Items from playList will show a home screen widget with Recently added or random media lists
  
• ATM Work in progress Artist Metadata - Limited [WiP], will show detailed info on actors when requested
  
• Advanced Launcher used from Home screen for games etc
  
• Streaming menu option will now use LiveStreams if installed.
  

[stoli]

Thanks for this! I have (ahem) stolen the qwerty keyboard. Ive been wanting to set that up, but didn't want to take the time with all of the required updates.

Regards,

[Mudislander]

You're welcome. I think it's much more comforatble to use when the keys are where I expect them to be.

[Mudislander]

Update

Added a few more mods & a couple of bug fixes.

I've included support for Cinema Experience, but not tested as is currently marked as not working in my addon browser.

I did include support for the weather.com+ script, but had a few probs as I got a marked slowdown on my machine, so it is temporarily disabled - will be back asap

[giftie]

Update

Added a few more mods & a couple of bug fixes.

I've included support for Cinema Experience, but not tested as is currently marked as not working in my addon browser.

I did include support for the weather.com+ script, but had a few probs as I got a marked slowdown on my machine, so it is temporarily disabled - will be back asap

You must be using a Nightly version of XBMC. The script should still work(It does on my system)

Changing the following line in the script's addon.xml:

Code:

<import addon="xbmc.python" version="1.0"/>

to

Code:

<import addon="xbmc.python" version="2.0"/>

should fix the problem.

[giftie]

Found an error in the code to trigger Cinema Experience, you have the script being called twice.

Code:

                    <control type="button" id="88">
                        <description>Play HTE</description>
                        <include>ButtonInfoDialogsCommonValues</include>
                        <label>Cinema</label>
                        <onclick>PreviousMenu</onclick>
                        <onclick>RunScript(script.cinema.experience)</onclick>
                        <onclick>XBMC.RunScript(script.cinema.experience)</onclick>
                        <visible>Container.Content(Movies) + System.HasAddon(script.cinema.experience)</visible>
                    </control>

[Mudislander]

Thanks, Fixed silly error - had been looking at the different ways people had implemented the script & got careless. My Laptop is running Nightly version PRE-11.0 Git:20110419-d951ea1 Windows & my main Linux PVR machine is running off the lars-opdenkamp-xbmc-pvr-lucid and yavdr ppa's. Cinema Experience is running on both machines, once the repo was refreshed there was no problems with the updated script.cinema.experience.

[Mudislander]

In the updated script.tvtunes-0.8.1, the scripts name has changed from script.TvTunes. This unfortunately has broken the command to call the script. I've changed the command but have not released an update as I'm off work tommorrow & plan to work on the skin. If anyone is desperate to get tvtunes working a.s.a.p. let me know & I'll provide a link for the fix.

[Mudislander]

Added in some more Mods over the weekend

• Confluence Themes by djtoll
  
• KBurns Animation to Backgrounds
  
• Media Type Cases eg: mkv,divx etc
  

Other fixes include tvtunes case change, weather+ addon , more content panels have increased transparency, weather widget can now be sticky, small changes to sysinfo to hide temps or hd capacity if pc does not support, changed script.favourites from required to suggested (Needed for Fav on Home Menu)

If anyone is willing to help with language translations please let me know.

[Mudislander]

Added Genre Thumbs - at the moment there is a pretty basic amount of thumbs, but can be changed by the user. The images are located in the following directories

Windows C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\addons\skin.convergence\media\genre

Linux /home/username/.xbmc/addons/skin.convergence/media/genre

The name of the image must match the genre to show - e.g. Action.png

Any genre showing up as unknown will be missing it's matching image. A zip of the images I used can be downloaded from Here

As this skin is now touching the 100 meg mark a decent internet connection is required. (May have to think about a separate download for all the artwork soon?)

I would also suggest to switch back to Confluence while updating as basically xbmc has to delete the skin and reinstall it. On my windows machine there is a definite gain in speed if the skin is not in use.

[fmronan]

conve gence it's Influence for xbmc 11?

[Mudislander]

conve gence it's Influence for xbmc 11?

Convergence is aimed at xbmc 11 and is a skin based primarily on Confluence with whatever mods take my fancy. I however did first see the transparent panels on Influence as well as the script to incorporate various items on the home screen. The difference between the two will get further apart as this skin evolves and I’m sure Influence has its own path to follow.

[venealis]

liking this quite a bit. is it possible to implement extrafanart into the visualization section?

[Mudislander]

Thanks. Yeah I like that idea. Right now I’m getting more video library views done but will start on your idea as well. Would just have to check that it doesn’t slow down the skin too much crawling through folders looking for extrafanart.

[Mudislander]

Added Support for MusicViz Extrafanart - Request by venealis.
YouTube added to Home menu by default, User can hide if required.
Skin now supports UK Ratings and Studio Logos, Watched overlay can now be disabled.
Added three new movie views - Wallstream, Halfwall and Alt Poster View. These walls still require a bit of tweaking but are working on my test machine. Once my main box with a decent size library upgrades the small niggles can be found.
My previous problems with unmet dependencies seem to be over so script.favourites-1.0.6 is back on the import list when the skin installs along with script.tvtunes-0.9.0

Unfortunately if users have added their own genre fanart it will be wiped out by the upgrade, so please make sure you have backup copies.