2005-09-28, 01:40
ever since the video osd was re-designed with the latest settings screen, a few things have been bugging me.
the biggest one is the selection of the audio stream. back in the day, this was a listbox-style selection where you could see all of the available languages and select precisely the one you wanted by scrolling up and down and then selecting once.
now all you get is an up/down arrow, requiring you to scroll through all of the possibilities (which are different for every movie, so you never even know how many choices you will have). the biggest problem with this is that (at least on my 100mbit network) there is a very significant delay, as the movie apparently has to be reloaded to pick up the new audio stream - it usually pauses for at least 10 seconds. with anything that has more than 3 tracks, this is very annoying. i usually end up scrolling through each option a couple of times, just to get a clear idea of what all of the available options are, and then go back to the one i want - so that's a good couple of minutes wasted just preparing to watch a movie.
the other gripe that comes to mind about the osd is that: this screen seems to be about 60% larger now, because of the way it was redesigned. while some parts of it may have a cleaner-looking layout, it is definitely not good that it now covers almost the entire video - previously it only covered a corner of the video, maintaining the look-and-feel of still essentially being in video-playing mode. now, it almost feels like you have gone somewhere else - in most cases the video is not really visible behind the osd now, even though there is transparency there - the window is just too big and too busy.
i'll post other concerns when they come to mind.
i would be happy to help work out the fixes for these myself, but i know that the guys who work on the skins are very protective of their (generally outstanding) work - so i thought it better to raise this in the forum, see what other people think, and get the skin owners involved.
the biggest one is the selection of the audio stream. back in the day, this was a listbox-style selection where you could see all of the available languages and select precisely the one you wanted by scrolling up and down and then selecting once.
now all you get is an up/down arrow, requiring you to scroll through all of the possibilities (which are different for every movie, so you never even know how many choices you will have). the biggest problem with this is that (at least on my 100mbit network) there is a very significant delay, as the movie apparently has to be reloaded to pick up the new audio stream - it usually pauses for at least 10 seconds. with anything that has more than 3 tracks, this is very annoying. i usually end up scrolling through each option a couple of times, just to get a clear idea of what all of the available options are, and then go back to the one i want - so that's a good couple of minutes wasted just preparing to watch a movie.
the other gripe that comes to mind about the osd is that: this screen seems to be about 60% larger now, because of the way it was redesigned. while some parts of it may have a cleaner-looking layout, it is definitely not good that it now covers almost the entire video - previously it only covered a corner of the video, maintaining the look-and-feel of still essentially being in video-playing mode. now, it almost feels like you have gone somewhere else - in most cases the video is not really visible behind the osd now, even though there is transparency there - the window is just too big and too busy.
i'll post other concerns when they come to mind.
i would be happy to help work out the fixes for these myself, but i know that the guys who work on the skins are very protective of their (generally outstanding) work - so i thought it better to raise this in the forum, see what other people think, and get the skin owners involved.
