Kodi Community Forum

Dear theme designers,

sorry for flaming and I know that it's difficult to argue about personal taste. But...

There's a tired design trope in XBMC: Themes that use stock photos of impressive interiour design, showing fancy expensive TV sets / home theatres / movie theatres.

Like the refocus skin,
the transparency skin,
the black glass nova skin
or the neon skin.
But there are more examples.

Yes, the user can change those images, but still: Please make it stop.

Dear theme designers, if your theme contains stock photos like these, consider an alternative.

My living room isn't suddenly more impressive when my TV shows an impressive photo of somebody else's impressive living room. My living room is more impressive when the TV shows an awesome interface.

So it's the theme that should upgrade the TV to a more beautiful device. Stock photos don't help with that.

Feel free to offer these alternatives you speak of.

I see NO reason why it's an issue

Many skins offer solid background colours as opposed to images, and those that do offer images allow you to customise them to your personal taste if the backdrop isn't to your liking. Other than TV inspired backgrounds for liveTV/tv shows, what else is a skinner supposed to provide ? A picture of a dolphin doing a back somersault perhaps ?

I've looked at how much coding is involved in producing a fully working skin, and I have nothing but admiration for the guys that have the ability and the patience to produce something that can make my xbmc experience even better.

If you don't like their work, don't use it. Stick to confluence or another skin with a uniform background. Better yet, produce your own skin with a different theme. But don't bitch about what skinners produce unless you can do better. The skinners have the ability, talent and patience to change the entire interface and user experience. XBMC wouldn't be nearly as flexible as it is without them.

I would assume the reason is those photos are probably not copyrighted or free to use therefore XBMC would not be breaching any copyright issues by using these "Tired" (as you put it) Wallpapers

like you said though people can easily change them so not really and issue is it you don't like the picture then change it

I personally don't care enough i only spend a couple seconds in the main menu when selecting my choice once in TV Shows or Movies the fanart takes over for each Show/Movie that plus well i am just too lazy to go looking for different wallpaper designs

(2014-07-25, 18:23)Jeroen Wrote: [ -> ]Feel free to offer these alternatives you speak of.

Oh. Well...

(2014-07-25, 19:04)black_eagle Wrote: [ -> ]Better yet, produce your own skin with a different theme. But don't bitch about what skinners produce unless you can do better.

Will try and am prepared to eat my words. :-) I didn't want to "bitch", but point out a design trope.

Usually, when I see these interiour design stock photos within an UI, I imagine it on a greasy flat screen TV in a stereotypical messy hacker's dorm room...

I think XBMC has made it to a lot of living rooms, thank you very much .

i am running it in my beautifull living room.