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+---- Thread: User experiences so far with the dx builds of xbmc - share them here.. (/showthread.php?tid=57681)
- dj_gerbil - 2009-10-31
Ok, here's something I noticed the other day. My Tv won't allow me to adjust the picture properly so the edges disappear off the screen. So I've used the calibration settings in XBMC to get the UI to fit the screen. Now it appears that videos play correctly however, here's the weird part, Milkdrop seems to be working to the desktop settings, i.e. slightly to big for the screen.
- azido - 2009-10-31
jmarshall Wrote:Remember: There is only a very small minority of users that come to these forums. Of those users, only a small minority actually want or need any of the features available via advancedsettings.
Cheers,
Jonathan
in general, most of the time i'm with you, but not here.
there are a lot of options in as.xml even a novice user would understand and find useful. for example the hideallitems settings for video and audio. furthermore the new standard of keeping windowed mode settings from guisettings.xml makes a lot of users never imagine they could fix the windowed mode to a wanted resolution size now, and for that either stick with the little window that defaults or with a resized one by hand that messes up the aspect ratio.
given that there are not many users read the forum as you said, how many users in your opinion then read the online manual? how many of them don't know xbmc is very flexible with it's options, and could serve almost all of their needs, but as they never see this flexibility they drop usage again?
as i said, i see your point in keeping xbmc as easy as possible - but it should ALSO be easy to see it's full potential - don't you agree?
i don't think the main target should be to keep users from settings they don't understand - it should be easy to gather informations and knowlegde of/about xbmc's possible features and what comes with them instead. and in that case the policy "what the user doesn't see, he can't mess up" is bad.
of course, that's just my opinion. i would call myself being an advanced user in most cases, but these days i have more trouble to get xbmc working the way it should for me than before. friends of mine/ users of our mod keep asking "how did you do this how did you do that" and have to deal with as.xml which is more complicated than trying a setting in the gui.
one other thing i don't understand is that you also go the other way around - talking about the <navigatevirtualkeyboard> setting that was in as.xml. now it is removed, and settings has a "remote sends keyboard presses" option now. but this doesn't work like the as.xml setting did before. if i enable it, i cannot type in any letters with my standard keyboard any longer (for example when adding a source and giving it a name), and as i did not set my number keys to send letters, i'm stuck. if i disable it, i can type in with my standard keyboard again, but i cannot navigate in the virtual keyboard with my remote. so either setting is missing a feature now and i need to switch based on what i want every time. the setting in as.xml was perfect; it enabled both, navigating with the remote and typing letters with my standard keyboard.
don't misunderstand me, this is no ranting. it's just like i feel xbmc's new policies are going in a direction that isn't the best choice to keep users satisfied with it.
- ashlar - 2009-10-31
Azido, your last message got me really worried. Still standing at 21930 I wonder when upgrading will be safe...
jmarshall, is there a unified "place" where one can see all the changes you are bringing to the settings? Excluding trac which I think you'll agree it's not so easy for this specific purpose.
- azido - 2009-10-31
ashlar Wrote:Azido, your last message got me really worried. Still standing at 21930 I wonder when upgrading will be safe...
sorry to hear that. i don't wanna worry ppl.. just want to tell jonathan how i feel about all that changes from a user's point of view.
- RDHoworth - 2009-10-31
I don't often post, but I can say, from a long time users POV, that I fully agree with the comments from azido. XBMC should never be a tools for novices only. An 'expert' or 'advanced' mode would be much better.
Having said that, XBMC is still a great environement, and thanks for all the work.
Regards, Richard
- jmarshall - 2009-10-31
Please make it easy on us if you have a problem with any changes that we make by posting a new thread with a _short_ summary of the specific problem. One problem per post makes it easier for me personally to reply.
An example would be the "remote as keyboard" thing. I may be able to make improvements to it if I know exactly what the problem is.
Regarding the rest of the settings stuff - we've pretty much finished the removal phase, and are now moving on to the rearrangement phase. Once we have that locked down, I'll do a quick scan of the advanced ones for inclusion in the UI. You may be able to speed this up by posting suggestions for this, but please do it somewhere other than in this thread.
Note that some of the settings were moved to advanced not necessarily because they were not wanted in the UI, rather because they were confusing. The software upsampling ones are an example of this. Once they're de-confused, they may make a comeback, but for now they will stay out of the UI. We're preparing a stable release, and part of that is ensuring that the settings make sense.
Cheers,
Jonathan
- patkhoo - 2009-11-01
jmarshall Wrote:The only upscaling options that have gone are the "software upscaling" ones, which the vast majority of people don't understand ("High quality - it MUST be what I want... WTF does everything go so slow now") and more importantly don't need.
We'd welcome a UI built up around that file, but I see very little point for it existing within XBMC itself, for a very simple reason: If it's there, people WILL muck around with them, and then complain when stuff stops working. Given that it's not there, people generally DON'T bother with it, and thus things keep working nicely.
Remember: There is only a very small minority of users that come to these forums. Of those users, only a small minority actually want or need any of the features available via advancedsettings.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Jonathan, I totally understand you! In my company software, we pride ourselves on developing software that is way, way, way easier to use than other similar products on the market. Our "Settings" is only one page, and asks users only four things. In order to keep it that simple, we need to be able to perform advanced tweaks to the software in certain cases - change of internal timing loops for performance, some networking parameters for special cases etc. So we had to move some of these rare cases to an "Options" page (which by the way only has 5 more questions anyway). But by golly you wouldn't believe the number of emails and support and ding-dong back and forth over all sorts of questions.
One example is: we have the option to change the compression rate for Zlib. Now, you know Zlib allows compression rates from 0 to 9, 6 being the default. Obviously, giving users a drop down box from 0 to 9 will be far too complex. So we chose "Low", "Normal" and "High" with corresponding values. And still, we get questions like "Can you explain how much compression is high/normal/low - and which should I use"?
The point is that while I too agree with Azido that advanced users (like myself) would like an easy way to change settings as opposed to editing an XML file (and risking typos, wrong values etc) but I do know from personal experience that software sometimes must cater to the lowest-common-denominator users - meaning the simplest, least confusing, UI experience possible. 90+% of all support issues can be resolved if the UI is super simple with like 5 questions and only 3 possible settings needed to work for 99% of users.
For the remaining 5-10% of advanced cases, then they can explore the advanced settings with appropriate disclaimers. And forum support.
Can I suggest a stand-alone separate .EXE/.DMG/.bin/whatever that allows advanced users an easy way to configure advancedsettings.xml (and maybe parts of gui.xml). Such a "thing" will be executed independently from XBMC itself and maybe even as a separate download. I for one, would be willing to help out in such an effort if I can. What do the rest of you think?
- Dullie - 2009-11-01
@jmarshall
I disagree.. I think anyone choosing to use an HTPC and XBMC or any other media center software is ready for an intellectual challenge at any given time.. Novice users will just slap a disc on a standalone DVD/Blu Player and free themselves from the hassle of setup and endless options and trials and errors.. Especially when you count in the OS tweaks, driver installation, hacking and cracking other platforms, scanning media, choosing Fanart, and so forth..
What I am trying to say that most XBMC users are already familiar with the insides and outs of Media Technology and they don't want it easy.. They want the best software with endless capabilities, and pretty a GUI.. So give us the options. Give us an intellectual challenge.. Without XML editing please
- jmarshall - 2009-11-01
I'm glad you all disagree with me, as if you didn't, I'd be concerned that the wrong type of users were hanging out in the forums
Yes, we'd LOVE someone to do up an editor for advancedsettings.xml. We're also willing to put in effort to make it easier for this to happen, though that may take a little bit of time to get sorted (it'll help us out as well - less code to maintain long-term if we do it correctly.)
Cheers,
Jonathan
- azido - 2009-11-01
jmarshall Wrote:I'm glad you all disagree with me, as if you didn't, I'd be concerned that the wrong type of users were hanging out in the forums
haha, good one
i just felt sorry to start this kind of discussion, but as i see, you take it easy.
- azido - 2009-11-01
jmarshall Wrote:An example would be the "remote as keyboard" thing. I may be able to make improvements to it if I know exactly what the problem is.
added a new thread here. it might not be as short as you would like it, but i tried to describe the issue as good as i can.
- jmarshall - 2009-11-01
Autoframe rate switching supported on DirectX build now:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=428563
Please test and let me know if it works or not.
- Jackie78 - 2009-11-01
Visualization with Project M and probably others (no others tested yet) is totally broken, can you confirm that? Are there DX visualizations available? As long as they don't work, DX is no alternative for me.
When I try to switch to music visualizations, I get a stuck screen, music still playing but no way to go back, program needs to be terminated
The same even happnes when you try to return to your home screen, because visualizations are played there too
- paco - 2009-11-01
Jackie78 Wrote:Visualization with Project M and probably others (no others tested yet) is totally broken, can you confirm that? Are there DX visualizations available? As long as they don't work, DX is no alternative for me.
When I try to switch to music visualizations, I get a stuck screen, music still playing but no way to go back, program needs to be terminated
You have to use a DX visualization. ProjectM is OpenGL only. Milkdrop is the DX equivalent.
- Jackie78 - 2009-11-01
paco Wrote:You have to use a DX visualization. ProjectM is OpenGL only. Milkdrop is the DX equivalent.
Thanks, I saw that Milkdrop is included, which is a great visualizatzion. However, in the XBMC version there is only on theme played all the time. How do I get all the different visual-themes available in Milkdrop?
From a technical point, it would be better to disable the OGL Visus in DX-Builds instead of just make XBMC hang......