[RELEASE] Back Row (Skin)

"Back Row" is all about recapturing the magic of going to the cinema in your own home. The skin has been designed with this aim in mind but has taken on board many good ideas and suggestions from the XBMC community. Over the years it has become a polished theme that can be easily customized to suit your needs. So go grab some popcorn and fool around on the Back Row. Whether you are mostly into music, movies, or tv shows, this is very well balanced to accommodate your needs. It has a lot of skin feature's to further customize things, and also includes "Newest Episodes" and "Newest Movies" windows on the main page to enable quick selections. Set up to work well with a mouse as well.

Home Screen


Alternative Home Screen


A Movie Wrap View


Movie Info


A Movie Cover Wrap View.


A Movie List View

A Movie Fanart Info View


Another Movie List View


A Movie Wall View


Movie Coverflow View


TV Show View (Info animates on to the screen after a few seconds.)


Optional support for TV show posters instead of banners

Even more screen shots!!!

A TV Show Episode's View


TV Shows -List View


Next Aired TV Guide


Live TV
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Music - Wall View


Video Info OSD



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DOWNLOAD LINK (Frodo Version)

Frodo SVN Checkout:

Frodo Change Log

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DOWNLOAD LINK (Eden Version)

Eden SVN Checkout:

Eden Change Log

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DOWNLOAD LINK (Dharma Version)

Dharma SVN Checkout:

Dharma Change Log

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STUDIO IMAGES -Copy extracted studios folder to the images folder to display studio icons. (IE- skin.Back-Row\images\studios\[all unzipped images here])

RECORD LABEL IMAGES -Copy extracted record labels folder to the images folder to display record label icons. (IE- skin.Back-Row\images\record labels\[all unzipped images here])

GAME STUDIOS IMAGES -Copy extracted game studios folder to the images folder to display game studio icons. (IE- skin.Back-Row\images\game studios\[all unzipped images here])

CINEMA WALLPAPERS PACK

Yea, you guys got a pretty solid skin...no clue why this was hidden/under the radar for so long, at least concerning these forums.

Well, we have been going pretty strong in the xbox-scene skin forums, which most all of us stem from until the xbmc forums came around. And are pretty known amongst them. But i figured since over time the xbmc official forums were around, it only made sense to also get a proper thread here as well. I honestly view the thread's here more often then i view the xbox-scene thread's. (The only ones i actually even viewed there were the XBMC threads anyway.) But thought since it was such a great theme, and so many XBMC users were pretty familiar and aware of "Front Row", it was only deserving to have a gallery page and forum thread on the official xbmc forums.

If you google search, you will even find an official wiki page mentioning and showing images of Front Row Theme. I just thought, with all the ones out there, a lot in my opinion not even coming close to the beauty (MY opinion 0nly.) to the other ones out there already having an official thread on the XBMC site, and yet have been around longer then quite a number of them, it only made sense to give it the proper respect it deserved. Sharpe is a friend of mine, and has worked so hard at tailoring it to be what the community has wanted in it, and he's complied in almost every way.

He's always been pretty amazing with adding almost every good idea in a theme. Making it be the best of what we all want a theme to be and have.

I had no idea this skin existed....

It's VERY good.... not perfect, but highly stable and with a few tweaks might be the skin for me!

I will play with the skin a little more before offering any suggestions.... but so far, it's quick, stable and easy to use....

Excellent!

ok... Issues I've found:

Fanart Wrap view for Movies (and TV Shows)
The 'current' selected Movie (or TV show) is not central... it's one position too far to the left (i.e. 3rd from the left). I understand it's to make the 'info' transition nice and easy (and just slots into the right hand side nicely... but it looks odd. It might be nicer to slide the current movie to the left as the info appears, and slide back to the right (middle) afterwards?

Ken Burns effect on background
It's a little jerky, but acceptable... probably a PC performance issue more than the skin... but Aeon65 skin seems smoother (might be placebo effect)

Fanart Wrap view for Music
Doesn't seem to be any ability to 'auto' show info (even if it's set in the settings)... waited 5, and 30 seconds... saw nothing.
A manual 'up' option would be nice to bring up the info for an artist or album

Album Fanart
There doesn't appear to be support for album fanart (fanart stored in the Album folder... which is now natively supported by XBMC)

Fanart General
It would be nice to have a more general support for fanart in all views.... either on, or off. There are some great views that don't support fanart... if they did, it would be great.

Track List views
The views already provided are 'ok'... but for track listings... it's very hard to justify Jukebox, Wall, Fanart Wrap etc etc... which all result in the same album cover image being repeated multiple times on screen. As beautiful as those views are, I feel they are a bad choice for track lists, and therefore, something like Aeon65's lowlist.... (a less obtrusive version of list) might be nicer. A sexy sleek 'list' is almost certainly the better option for track lists.

Music Videos (Videos) in Home screen
There doesn't seem to be an option to disable this menu item in the Home screen, yet there is such an option for other for other items. (It should also be noted that TV and Movies share the same visibility option, and it could be argued they should each have their own option).

Weather
No option for conditional weather backgrounds (that I can see)... this is common now in most skins. There IS an option to support multiple images for weather, but doesn't seem to be conditional upon the actual weather.

Home Screen Menu Positioning
I would argue that a horizontal menu running through the MIDDLE of the screen is likely to wreck 80% of background images, and would be better placed towards the bottom of the screen. Yes, this IS a personal preference, but also based on the rule of thirds in photography, where most of the important image data lies in the top 2/3's of an image. (I know there are many exceptions, but a menu right through the very middle is a generally a bad choice)

Home Screen filmstrip
just an idea, but it MIGHT benefit from a 'zoomed' focus... i.e. the currently selected frame being zoomed/enlarged.
Happy as it is... just a thought

DVD Case Wrap
Very sexy view indeed.... fanart would be welcomed... PLUS, possibly use cdart.png in the movie folder to display the ACTUAL CD art (otherwise use the existing image as fallback)... Spinning might be nice too... or possibly overkill?... and well, this is a VERY outlandish thought.... after a short period of time showing the case open view.... animate yet again to mimic a rear cover (zooming to show the movie info)?
If you DID support fanart in this view... similar issue as the previous item regarding placing the images in the middle of the screen rather than towards the bottom.


Ok that's all for now...

REALLY loving this skin. It's slick... as slick as some of the newer skins coming out... a few more tweaks and I think a LOT of fanart fans will jump on this skin (since the newer skins are setting a trend of playing down the fanart)

Very nice skin.
Simple , clean .... I like it a lot.

I pretty much agree with AnalogKid`s comments. Especially the addition of fanart in all views would be great

Hi guys - some really constructive suggestions from AnalogKid there - great feedback.

I'll take them on board as I continue to develop the skin and I'll keep you posted when I do.

Cheers

Hey!! Nice to see this skin again. Thanks for keeping it up to date Sharpe and djdafreund
What happen to the giant icon for the home screen ex.Movies,Tv.Music.

Has anybody tried this on the xbox? Is it still being built for the xbox or HTPCs? Using the Smaller film strip setup, I get very so slow and choppy movement, and I alot of times I have to reboot my xbox just from going it and out of menus.
I would love to see a lowered textures pack
Thanks again