Night Super-Customization
#1
Question 
Hello all. Before I start I want to say thanks to this awesome community for the amazing Night skin. It is by far my favorite, and I shudder to consider using any of the others. This is my first thread, but I've been playing with and using XBMC for a year or two now.

I'm finally getting things pretty much just the way I want them in my HTPC setup, but there is one hurdle still remaining, and it's the biggest one.

See, I have TONS of media on my home server, and because of that, I would like to set up my main home menu in XBMC a certain way so that it isn't way too overwhelming. I have the following categories/home menu options that I want to include in my setup:

Videos
Streaming
Hulu
Educational Series
Specials
Kids Movies
Movies
Anime
Kids Shows
TV Shows
Standup
Music Videos
Pictures
Settings

Currently, I accomplish this by tagging shows with 'segregation categories' and then mapping those categories to custom home menu items which point to favorites. For example, all of the Kids Shows have a corresponding "Kids Menu' genre tag, and the Kids Shows menu item opens a genre search for "Kids Menu" which I saved to favorites... kapeesh?

I have several issues with this setup. For one, I lose all of the "Recently added" scripts that I love so much. The second issue I have is that this creates a very cluttered home menu.

What I would like to have in the end is a much more organized home menu, but I NEED to retain the rotating fanart for each item that I love so much. After doing some research, I think I have the following options, each with their own pros and cons:

Option 1
Create custom submenus and segregate the menu more. It would be structured like so:

Videos
Streaming
Hulu
Music Videos
TV Shows
Educational Series
Anime
Kids Shows
TV Shows
Movies
Kids Movies
Movies
Specials
Standup
Pictures
Settings

Pros: Structured nicely and simple. The 'recently added' scripts would still function as well. Cons: I lose the ability to set background folders of fanart for the submenu items, so Anime wouldn't show separate backgrounds than Kids Shows. Also, the submenus are mixed in with existing submenus, like 'Genre' and 'Title', etc. So I can deal with that (which I really don't want to do) or edit those submenus out and lose the ability to then sort by genres or titles when I want. (Which I also do not want to do)

Option 2
Create separate profiles for each of the big categories. Selecting, for example, "Movies" would switch you transparently to the 'Movies' xbmc profile, where Kids Movies, Movies, Specials, and Standup would be the home menu options. The structure would be the same as Option 1, with the main categories as profiles.

Pros: Fanart background folders for every item, so I get different rotating backgrounds for Kids Shows than Educational for example. Also, recently added scripts would still work on the main profile home menu. Cons: Complicated. Each of the other profiles would need a 'Back to main' menu option to switch it back to the main profile, and I don't know how or if I could even sync a setup like this to a central mysql database.

SOOOOoooo... end game is that for Option 1, I need to figure out how to set custom fanart folders for submenu items (even if it takes modding some xml or skinning) and I need to know if this will remove my ability to sort by genre, title, etc. OR, for Option 2, I need to know the downside of trying to transparently work with multiple profiles and sync them with mysql....

Any ideas/suggestions/code/skinning tips? Thanks in advance! Cool
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#2
Anyone? Sad
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#3
301 views and no one has any ideas? Huh
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