[Ned Scott]

Since the main logo animation thread is more about coming up with cool ideas and animations, this thread is just for causal discussion on possible technical and user-experience topics related to having a startup animation.

[Ned Scott]

My point was that I suspect you want it off as your a power user and just want to go into the program as fast as possible. And that I think that the majority of the users would welcome an animation on the cost of it taking a few more seconds to load (as they wouldn't' mind spending those seconds as they only do it once a day at most). As a power user you may start and stop the application far more often.
So for the average user it make sense to have it on by default, but allow power users, as yourself and me, to turn it off when we don't' want it.

On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that power and causal user concerns might not differ that much in this area.

I think the casual user doesn't want to wait any longer than needed to start any app. I think about what happened with iOS 7/8 where Apple added more animations for opening things and they later had to tone it way back, because all that kind of stuff adds up. It made things feel slow, and people thought there was actually something wrong with their hardware (insert apple joke here). An extra couple of seconds might not seem like a big deal on an i3 HTPC, but we have a lot of devices that already take a while to start up. IMO, the power users are more likely to leave their dedicated HTPCs on all the time or only sleep them without quitting Kodi.

For example, this might be a concern for all users on Android. Android boxes will quit Kodi when it is in the background and needs memory (which is often), and that is a big impact on people who switch between Kodi and Netflix or other video apps (which, IMO, is the main reason to use Android over other options that are often just as inexpensive).

I doubt it will actually be an issue for whatever we end up doing, and I have faith that there will be a fair balance between a nice animation and delay, etc, but it's food for thought. (Or just me ranting ;) )

[h.udo]

Disclaimer: power user here.

I never ever power down Kodi clients (4 RPis and one very old Asrock Ion 330 connected to my server) unless I'm updating, trying to implement something new or simply trying to annoy my wife. If we get to a point where an animation is chosen and implemented, I probably wouldn't see it more than once a month.

That being said, I would like to see some degree of user control. Animation on/off should suffice. At least for me.
If not, I can live with a reasonably delay powering up Kodi.

[natethomas]

Disclaimer: power user here.

I never ever power down Kodi clients (4 RPis and one very old Asrock Ion 330 connected to my server) unless I'm updating, trying to implement something new or simply trying to annoy my wife. I

Hah, I'm naturally the resident technician of my family. Whenever I go over to fix or update my mom's installation of Kodi, she's always terrified that I'm going to reboot it and it's going to come back in a way that is entirely alien and new to her. No amount of assurance on my part can ever reassure her enough.

[h.udo]

LOL, same here! My wife panics every time she sees me pulling cables and grabbing RPis.

But seeing my brother with the same face (he's fairly tech-savvy), I can't blame her.

[popcornmix]

I think any animation that slows things down needs to be optional. While many users run kodi 24/7 and only reboot once a month, there will be users who launch kodi from the desktop whenever they want to play a video and quit it afterwards. There are users who feel it's environmentally wrong to have an appliance powered on when not actively being used and are constantly powering off. The few unwanted seconds of delay will begin to grate when happening every day.

Personally I prefer a boot animation that is launched before kodi starts while the distribution (e.g. OpenELEC) is starting up.
For example on the Pi it may take 15-20 seconds to boot, but only the last few seconds are when kodi has launched.
By running an external program that plays the animation (comparable with the current OpenELEC splash screen which occurs as early on during boot as possible),
you can display a long (e.g. 10 second) animation without slowing down boot (a proof of concept video was shown in the other thread).

Of course the boot animation should also be optional.

I could imagine a point in the future where kodi has a short intro animation that defaults to enabled, but is easily disabled.
A distribution like OpenELEC may choose to disable the intro animation and add a longer boot animation.
The user may get bored with the boot animation and then disable it.
Which all seems fine to me. Users should be able to set up kodi just how they want.

[natethomas]

Generally agree with popcornmix. As an additional option, it might be an idea for Kodi to play the animation on first run or update, and then default off afterwards, with the option of defaulting on with every boot in the settings. At the risk of making people oppose this way of doing it, the idea is based on the OSX startup animation, which only happens the first time you run OSX.

[Calum]

Yup, as has been said it's all about options. Personally I wouldn't mind something in the three to four second range, any longer though and I'd be looking for the code to remove it.

BTW, I'm certainly not a power user. I just use Kodi to fill the gaps left by Netflix and Hulu and to launch android apps Instead of the fire tv menu.

[tential]

Don't think it's really necessary.

Most users it seems don't' restart their boxes/rarely often and those that do seem to be power users.

Doesn't seem all that useful, but as long as their is an option to turn off I don't care.

[Ned Scott]

To take this in a slightly different direction, I think it would be great to also be able to modify the boot animation just like how we can modify the splash screen image. Have an override file in /kodi/media/ or something.

Would something like that be doable or would it complicate things too much, code-wise?

[Piers]

Taken from the main thread so it's not cluttered:

The discussion on the settings is highly offtopic but I can say that its very unlikely that we will let power users dictate it. I.e. I'm guessing it will be on by default but possible to disable.

Well that makes the Kodi team opinion of users very clear, think that's the first time I've heard that feedback from users is not welcomed.

No, we listen to our users. However we don't want the 1% of our users to select the default which isn't representative of the vast majority. Which is what I questioned on your, very strict statement on how the setting should be.

My words may have come across a bit harsher than anticipated, for that I'm sorry.

My point was that I suspect you want it off as your a power user and just want to go into the program as fast as possible. And that I think that the majority of the users would welcome an animation on the cost of it taking a few more seconds to load (as they wouldn't' mind spending those seconds as they only do it once a day at most). As a power user you may start and stop the application far more often.
So for the average user it make sense to have it on by default, but allow power users, as yourself and me, to turn it off when we don't' want it.

EDIT: I hope with this there are no hard feelings and that we can leave the discussion out of this thread. And let it be about the awesomeness of the animations instead!

Yes, my mistake - I totally misunderstood what you meant. To me nothing concrete has been said about the settings, which to me is an important issue.

[tential]

What's the purpose of the boot animation again?

[Ned Scott]

What's the purpose of the boot animation again?

To get chicks.

[natethomas]

What's the purpose of the boot animation again?

42

[helta]

its actually to get 42 chicks. stop half assing it.