Solution: Media info on 2nd screen

I have spent much time searching for a solution for bringing the information of the currently playing media to the embedded lcd screen of my HTPC, which offers a resolution of 1280x800 pixels, while watching tv shows, movies or listening to music on the "bigscreen".

I now have coded a small webpage for the built-in XBMC webserver, that does exactly what I need. I just have to start Firefox (IE doesnt work ATM) in fullscreen mode on the small embedded screen and all the relevant information is on screen.

The solution is easily adaptable to other screen resolutions via the variables found in the .asp file.

Installation:
Extract the contents of the .zip to your web folder inside your XBMC installation and open the url "http://yourxbmcip/multimediascreen.asp" in your firefox.
Be sure to first open the .asp file in a text editor and change at least "xbox_web_path" to your needs, since that is the path of the webserver, where the thumbnails are copied to to be available via HTTP. You can change other aspects there as well, eg. screen size or font size.

Here is the Version 1.1

Since I'm not a skilled coder, please feel free to add your changes to my code! :-)

Screenshots:
Movies:

TV shows:

Music:

Great Work, triumvirrr!!

A question, though:

The Next and Prev shows the complete pathname of the upcoming or previous Track, resulting in a truncated line.
On your screenshot I can see "Metisse - Pray", without a pathname. I only see something like a truncated line saying "E:\News\Prog 1\Darwin's Radio - Eyes of...."

Is this a setting in XBMC or in your code?

If developed a bit more (don't know if this is your intention). it could be a great Web interface for a little touchscreen like the MIMO UM-740 (800x480) http://www.terracode.com/MIMO_UM740_Revi...ew_P1.html.

Instead of powering up a power consuming LCD/Plasma, you could use the external/internal extra display for choosing/playing music content. For video content the primarily screen would be needed obviously.

Of course there need to be some controls and lists on a sub or previous page chosen from your existing "Now playing" page, where the user can choose his media.

Anyway, great work!

Thanks for your feedback!

The truncated line of the next/prev item was caused by an error in my script when accessing local discs - it originally worked only with remote shares. Now it should only show the filename, without the whole path and without extension, no matter where the file is located.

I have updated the downloadlink in my original post.

I will eventually also implement some control buttons, since the little screen built into my HTPC has touch capabilities which I would like to use besides my remote.
So what will come is at least the possibility to pause - next - prev via the interface, probably even a full browsing mode for music.
I don't think, that this makes much sense for movies, since when watching movies you will most definitely have the big screen lit ;-)

this looks realy great... I'll try this immediately.

I've tried it, but get an error message in my browser:
Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
Timestamp: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 15:43:20 UTC


Message: Expected hexadecimal digit
Line: 8
Char: 41
Code: 0
URI: http://192.168.1.100/multimediascreen.asp


Message: 'status_position' is undefined
Line: 129
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: http://192.168.1.100/multimediascreen.asp


Message: 'document.getElementById(...)' is null or not an object
Line: 464
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: http://192.168.1.100/multimediascreen.js

Any idea ?

Please try using Firefox, as stated in my first post, IE isn't supported ATM.

I will post a newer version in the near future with support for fanart etc., since there seems to be some interest in the project.

triumvirrr Wrote:Please try using Firefox, as stated in my first post, IE isn't supported ATM.

I will post a newer version in the near future with support for fanart etc., since there seems to be some interest in the project.

Wow, this looks realy promising. Thanks !!

Is it easy to stop switching between date and time (bigtime) ?
I would like to see constantely the time.

triumvirrr Wrote:Please try using Firefox, as stated in my first post, IE isn't supported ATM.

I will post a newer version in the near future with support for fanart etc., since there seems to be some interest in the project.

Just curious: any idea of a possible date/periode ?

The newer version is already running on my system - just have to do some minor cosmetical changes before putting it online.
I think it will be ready and online until next weekend.