All the Beautiful Skins?
#16
For me its Transparency! all the way. I really like the views that leave alot of room for fanart and the multi-image backgrounds with zoom look amazing. On top of that, all the small addons like the recently added tv/movies on the home-screen are very nice. All other skins i tried, like aeon/alaska/experience/confluence take up too much room on the screen.
Before Transparency! I used Focus, that was a nice one too.
Intel Core2Quad 3,2Ghz, 2Gb RAM, Nvidia GTS450 on Ubuntu 10.10, Denon AVR-2311, Denon POA4400A
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#17
There are a lot of "pretty" skins but few actually remember the whole goal of a skin should be ease of use. This includes fonts that are readable from 10 feet away and layouts that are intuitive.

It seems to me that many people prefer to jerkoff to hi-res fanart then actually read who's in the movie and what it's about.
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#18
havix Wrote:There are a lot of "pretty" skins but few actually remember the whole goal of a skin should be ease of use. This includes fonts that are readable from 10 feet away and layouts that are intuitive.

It seems to me that many people prefer to jerkoff to hi-res fanart then actually read who's in the movie and what it's about.

try lithium ... Big Grin
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#19
I have used pretty much every skin there is, and my favorites constantly change :lol:

Currently my favorite is Alaska: it is simple, very pretty, and the flag designs are by far the best. Also, it organizes my TV Shows the best out of all of them! It took me a while for Alaska to become my favorite however... I thought it was too bright, and wan't in love with the movie views. However, with the updates coming, I know that the movie views will be even better Smile

My next favorite is Aeon... I know it's bloated, but it does look amazing! My favorite version is ShowMix, followed by Aeon 65. If you use EMM, the way the info. is displayed looks insane.

Next is Transparency: simply a fantastic skin with everyone's favorite features enabled Smile Looks very good and not too bloated!

Next is Confluence (great default skin!), then Mediastream Redux (very nice looking, with some cool features), followed by Xperience (looks great, but i didn't fall in love with the Movie and TV views - A for effort though for creating original ones. If there was better flag incorporation without hitting info this could possibly change). No offense to other skins, this is all personal taste Big Grin

@havix: I seriously hope no one is jerking to fanart :lol:
I love my Mac Mini :;):
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#20
havix Wrote:There are a lot of "pretty" skins but few actually remember the whole goal of a skin should be ease of use. This includes fonts that are readable from 10 feet away and layouts that are intuitive.

It seems to me that many people prefer to jerkoff to hi-res fanart then actually read who's in the movie and what it's about.

Or try the info button, and get a fullscreen info dialog where you can read..
"who's in the movie and what it's about."

And for a lot of people pictures say more than words.:p
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#21
jerking off to FanArt, rofl... awesome
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#22
havix Wrote:It seems to me that many people prefer to jerkoff to hi-res fanart then actually read who's in the movie and what it's about.

True...haha.

I have way too many movies in my library to hunt for a fanart image that more than likely will be a resized still from the film.. Why bother? I don't have a mediacenter to look at wallpaper all day, I have it to watch videos. That's why I use Confluence List view with custom Thumbs that have an HD logo in the upper corner. fast navigation, easy layout, no bs. Simple, done and done. And I like this view b/c there's no media flags visible.

I'll let all the Aeon lovers gush over their studio icons and extra thumbs, etc. To me, it's needless clutter. Also, I have 0 desire to reorganize my 800+ films and 70+ TV Series to accomodate a new feature (extrathumbs) for a skin that has never really been completed, and said feature hasn't been part of another skin since, including the next skin attempted - Alaska. (Which looked promising I thought, but once he left the project, it went from vefy white to very pink I thought).

To each his own though...I know no one receives any payment or things of that nature and it's all done for this great community, so whatever floats your boat, knock yourself out. For me, though, it's about simplicity, and fanart doesn't fit the bill.
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#23
I came to XBMC right when Camelot final was released, so my first "taste" was Confluence, which I thought was amazing. Then Transparency! which is slick & polished looking (I dig the tech look). Recently tried out Rapier, at first it was a little confusing , since the layout was a lot different, but I'm growing into it nicely. Plus for some reason it's the only skin that actually displays the correct movie folder.jpgs (which I carefully loaded into each movie folder) for all of my Movies. Others show completely wrong movie art
or still shots from the files themselves?!
All of them add nicely to the XBMC experience!!
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#24
Love Aeon.

I'm not normally a guy who fusses about aesthetics (I still use the windows 98 theme on my computers), but when I get to my media center... I'm in relaxation mode. I want a skin that's going to blow me away with visuals every-time I use it... and Aeon does that. After 6 months, it still does it.

When my family or friends pop by, I want to show off something awesome. Am I shallow? Hell ya!

Aeon is slow yes. Not so slow that you'd even think there was a problem, unless you've used another skin like Confluence, which is just lightening fast.

The various mods on Aeon make it a little tricky too. Each mod has it's own features and bugs and picking your favorite seems to always involve a compromise. You can't just decide to use Aeon... you have to decide which Aeon to use.

I'm anxious to look at Alaska. The media screens look amazing. Only the home screen seems a little ... plain (to me). If there are backdrop options on the home screen, it might challenge Aeon for me.
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