[mythtv-users] Re: [mythtv] MythTV Usability Report

Tom E. Craddock Jr. sigtom at sigtom.com
Sun Jan 8 17:02:18 UTC 2006


Martin Ebourne wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Jan 2006 19:55:01 -0500, Tom E. Craddock Jr. wrote:
> 
> 
>>Jono Bacon wrote:
>>
>>>Hi all,
>>>
>>>Firstly, thanks for MythTV. It is an incredible piece of software our
>>>house is a better place with our MythTV box. Keep up the great work.
>>>
>>>For a while now I have been noting down little quirks and oddities in
>>>MythTV. Although MythTV is incredibly usable and works very well, fixing
>>>these problems would make it more intuitive and easier to use. This list
>>>is certainly not exhaustive and although I have been meaning to do an
>>>exhaustive usability assessment, I have not had the time. As such, these
>>>are major usability issues I have confronted.
>>>
>>>I would love to conduct a more in-depth usability test in the future if
>>>that would be of interest. I write quite a bit about design, usability
>>>and MythTV on my blog at www.jonobacon.org.
>>>
>>>I have put a code at the beginning of each issue for easily referring to
>>>it.
>>>
>>>--> General
>>>
>>>* G1 - When watching a show, you should be able to hit the record button
>>>to record the entire show if it has been watched from the beginning and
>>>as such the live TV buffer contains the show. * G2 - If you schedule a
>>>show to record, you can only watch the show at the same time as
>>>recording it by first selecting Media Library->Watch and then selecting
>>>a show. This is unintuitive - you should just be able to watch TV like
>>>normal and be able to view the channel while the show is recording.
>>>* G3 - Switching between channels is far to slow - this slowness makes
>>>skipping through channels rather laborious. * G4 - The term 'Optical
>>>Disks' in the menu is not particularly clear - I suspect most people
>>>know its a Disk, but not optical. * G5 - In the Upcoming recordings
>>>screen, the use of dimmed and non-dimmed entries in entirely unclear -
>>>what do they signify? It is certainly unclear to me and my other half.
>>>The other problem is that many of the entries listed in Upcoming will
>>>not actually be taped because it says the recording will be taped at a
>>>later time. If it is not going to be taped, why is it still in the list?
>>>* G6 - Many of the screens in MythTV (such as Upcoming and Set
>>>Priorities) have specific letters in each entry. These letters obviously
>>>refer to something specific, but there is no legend displayed on the
>>>screen to say what they mean. * G7 - There seems to be no simple way of
>>>cancelling all recordings for a show other than finding it in the EPG
>>>and changing the recording option to not record the show. The ideal
>>>solution would be to have a list of shows that are being recorded and
>>>then when you select a show, there are options such as Cancel this
>>>recording, Cancel all recordings etc.
>>>
>>>--> Electronic Programme Guide
>>>
>>>* EPG1 - When watching TV you will often want to view the EPG. Currently
>>>you do this by pressing Menu and then selecting Program Guide from the
>>>on-screen menu. This two step process needs to be instead bound to a
>>>single key so that you can press one button and access the EPG while
>>>watching TV.
>>>* EPG2 - When you access the EPG from the main menu, there is no TV feed
>>>on the top right-hand corner, whereas when you access the EPG when
>>>watching TV by pressing Menu->Program Guide, there is a TV feed in the
>>>EPG. This behaviour needs to be unified - I would suggest always having
>>>a feed of the current TV channel. * EPG3 - The EPG should not be inside
>>>the Manage menu, for a few reasons. The first is that you don't really
>>>'manage' your program schedule, and secondly because you need to
>>>reference the EPG regularly. Why take two steps to access the EPG when
>>>you likely want to access it on the main menu?
>>>
>>>--> MythMusic
>>>
>>>* MM1 - When in the main playback screen, there are a number of
>>>different artists in a long list, but there is no way of jumping from
>>>artist to artist.
>>>* MM2 - If you have not created a playlist, or you have just cleared you
>>>active play queue, MythMusic by default has no songs loaded. This is
>>>totally unintuitive. The default functionality should be that when no no
>>>queue or playlist is available, *all* of your music should be available
>>>to play. It seems crazy that All My Music needs to be consciously ticked
>>>in the Edit Playlist area to actually hear some music.
>>>* MM3 - There is no way to create a playlist based on genre. * MM4 -
>>>When playing back a song it lists encoding details (eg. 128kbps 44.1khz)
>>>- this information is of no interest to most users and therefore should
>>>not be displayed. * MM5 - There is copious room in the bottom third of
>>>the screen, and this should really be used to display guidance notes
>>>about creating a playlist. Creating playlists is not very intuitive and
>>>this space could be usefully used for notes.
>>>* MM6 - There is no obvious way to save a playlist that you have just
>>>constructed. I still don't know how to do this. * MM7 - When creating a
>>>playlist, the icons on the left (such as the CD icon when you have
>>>inserted a CD and it appears below the All My Music line) are not clear
>>>at all. This need to be much bigger or use the space at the bottom of
>>>the screen to show a nice big icon. On my 28" TV, they just were not
>>>clear enough and look like bullet points. * MM8 - When in the main music
>>>playback screen and at the top of the list of songs, you can't press Up
>>>to go to the bottom of the list. I assume the same problem happens at
>>>the bottom of the list - you should be able to press Down to go to the
>>>top of the list.
>>>
>>>--> MythWeather
>>>
>>>* MW1 - When loading MythWeather and it says it is retrieving weather
>>>data, it takes a long time to grab this information. It would be better
>>>if it just went away and grabbed it periodically in the background, this
>>>giving little or no delay. * MW2 - Unlike other modules in MythTV,
>>>MythWeather does not display information in the LCD panel on the front
>>>of my case.
>>>
>>>--> Ideas for features
>>>
>>>* Reminders - there should be a feature to allow you to set a reminder
>>>to watch a particular show, even if you are not recording it. MythTV
>>>would then pp up a box to say the show is on and allow you to change the
>>>channel. It would also be useful to possibly pop up a small OSD with a
>>>countdown to when the reminded show starts. * A module to go and grab
>>>National Lottery numbers and display them.
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>
>>>  Jono
>>
>>
>>Are you running SVN?
> 
> 
> Could you have quoted any more irrelevant lines before asking a question
> with such an obvious answer?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Martin.
> 
> 

Yes.


Tom


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