[mythtv-users] 3-D UI for Myth, PNP installation, new LinuxMCE

[Justin Hornsby]

Okay. I've got carried away with the fact the UI's menu system *looks*
so awful & complicated.

The 'awful' looks could be tackled with some better graphics & choices
of colours - not really a big deal.

There _are_ some good (ish) ideas in there (outside of the menu
system) which could be used in mythtv.  For instance, the fast smooth
scrolling & EPG/media navigation ideas are nice, and could be made to
work with a regular remote (longer presses mean faster search speed),
though obviously a movement sensing remote would work best with that
paradigm.  Smooth, fast scrolling would certainly be a big improvement
over what we have now.

For many of the advantages linuxmce has over mythtv in that area
though, there would be little point trying to implement them in mythtv
right now.  The reason for that is all the plugins which handle media
- you'd have to replicate all of the UI improvement work in each
plugin.  When all media handling is integral to mythtv itself, it'll
be a much more attractive (and worthy) proposition.

I think to lose mythtv's 10' interface would be a bad thing.  There's
also no real need to put much of the UI on top of video, and there's
certainly no good reason to use up so much screen space with menu
options.

So many menu options on screen at once also bring another problem -
small text.  Text needs to be readable on a variety of screen sizes &
distances.  It's no use assuming people have a HDTV & sit 2 feet away
from it.  8pt text might be rendered well on a HDTV at 1080p but will
the user be able to read it from their couch?  There's a very good
reason the 10-foot UI paradigm has been so popular for so long.  It
*works* very well.  The common misconception that a bigger screen ==
more screen space for information is simply not true.



-- 
Justin Hornsby
Creator of ProjectGrayhem, blootube and neon-wide themes for MythTV
email: justin(dot)hornsby(at)gmail.com
web: http://www.juski.co.uk