[mythtv] Proposed MythMusic Interface Improvements

[Ed Wildgoose]

>Any UI that moves away from hierarchical browsing and closer toward keyword
>or metadata searching would likely represent a significant improvement over
>the current mechanism for managing a large collection. While browsing is a
>familiar paradigm that should be included in any revised UI, its current
>form (both 0.14 and 0.15) diminishes in utility as the size and variety of a
>music collection grow - particularly for a keyboard-driven interface. This
>is a flaw in hierarchical information display in general, and not
>specifically an issue with either implementation.
>  
>

Nah, personally disagree with this...  I'm a heirarchical fan...

Actually, the genre tag doesn't work for me really, I don't know the 
different between "Garage", and "punk soul", so I don't bother to 
classify my music like that.  However, if the interface had a good set 
of drill downs by various categories, then it would be nice to classify 
stuff by "screechy female vocals", "stuff the wife likes", "tat that I 
like", "party music", "easy listening late in the evening", etc.  This 
would be my type of genres.

To be fair though I only have around 200 albums, so I don't find it too 
hard to navigate even now.  However, I *would* rather like to be able to 
switch search methods more easily, eg drill down by "girl bands" to pick 
out those top tunes (...!),  and then drill down by artist to fill in a 
few blanks, and then drill down by "mood" (yeah we don't even have that 
yet), to fill in a few more songs.  I don't really see the need for 
anything more advanced than that though, the page up and down buttons 
work really well, and it only takes a few secs for my wife to pull in a 
new playlist with a few hours of songs on the current interface... 

So for me, just a few tweaks to the existing system so that you can 
drill down via any category would be my favourite improvement, followed 
by having multiple categories, eg mood, marks out of 10, fast/slow beat, 
etc.  That's all I use on Winamp, or any other desktop media player, to 
find my songs...

Nice ideas though.  Good luck

Ed W