[mythtv-users] A different perspective on the "user experienceissue"

[Sarah Hayes]

>
> Secondly, who are we talking about 'end-users'? If we are to split users 
> into system installers, and end-users, but have all the configuration in a 
> single area, do we then need to consider adding pin-codes to any setup page 
> that could stop the system from working? My wife ain't dumb, far from it and 
> very computer literate for her job, but not giving her access to a program 
> which can stop the whole system from being able to record, is a relief. She 
> doesn't know any of the access details for the backend machine I have apart 
> from an auto-mounted SMB share.
>   
I would define an 'end-user' as a none technical person, willing of mind 
but devoid of technical knowledge.  i.e. they won't nor want to 
understand that not all of the content available is playable by THAT 
frontend (i.e. HD on an SD only machine).  Just because they've told it 
to record East Enders... doesn't mean to say they won't remember it did 
without prompting, or that their RSS feeds have updated, or some kind 
soul's added more stuff to the archive/mythvideo section.  Or, as 
actually happened, the sort of person who receives an automated "mail 
box is full" message from their ISP... and goes nuts deleting stuff off 
the laptop... and all the network drives they could find.

Yes, that's how I define an 'end-user'.  Intelligent, but capable of 
being dumber than a bag of hammers and twice as destructive.

For my sins and I keep harping on about it, I'd like to see tighter 
integration between 'mythtv' (defined here as the main menu) and the 
plugins, so that the plugins can announce "hey, new stuff... Charlie 
Jade (15 shows) added, Battlestar Galactive Razor added" as a 
ticker/image animation playing until your out of new stuff.  Same with 
recordings a "East Enders 28/02/2008 recorded".  Yes, you can get to 
that via system information, but parts of that should appear when the 
system is idle.

In an A/V network, the ability to manage frontends, not all FE's are 
created equal and the Core 2 Duo can play back stuff the MII10K can't.  
So being able to make content appear/disappear for the less capable 
elements would be 'nice'.   This is just my irk I suspect and resultant 
from a rather organic growth of the system.

Completely separate out the backend & frontend configs.  Frontends are, 
to my mind, interfaces, transcode/mythcommflag/mythfilldb and such are 
backend jobs and should be setup in the backend setup screen.  Secondly, 
backend configuration should be 'somewhere' in the frontend's config 
menu and it shouldn't necessitate /etc/init.d/mythbackend restart for 
charges to take effect.

MythVideo could do with some different methods of sifting through a 
large media store.  "Favorites" would be good, as would "series" views.

The MythVideo -> Internal player handover could do with some 'tweaking' 
I can see in the logs it's precaching, but all I get is a big black 
nothing for several seconds (WiFi... ain't it grand?) a loading bar, 
countdown or something to give an idea that the machine is doing 
"something" (yes, even a spinning animation would do)  EU's get panicy 
and push buttons when they get a big black nothing and some of them are 
quick off the mark.