xStreamed *updated 3/6/11* www

[Marbles_00]

Added a TV module. See first link to download. This is Option 1, which uses GBPVR for TV functionality. Not a true integration, but has worked very well indeed. See the documentation included with the install for further details.

Also in the first post, I included a link to download a Hauppauge Services pack. This pack is for controlling the basic Xlobby functions via the Hauppauge 45-button remote. Make sure you make a backup of your irremote.ini file prior to installing this service pack. It contains a bunch of .bat files and corresponding .vbs files to which the irremote.ini is configured too. NOTE: The .bat files run xsend commands, which the IP address in the .bat files will have to be changed to suit the IP address defined in the xReceive plugin.





Enjoy

[Marbles_00]

Updated the Main Module (to v3) and the Movie Module (v2).

Changes in the Main Module:
- decided to incorporate all plugins used into the Main Module. All future plugins will follow suit. Individual modules will not have a plugins directory to copy over anymore.
- found some inconsistencies and bugs to the startup screen. Added all buttons to hide on startup.
- added some more events to the skin\navigation eventgroup
- defaulted the xReceive plugin's conf.ini files IP address to 127.0.0.1
- added a xlobby_root directory which has the xlobby.xml, types.xml and mediatyps.xml. These are the primary xml files to get xlobby running, and are geared towards the xStreamed skin if you wish to use them. Backup your current files prior to copying them over to the xlobby root directory. In the future, I may just add a bat file that will automatically do this for you.

Changes in the Movie Module
- found some plugin commands missing that would retain the views selected movie screens. Without the commands, after selecting a different view type, if exiting the movies screens (back to main menu) then re-entering the movie screens would default the view back to List.

Both can be downloaded from the first posts (links updated).

[Marbles_00]

Have an update:

Currently working on two modules. One is the TV Series Module. I've finally learned how to use the xTVdB plugin, and putting it to good use. The other is the Video Module that will playback video clips of home videos, or adult videos etc. It will also playback offline movies that may reside in the DVD Rom drive. Below are some teaser pics. Stay tuned for their releases.

TV Series Main Menu (sorry, I only have seasons of Lost, but this will be the starting point to select your series to watch)


From the above screen will take you to the Season screen to select your series season. There are four views that will be selectable, like the movies - list, large icons, small icons, and coverflow.

List View


Large Icon View


Once the season is selected, you will be presented with the Episodes screen to select the episode to watch. Again you can select the four views to present the episodes.


And here is the main screen for the Video Module:


I've also updated some of the "TV" backgrounds to be more personable towards xStreamed (as shown in the Video module background above). GIMP is so much fun...especially the "perspective" tool.

[Marbles_00]

Since I'll be releasing the TV Series Module soon, I figured I would do up a quick tutorial on setting up and using the xTvDB plugin. Now you can either wait for the module release, as there will also be an update to the Main Module which will include this plugin, or you can download the plugin from the plugin section.

Even though I've tailored this tutorial towards xStreamed, it is still generic and can be used to setup a TV Series database to be used in virtually any skin.

Extra Notes:
- I didn't note it in the document, but for my use, since I'm using .vob files, I added *.vob to the "exts=" line.
- The [folders] can be setup for UNC pathing. Since I have my media files on my UnRAID server, my [folders] line looks something like this: 1=\\Tower\Disk1\TV Series\Lost\
-if you download the plugin from the website, you have to make sure there are two sub-directories in the xTvDB directory. One is a "cache" directory, and the other is an "images" directory. I'll try and remember to include these with the xStreamed install pack.

[Marbles_00]

Whew, released are the TV Series Module and the Video Module. I have also made some updates/changes to the other modules as well. All can be downloaded from the first post. Below are the details of the changes:

New
Video Module (first release v1.0)
-"video-" screens added
-password overlay added
-updated the video eventgrouping
-added new background
-added "menu-" control databases
-added additional buttons under buttons\Logos

TV Series Module (first release v1.0)
-"tvseries-" and "tvepisode-" screens added
-updated the tvseries eventgrouping
-uses xTvDB plugin (installed with main module). View tutorial on xStreamed forum for details on setup

Updates
xStream Main (will update to v4.0)
-updated startup for video and tvseries modules
-added playback control eventgroup from Movie Module since other modules may require these functions
-updated the types.xml file to include Video and TV Series information
-added xTvDB plugin and associated files to the plugins directory (view tutorial on xStreamed forum to configure)
-added xPowerEvents and associated files to the plugins directory. USER has to copy xPowerEvents from
the xlobby_root to the main xlobby directory
-add the xTopPick plugin to the plugins directory. If using the Movie Module, USER has to set this plugin
up or the "RECENTLY ADDED MOVIES" selection will not work. It is verified to work as follows:
Selected Field - (i)number
Field Type - Numerical
Direction - Descending
Output Count - 15
This will display 15 most recent movies added to the movies database, and is more in line to how the actual skin in which xStreamed emulates behaves.

Movie Module (will update to v3.0)
-updated playback control eventgroups for the stop command to goto main menu
-moved playback control to xStreamed Main Module
-incorporated the use of xTopPick plugin. Plugin added to main module install

TV Module Option 1 (update to v2.0)
-updated background

Like always, feedback is welcomed and encourage. If you have issues with any of the installs please let me know. It is becoming a little bit of a bear monitoring all the changes and determining which "Module" gets the changes in the end, so I may have missed something.

Enjoy

[Marbles_00]

Who knows. I've been messing around with a news ticker on the main menu screen. I've got something going now (bottom section of main menu...title of article in blue, description in white and scrolls horizontally):


Basically it is cycling through Calrad's news feeds, displaying a new article every 20 seconds. This time can be adjusted in the event, but seems to be working pretty good. Could be the next module to be released...who knows?

[Marbles_00]

Wow, been July since the last time I sat down and skinned. So many other projects took off, not to mention a slew of computer issues and changes. Things are starting to die on the personal project bit, so I decided to get back into skinning the xStreamed skin.

New
News Module (first release v1.0) - see download link on first post
-includes background for individual screen
-updated menu screen to include the news ticker

ISSUE: seems that there is a timing bug when bringing the xlobby computer out of sleep. By default I have the new ticker show different articles every 30 seconds. Everything is peachy, until the system is woke from standby. Then the news articles change from article to article at a random rate. Sometime it is there for 10 seconds, sometimes 5...and then sometimes it just cycles 2 or 3 articles. Not quite sure how to handle that bug.

Other than that, one will have to go into F2/Setup, under Databases. Then update the proper events.

Updates
TV Module Option 1 (released v3.0)
-seemed to miss the TV function overlay in v2.0, so I added it, as well as added more functionality to that screen.
-added show title and aired date to top of page for recordings that reside on the media machine (will have another update for this, but on the server side in the future).

Anyways, hopefully it won't take so long before the next module release.

Like always, if you have questions, please write them here, or send me a personal email.

Have fun.

[Marbles_00]

Messing a little with this view:


Once complete, one will be able to switch between the xStreamed default view and the xStreamed Horizontal Menu view via in the skin's settings (using the ol' change skin plugin).

Also started to work on the games module, and picture module.

[galiman]

Hi, Marbles.
I've downloaded this but not yet installed it. But very much looking forward to it. I really like the horizontal menu. One quick question...if I install the TV module, will it affect any settings in my current installation of GBPVR? It took me a while to get GBPVR to function well, and the way I wanted. I don't want to risk messing it up.
Thanks.

[Marbles_00]

Nope, they are totally independent of each other. In my setting, I turned off all the extra menu features in GBPVR that would not be used, like DVD, Music, Picture etc. The only interaction between the two is that Xlobby will call on GBPVR's exe to start, and it should go to the background. Then when exit GBPVR, it will just go back to Xlobby.

You will have to setup a database in Xlobby to locate your local RecordedTV location, and if you have an external server you copy to, you will have to create a database for that location as well.

Let me know how it works for you. I may have missed something when I compiled the install exe. I apologize if I have missed anything.

The horizontal menu is just a concept right now. I want to get the majority of these individual modules done and perfected first.

[galiman]

You will have to setup a database in Xlobby to locate your local RecordedTV location, and if you have an external server you copy to, you will have to create a database for that location as well.

Rather than do this, wouldn't it be easier to just let GBPVR play recorded TV?

*Edit* Sorry, dumb question. That sort of defeats the point of having a beautiful, seamless skin, doesn't it?

[Marbles_00]

That sort of defeats the point of having a beautiful, seamless skin, doesn't it?

Exactly. I have tried to skin the GBPVR screens to suit, but it is not easy. I can go into xlobby's xml files without issue, but GBPVR is a different beast. Not impossible, but not easy in the very least.

And yes, I did forget to include a file in my most recent install...DOH! But the bright side, it is just a simple bat file that I call on to transfer video from the local machine to the server. It's called move.bat and the contents are below:

Code: Select all

echo %1
echo %2
move %1 %2

cd\
xsend "command:xlobby:run event:TV:refresh" "8009" "192.168.0.19"

If you use this feature, you will have to change the port - 8009 and the IP address to the one you specified in your xReceive plugins conf.ini file. Also you will have to define your category and remote file location in the event command. If you goto F2/Setup, the select TV, there will be an event call "move_recordedtv". Under the OS command, you can see the parameters of the source file name "%recordedtv>parameter%" and the destination "\\Tower\disk2\recordedtv". Then you should be good to go.

[Marbles_00]

Sneak peak at the Settings Module I'm working on:





The cool things about this module is that I have found more uses for using the convert2variable plugin. Depending on the menu item, it will automatically select the database to display in the sub-category. So when the Menu Select is up front, the sub-category will display the database for selecting to use a Vertical Menu or Horizontal Menu (as shown). Then if you scroll to Audio Setup, the sub-category will then display an audio menu database which will allow for Winamp EQ configuration and Master (System) volume control. Video Setup will also select a video menu database for selecting test screens and setting up some Zoom Player and MPC-HC settings.

The other cool thing is to be able to swap the look of the main menu between a vertical perspective to a horizontal perspective. This is done by actually using the xChangeSkin plugin, and the "horizontal menu" is actually another skin in the works (see one of my previous posts). So this function is not yet ready...but will be at some point.

[Marbles_00]

uploaded a new News module. I like what I've been able to incorporate in with the upcoming Settings module in how I deal with menu, sub-menus and their databases. I ended up using the same concept with the News module.

Download link has been updated on the first post.

[Marbles_00]

Uploaded a new Settings Module (view screen shots in the above post). Please view first post to download. Also, please read the included document on what this module is capable of doing, and some brief instructions on getting it up and running. Included with this module is the xStat and xWOL plugins, rom2xlobby executable, and the xChangeSkin installer.

In setting up xWOL, please review the included documentation in the xWOL directory.

In using rom2xlobby, especially within xStreamed, the default location for the rom2xlobby folder is c:\emulators.

Run the xChangeSkin executable to install the required software. Currently, this will only work if a second skin resides in a folder called xStreamed_Horizontal. I am working on this skin and will release at some date in the future.

Anyways, I hope there isn't too many bugs. Everything seems to be working fine on my test system. If you have any questions, please send me an email, or post your questions/comments here.

Enjoy

OH and MERRY CHRISTMAS