PDI/xCard, Xlobby, Ripped VOBs...Almost!!!

[Tracie]

Dude you rock!

Yes, he does. This is why I recommended Xlobby - it is a great product, but the support is what puts it over the top for me.

[Phil Smith]

Check is in the mail!

Now all I need is for xCard to open in the background, or minimized, and dScaler to open in the foreground in full screen mode. Learning how to use Girder is this weekend's project, so hopefully I'll have that taken care of soon.

Once the movie section is complete, which it almost is, I'm sure I'll need a few pointers for the audio and TV sections of Xlobby, so I'm not through bugging you!

Thanks again for all the help!

PS: And thanks to Tracie for suggesting I try Xlobby!

[Tracie]

Hey, no problem. I'm the world's biggest believer in word-of-mouth - if you find something you like & works well for you, pass it on!

[stevenhanna6]

I'm glad you guys like the program so much

Thanks for the donation Phil, and thank you Tracie for showing Phil the way to xlobby.....I have a feeling Tracie will be sticking around here and I might have to upgrade to user rank

If you need any help just make a new thread, alot of people know girder and xlobby around here

[Phil Smith]

Hey thank you for help Steven!

If you need any help just make a new thread, alot of people know girder and xlobby around here

Will do!

[Tracie]

Yeah, I'll be stickin' around. I've had to do a nuke & pave on my HTPC, but am slowly getting it around to where I want it. Xlobby will actually be one of the last things that I get working this time around (not actually using it right now), but I keep an eye on this site to see what's new.

[ewingr]

I am searching for a front end that will work with my xCard/PDI card proggies. Based on this thread, I am thinking xLobby does now support it.

I had just downloaded xLobby Alpha 39a and 39.1.zip, but read on your main page that it only supports Zoom and TT.

Looking forward to your positive reply.

[rhinoman]

Ewingr,

You can make a button on an xlobby page lauch any exe you like so dscaler is no problem.

[ewingr]

But, I need more than dScaler to work. It needs to run a player that feeds dScaler. It's the player that ships with the card, called XMP2 (the exe is called Skingui.exe by Sigma Designs. All this is discussed earlier in this thread, but no definite answer to current version supporting it.

[stevenhanna6]

But, I need more than dScaler to work. It needs to run a player that feeds dScaler. It's the player that ships with the card, called XMP2 (the exe is called Skingui.exe by Sigma Designs. All this is discussed earlier in this thread, but no definite answer to current version supporting it.

how do you want to run Skingui.exe ??? do you want to pass the video_ts folder where your dvd is?

[ewingr]

I'm not educated enough on how to use the product yet. I just need to know if it works first. Too much effort to mess with it for a week and half to find out it doesn't even support it.

But, what I want to do at this time is have information on DVDs, cover art, etc etc on the PC, but not the DVD. I want to put the DVD in the drive once I browse the stuff on the PC, and play it.

Natively, based on what I know now, I have to manually load the player from xCard (of course I could tell XP to use it always and have it auto load...but I'm waiting until I decide if there is something else I want to use); then I have to manually load dScaler and it plays there.

I suspect I will want to run some off of my HD as well, but I don't plan to keep all of them there.

[stevenhanna6]

But, what I want to do at this time is have information on DVDs, cover art, etc etc on the PC, but not the DVD. I want to put the DVD in the drive once I browse the stuff on the PC, and play it.

Natively, based on what I know now, I have to manually load the player from xCard (of course I could tell XP to use it always and have it auto load...but I'm waiting until I decide if there is something else I want to use); then I have to manually load dScaler and it plays there.

sounds like you just want to setup a list of your offline dvds....the easiest way is with a program called dvdprofiler then importing that data....but you can set it all up manually by editing your movies database. Right now if you have an offline dvd in xlobby it will prompt you to "insert Abyss dvd" into the dvd drive then it will launch whatever exe's you want....you can even set a delay in between the 2 exes you have to load if you have to.

I'm not sure this is what your looking for.

[Phil Smith]

Now all I need is for xCard to open in the background, or minimized, and dScaler to open in the foreground in full screen mode. Learning how to use Girder is this weekend's project, so hopefully I'll have that taken care of soon.

I've had so much other stuff going on I haven't had time to mess with xlobby in a long time. The last version I used (several versions ago) was VERY slow to open the xcard software, and occasionally it wouldn't work at all. Some action (I don't recall what it was) would lock up my HTPC requiring a reboot. Because of this, I put xlobby aside until I had more time to work with it.

Last night I loaded Alpha 39a. It works better than ever! I configured xcard as my player and added dscaler as an external app to the "play" button. Now xcard opens quickly (not slow like it use to) and immediately afterwards dscaler fires up. I edited dscaler's reg file and got it where it opens in full screen. I now have it where I click the "play" button and everything's opens and configures automatically. Too cool!

The only thing I need girder for now is to automatically close dscaler when I close xcard, which would be via the off button on the xcard remote. I still don't have a lot of time to devote to this, and citing that I still don't know how to use girder, it may be a while before I get around to it. But, if anyone else has already done this, I would appreciate any tips you may have.

Steve, I would like to eliminate the second movie page (I guess that would be the the info page). I'm not going to add info about the movies, so that page really serves no purpose for me. I like the way first page is laid out and works, and it's all I need. Instead of clicking on a movie and opening the second page, I'd like the dvd just to start playing. It that doable?

PS: Steven way to go! This program has come a long ways! I poked around, reconfigured, opened and closed it a million times while messing with it last night. It was rock solid! It never hiccupped once!

[Phil Smith]

Steven, I would like to eliminate the second movie page (I guess that would be the the info page). I'm not going to add info about the movies, so that page really serves no purpose for me. I like the way first page is laid out and works, and it's all I need. Instead of clicking on a movie and opening the second page, I'd like the dvd just to start playing. It that doable?

Disregard that request. I figured it out. Still could use some girder help on shutting xcard and dscaler down if anyone has any tips.

[Phil Smith]

From reading everyone's comments, it appears xlobby has really advanced a lot. Unfortunately, it's also become a lot more complicated, which makes it harder on us dummies. That's kind of a disappointment. Someone's comment on AVS about it's ease of use was the reason I reason initially checked it out. That's what I found appealing about it--it was dummy-friendly.

Anyway, I'm trying to get my DVD player to work with the latest version of xlobby. I've searched the subject a little but I'm not finding much. In the "file types" folder I've edited Zoomplayer to what I thought would make my xcard work. Attempts to start a ripped DVD results in nothing happening.

Can some one get me pointed in the right direction, or point me toward a "getting started" page?