Random trailer/coverart launching same movie

[rtarver]

Has anybody considered what it would take to have XLobby start a series of random trailers... probably a specific genre, and then when a specific action is taken while a particular trailer or coverart is showing launch the corresponding movie?

I'd like to be able to wander upstairs and start a random preview of say... all my action movies, and then when I see the one I want just hit play and have that movie start.

Has this been implemented already, or would there have to be functionality added to XLobby for this to occur.

Any thought or comments appreciated.

Thanks,

Russ

[Colby]

Yes this has already been implemented. I think you just need to pass the variable to player. There are actually a few ways to do this now that I think of it. Let me think on it.

[rtarver]

Colby,

Might thoughts were something along the line of having a new database that contains all the coverart. There would be a field in the database that has the link to the movie associated with the coverart. Pressing play while any given coverart is up would send the message to play that particular movie. That is the part I'm having a hard time implementing

Now to complicate things. I plan on buying the sony 777es 400DVD player with rs232 input. I would then have to figure out how to pass a variable to girder so it can talk to the player.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Russ

[Colby]

In my skin, I use Zoomplayer. You can select a movie, then it has the coverart, and info as an overlay. There is an option on this overlay to play movie or play trailer of this specific trailer. I can also just view random trailers from the movie screen. How is this so different than what youre wanting?

[rtarver]

It's different in that when I sit down, I don't know what movie we want to watch. I just want the computer to randomly display cover-art of a particular genre. Once I see one I like I'll just hit play and then the movie launches. I don't want to have to go and search for that movie in the database and manually launch it. I'm really not the epitome of laziness, it's just that we have about 300 dvd's and I hate playing the "what about this one" game. I figure if we just sit down, then when my wife sees one she likes on-screen, I just hit 'play'.

Does that help?

Russ

[edgley]

This might actualy be a feature request.

What you want to do is have a slideshow of cover albums, could be for music or video or anything and when you click the active image it either launches it, displays it etc.

Good idea!

[rtarver]

You got it!!!

For those nights when we really don't know what we want to watch, we can just sit down and watch random covers until we see something we like. I suppose this could be extended to music and videos as well.

Do you think it's possible with an overlay screen that randomly displays cover-art and has a button that has the focus. When it's pressed, it launches the movie associated with the cover-art in the separate cover-art database?

Russ

[Colby]

I bet you can do this. if your movie category has "launch movie" as the event, the you could start a slideshow and upon clicking, it would execute the movie.


Fake the slideshow by creating a movie category with 1 colum 1 row. Then nav through with left & R or up and down and when you see one you like click enter it will play. with it being a category then you can easily filter it how you want. and it will work the same

Or are you really not wanting to wear your finger out clicking the next item in the category? Maybe you could make an automated next item event.

It all seems do able, Good Luck

[rtarver]

Thanks Colby,

I'll give it a try over the next few days and see what I come up with. Do you agree that I need another database... separate from my movies? Or are you suggesting just a separate layout for this functionality?

Russ

[Colby]

Do you agree that I need another database... separate from my movies? Or are you suggesting just a separate layout for this functionality?

You only need one database for your movies. The layout, is determined by the presentation of the category in the skin. you can make a category called movies1 referencing the movie database with 6 rows 4 columns whatever and another screen, with category movies2 with row 1 column 1, that would reference the same movies database. A simple button on the movie screen could "start" your random browse page. You could then add multithreaded events to the page enter events to toggle to (play movie, auto cycle, or whatever). As long as the info screen is blank for movies2 category it should execute the movie, as you have that set up; online or offline or whatever.

I hope this makes some sense.