DVDLobby Pro 3.0 Coming Soon...

[dreicher]

**** Posted with Permission from the AVSForum ****

Cinemar is pleased to announce the soon-to-be-released DVDLobby Pro 3.0. Version 3.0 builds on the great look and features of Version 2.0. In Version 3.0, we've completely migrated everything to client/server to allow users to manage one central database of movie information and keep as much processing at the server and away from the clients as possible. Joined with all the features of MainLobby Server (including direct control of Zoom Player, TheaterTek, HomeSeer, Slinke and many other hardware/software devices) - users will have limitless control over how to enjoy movie night.

In addition to the change to a client/server model, DVDLobby Pro 3.0 includes it's own "Get Movie Information From Net" feature which allows users to automatically search and retrieve movie information and cover art from the internet without the need for any external programs.

Plus, we've added a few more features:

Ability to "lock" movies from viewing. Users will not be able to see these movies in any way unless they enter the correct security code at connection.
Ability to start in any mode: overview, thumbnail, genre, etc.
Variable fading of covers when changing movies
Ability to control up to 5 hardware/software devices from the built-in remote control per server
Built-in OSK for searching
Ability to view movies by first letter of Movie Title
Variable "autoplay" speeds
Can be operated completely from a touchscreen
Sort your entire movie collection quickly
A new, custom look with animations that will "WOW"

For a complete list of features carried over from DVDLobby Pro 2.0, see this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=240286

Some of the new features in action:

View by First Letter of Movie Title
http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_firstletter.gif

Remotely control up to 5 hardware/software devices from the DVDLobby Pro 3.0 client
http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_newremote.gif

Sort your movies in the client quickly
http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_quicksort.gif

Built-in keyboard for searching your movie database from a touchscreen
http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_searchosk.gif

Ability to lock/hide movies in your collection from prying eyes
http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_unlock.gif

Alternative looks for some added fun
http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_t2alternate_4x3.gif

http://www.cinemaronline.com/screenshots/dvdlobby3_t2alternate_16x9.gif

Full details and release/upgrade information will be available soon from Cinemar.

Dan

[slocko]

Dan does this mean you don't require DVD Profiler anymore??????

That would be most welcome!!!!!

[mcascio]

Dan does this mean you don't require DVD Profiler anymore??????

Slocko,
We'll continue to support importing DVD Profiler data; however, it's no longer a required application. In our effort to make adding movies easier, you can just type in the title or UPC code within our app to pull in the data via the internet. It even pulls in MOVIE TRIVIA data which will be using later on. :)

BTW, the new "look" that is included as a bonus with DVDLobby Pro 3 - which Dan and I have labeled "T2" has some really cool animation and soundFX incorporated. When you selected a movie, an explosion/fireball explodes above the movie poster. When moving from one movie to the next, a mechanical arm enters the screen and grabs the next piece of cover art.

The other cool thing with the old look is the smooth fades/transitions between movie posters. It really adds a classy touch.

[slocko]

to make it work with a barcode scanner, do you guys need to do something or the driver that comes with the barcode scanner will take care of it?

that is so frickin awesome!!!!!!!!!

[CycloneGT]

I think you just manually enter the number below the UPC Barcode.

[dreicher]

slocko,

Most barcode scanners simply work as "keyboards" by reading the bar code into the keyboard queue. So, you'd set focus to the search box and "fire". If you have your want setup to send a carriage return after the bar code - it will automatically send the search and give you return results.

The addition of movie trivia to the mix allows us to design some creative interfaces that add just those little touches that make enjoying your movies that much more enjoyable.

There's been a TON of overhaul work for this version to make it MUCH more robust in what you can do. By tieing in to MainLobby Server, you can expose all of the functionality of that application to dim the lights, change sources, play a audio/video intro, etc.

If you haven't already heard, we've already launched DVDLobby 1.0 for the Pocket PC platform that works on the DVDLobby Pro 3.0 platform. More information is available at http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobbyppc.html

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say we should be ready for consumption by weeks end. If you'd like to try the catalog system that movie information will be pulled from and the "Add from Net" feature, you can download MainLobby Server and the MLDVDLobby plug-in from http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.html

Dan

[orbitzboy]

***off topic ***

Mario,

Back in the 1.x days, you wrote a cool screensaver that would randomly display the dvd cover art as as a screensaver for mainlobby. Any chance you can update it (or release the source for us flash hacker wannabe's). Since it looks like the 3 version will be chock-full of eye candy, this fits right in.

[mcascio]

Hi orbitzboy,

I'll work on updating that screen saver to work with Version 3 once it's officially released. I think we'll be sticking with the structure of DVDLobby Pro 3 and the way it grabs images from the server for quite some time so it finally makes sense to convert this file now. :)

Feel free to post other ideas you'd like to see. Every now and then it's fun to take a break and work on some of the more fun things. :)

[mnkynifefite]

Su-weeet!

Can't wait....

[mcascio]

Here's some more eye candy for you guys featuring the new "T2" style themed interface.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/avsforum/800x600_t2dvdlobby.jpg

The remote control slides up/down. When you select a movie, the explosion occurs. Also, every so often, a light sheen passes over the cover art image to give it that glossy look. :)

[pdermody]

Out of curiousity, was the keyboard navigation stuff ever resolved? I do admit that I quit following the other thread, so if it was announced in there please forgive me for asking again.

-pd

[mcody]

I have about 180 DVD's that I would love to be able to tie into an interface like this but it would take a hell of a lot of storage space on a server. Plus backing up every DVD I buy is kind of a pain.

A 400 disc DVD changer would be great but how to I maintain image quality and the benefits of a HTPC and a software player? When I last looked at these about 2 years ago, Svideo was the only option. Even with Compononent out, I guess I would have to upgrade to a Component in Video Card. Are there any other options for video out? How about Firewire?

[dreicher]

mcody,

If you want to switch over to hard-drive or a changer-based system, by all means; however, neither is a requirement of DVDLobby Pro 3.0. You can continue to watch your movies in the same way you have in the past. DVDLobby Pro 3.0 allows you to enter a prompt for each movie (ie: "Insert DVD and press 'OK' to continue"). When prompted, you simply put the DVD in your tray, press OK and all the commands you have set to execute get sent then.

You can also mix/match your collection. So, maybe you rip 30 to hard drive and keep the other 150 in their cases on the shelf. Add prompts for the 150 and different commands for when you play the different movies.

DVDLobby Pro 3.0 is a way to organize and select your movies, control your hardware/software movie playback devices, and automate the movie launching experience. We've made it as open as possible to accomodate every different scenario we could think of - yours included.

Dan

[orbitzboy]

*** another eyecandy feature request ****

I went out and spent big dollars on a 1080p home theater "intro". To say it's cool is an understatement. I've also worked on a few tiff's for the "before the movie starts" display. I was guessing that you might use your new trivia functionality for some movie trivia slides, but I wasn't sure. It would be great if there was a little editor to allow theater style pre-movie trivia / pictures / etc... I've got a few (10 minutes until showtime, etc...) but if it was flash-enabled, it would actually be BETTER than the local theater.

A while back I started to make a preset series of mainlobby screens with weblobby loading HTML pages to do this, but it was a hack at best. I could finally put some of those techtalker snippets to use.!

[orbitzboy]

**** one more request *****

How about at least one blank sort field? One of my pet pieves about DVD Profiler was it's inability to let end-users create their own Genre's. I wanted to create some searchable catagories to make it easier for others to go through the collection (like "unwatched", or "elmo for lauren"). My wife complains a lot about this. Often she just wants to see "one of the new movies you just got". I would love to be able to create a catagory for those movies I know she (or I) have been wanting to see without hunting through the 1800 movies in my collection.

*** update *****

You guys are good :> Just noticed I could add my own freeform Genre's to the mlserver dvdlobby plugin. THANK YOU!!!

[denness544]

Will DVDLobby now support HDTV resolutions? I stopped using DVDLobby due to the small text. I am currently watching my movies at 1920x1080.

[mcody]

dreicher -

Thanks for the tip - that makes the whole thing a lot easier. I thought that I had to have all my DVD's tied into the system at once.

I plan on using this with a small smart display panel once MS gets around to up'ping the bandwidth so I can stream video as well as control my theater.

Thx

[bhiga]

Originally posted by mcody
Even with Compononent out, I guess I would have to upgrade to a Component in Video Card. Are there any other options for video out? How about Firewire?
More often than not, the video over firewire is compressed - either MPEG a la MicroMV or DV a la miniDV. Of course, it's possible to transfer uncompressed video over firewire, but only at limited resolutions unless you have firewire 800 or better.

Maybe someone makes a 400-disc DVD-ROM changer? Then the PC could just pull from the changer just like it pulls from a standard DVD-ROM drive.

[weldon]

There is a 200-disc DVD-ROM changer called PowerFile. It costs ~$2000 new or ~$1000 on eBay, so it is likely more economical to rip the discs to a RAID instead.

To see what I am talking about, here is a listing (http://cgi.*********/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2763537860&category=44955) on eBay.

Forgot about the URL rewriting rules, but the enterprising individual can replace the stars with the correct domain name

[Shawn Pilichis]

Hi all

I don't post much but I had some free time to interject. I also stopped using DVD Lobby when Mario switched over to tiny text and images. I too use a high def display but my desktop is 1440x960i and it seems that the DVD Lobby screen is mostly filler graphics and less DVD cover art and text. I complained about this before but it seems I only fueled the reduction even further. I much prefer the ratio of cover art and text that fills more valuable screen space like the original DVD Lobby. Maybe the folks behind DVD Lobby can stop filling the screen real estate with foo foo graphics and allow more substance? I wish the Lobby apps evolved forward into more functional and purposeful applications instead of the fluffy bells and whistles stuff. Mini explosions may be cool but I would REALLY love to be able to read the movie descriptions instead.

http://my.core.com/~spilichis/dvdlobby3_newremotebetter.gif

[K-Wood]

I second Shawn's request, but for a slightly different reason. I'd like to be able to use DVDLobby on an 848x480 plasma and a small 7" 848x480 touchscreen. As presently configured, DVDLobby and MusicLobby are optimized for a 4x3 display. Displaying them on a 16x9 display wastes alot of real estate, and on a monitor with a 848x480 resolution, the buttons are just too small to be seen or pressed. I realize that we can modify the buttons, but that will not solve the problem of unreadable descriptions and small cover art. Thumbnails are particularly hard to read.

I frankly liked the old version of DVDLobby in which the cover art and description filled the expanse of a 16x9 screen. It was gorgeous on my plasma.

I don't really mind the graphics and the animation, but would like to see them do their thing and then give way to a wider, more information-filled screen. Shawn's rendition is a good example. Perhaps the graphics could be activated primarily as a transition between scenes?

Thanks,
Ken

[JoshFink]

Shawn, most of the time the HTPC screen and the Controls are closed and you can read the description fully. If not it takes about 2 seconds to close both of those. I use DVD Lobby and have never had a problem reading the text fully.

Give it a try again, you might like it. I believe the above example was to limit the amount of screenshots he had to take hence showing everything.

Josh

[JoshFink]

Ken, over on the Cinemar forum you will see that they state that DVD Lobby 3 will fully support 16x9.

Josh

[orbitzboy]

For those that had problems with the previous DVDlobby on size,

did you use the "scale" option to the right of the box where you load the DVDlobby.swf? I too run 16x9 at 1920 x 1080p. The box was tiny at default, but I was able to scale it up to fit perfectly. I liked having some realestate on each side, as I used it for my own buttons (changing aspect ratios, TV volume, x10 lighting, etc...)

[dreicher]

Shawn,

We understand your concerns and appreciate your feedback. The Lobby suite to this point has been primarily driven by computer users wanting more features and display geared toward viewing on a computer for controlling their systems from a webpad or seperate computer. We are working on TV-centric versions of the suite components that are designed to be viewed on televisions (across the room/controllable via remote) to allow us to begin accomodating that segment of the market.

I think we can all agree that the interface for computer use/display does not port well to television display and vice versa. In the same respect, it is quite a challenge to bring the same level of features in the "PC" versions to a "TV" version because of interface limitations. We are moving forward very quickly in our undying attempt to be all things to all people, and I think that if you stay the course - you will be pleased with the results.

I will take exception with the idea that we don't offer a functional or purposeful application. A lot of hard work has gone into delivering the products our users request and we continue to evolve directly from user feedback. Just because we haven't delivered something yet, doesn't mean we're running away from it - we just want to do it right and develop a unique solution for it. We are working hard to deliver the solution you desire and continue to enhance our product line across the board to make it usable to more and more people.

I hope you will stay the course and continue to give us the feedback we need to enhance our products.

Dan

[K-Wood]

I just read Dan's reply to a similar question posed in the Cinemar forum; it appears that DVDLobby 3.0 will automatically scale proportionately to a 16x9 screen based on the MainLobby scene on which it resides. IMO, that is a perfect solution. From the screenshot he posted, the text and cover image will be perfectly readable from across the room, even on a 848x480 display. The buttons may need to be enlarged for a 7" touchscreen, but that is an user-configurable option and easy to do.

I assume Cinemar will embue the same functionality in the next version of MusicLobby.

Although it is impossible to "be all things to all people," Cinemar appears to be coming close.

Eventually, it looks like it will be possible to use the same application (or variations of it) on multiple types of displays (main movie screen, PocketPC, Airpanels, Progears, and small touchscreen monitors) and for different purposes, e.g., visually stunning eyecandy for the main screen, attractive touchscreen remote controls placed throughout the house, or PPC handheld remotes.

Cool.

[dreicher]

Ken,

We will be enhancing MusicLobby to the same degree of autosizing in the next release. There will be some additional challenges with that (ie, Jukebox display) that will take some time to reconfigure for a widescreen display, but we'll get it done.

We're hoping to be able to allow users to present a unified look across a multitude of platforms; including: TV, PC, touchscreens and Pocket PC's. There are quite a few challenges to make that a reality, but I think we're on a good course and have the capabilities to see it through.

Dan

[Shawn Pilichis]

Dan

I have been using the Lobby products since day one. DAY ONE. CD Lobby and DVD Lobby. Remember those? It worked initially, before more "improvements" were made. Then the pictures and text shrunk and I lost all control of my stream zap remote because the the different version of macromedia used to create it suddenly did not support arrow keys anymore. Now I find that I invested in a remote control that I could no longer use and a software I paid for that I cannot barely read.

Tell me, if I stay the course, how exactly will I be pleasantly surprised? Will DVD Lobby provide larger images and readable text or will it still have tons of un used space on the screen filled with a mechanized looking background? It's not a matter of 16x9 or 4x3, there simply is too much wasted space on the screen period. You have to remember something, this software originally filled the screen and had full 16:9 support before the masses jumped in with all their 2 cents and butchered the software. Now it's designed for an entirely different crowd than who first supported it. People like me funded this program a year ago. So what if I don't have a touch pad or a hand held gear-a-majig.

I can appreciate all the hard work going into little explosions and screen transitions but come on, can you at least support the aspects of the program that ORIGINALLY sold me on the idea of using it?

[schud]

What Shawn said...............

Here's another MainLobby\DVDLobby user who uses a remote control and displays ML\DVDL on the big screen.

[JimmyReplay]

Hello,

I have been using DVD 1.21d for about 7 months now. I really wanted to upgrade to 2/Main lobby (especially with that great upgrade deal), but I haven't.

I too like the large text and full sized covers. I use pronto and airboard reviever to send remote control commands onto my main TV (a 48" RPTV) Arrow keys are a must.

I fully support all of the work the developers are doing...I just want to let you know that there is are quite a few of us who do use the TV as the main viewing device.

I have read about DVD lobby 3 and it sounds good. What is the upgrade path going to look like. I know I am gonna have to get Main Lobby...did I need DVD lobby 2 as well?

Thanks for the work! It is appreciated.

Jimmy

[boykster]

I too have been waiting for a good solution to the TV-centric use of the lobby products.

My usage of DVDLobby (1.21) is EXCLUSIVELY through a remote. I'm using girder to send keystrokes to the app, and am not at all interested in fancy remote overlays, etc.

As with Shawn, I've been using DVDLobby from the very very beginnings, and in fact was a big contributer to the initial integration of the slinke, as well as writing some of the bat files/scripts used to launch external stuff. I have emails from Mario dating back to April of 2002 regarding the usage and extension of DVDLobby.

While I find the Lobby developments exciting, they just don't mean much to me, as I don't use, and don't plan on using touchscreens, pda's, etc to control a system that works great from a pronto/prontoNeo remote (as I have in every room). Additionally, at least 70% of the code that makes my system "work" is outside of DVDLobby (import program, scripts to launch movies, bat files to keep systems in synch, girder gmls, slinke code). That's a lot of overhead for a system that doesn't quite meet my needs (as was originally promised).

What I would love to see is better keyboard (or other external event handling for mouse/touchscreen emulation), more efficient use of screen real estate (images/descriptions/ratings/etc), and genre/alpha/rating sorting that can be invoked using hotkeys of some sort...floating bars don't work for me. Pretty graphics and transitions are neat, but in the long term, functionality is king.

I'm very happy for Mario, Dan and Cinemar in general for continuing to develop and support these applications, but I agree with Shawn that many of the needs of the "early adopters" haven't been met, but many others' have...

Guess it's time to re-start writing my own interface that fits my needs...

Anyway,

Looking good, have fun with it.

Rich

[dreicher]

After much anticipation, Cinemar is pleased to announce the public release of DVDLobby Pro 3.0. Building on the wonderful features of DVDLobby Pro 2.0, this new version takes everything to the next level - introducing a true client/server solution for managing and launching your changer-based or harddrive-based movie collection in a whole new way.

Requirement for DVDLobby Pro 3.0 including: MainLobby 2.30 or higher and MainLobby Server v. 1.1.0 or higher (www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.html).

For more details, please visit:

http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobbypro.html

Some of the features included in DVDLobby Pro 3.0

Full client/server architecture allows you to have one movie database accessed by multiple clients (including PC's and PocketPC's)
Ability to manage your movie collection directly from MainLobby Server, including the ability to automatically add movies from the internet without third-party software solutions
DVDProfiler 2.0 and DVDLobby Pro 2.0 importers to migrate your collection to DVDLobby Pro 3.0 easily
Bonus 'T2' skin with eye-popping graphics and animation
Auto-scaling to 4:3 or 16:9 displays, with increased size of dialogs in 16:9 over version 2.0 (92% of 4:3 display size)
Ability to change font size for overview and movie title text
Ability to "lock" movies from viewing. Users will not be able to see these movies in any way unless they enter the correct security code at connection
Ability to start in any mode: overview, thumbnail, genre, etc
Variable fading of covers when changing movies
Ability to change between up to 5 MLServer hosts and movie databases
Ability to control up to 5 hardware/software devices from the built-in remote control per host
Built-in On Screen Keyboard for searching
Ability to view movies by first letter of Movie Title
User-definable "slideshow" speeds
Can be operated completely from a touchscreen
Search your movie collection (including overview text) quickly
No preloading of movie information
Overview mode displays movie information, rating, running time and release year
Thumbnail mode allows you to browse your movie covers 12 at a time
Genre View (Sorts your movies into genre categories) and define custom Genre's to build favorite lists for everyone in the family
3 preset genres to view All movies, last watched movies and most watched movies quickly
Sort movies by Movie Title, Sort Title, Rating, Production Year, Genre, Collection Number and Changer Location
Full support for all DVD-Changers (additional hardware may be required)
Direct support for ZoomPlayer and TheaterTek, plus many popular harddrive movie players
Define exactly how you want to launch each movie and what you'd like to happen with each movie launch
Ability to build macros using all the power available from MainLobby Server
Completely skinnable
Keyboard shortcuts (Use a remote control instead)
Define special commands for launching trailer for each movie

Available now from www.cinemaronline.com

Daniel Reicher
Cinemar

[dreicher]

Gentlemen,

We are working on a solution for TV-display/remote control. We understand the market for this and the desire of our user base to deliver this. We have taken measure to prevent the 16:9 version of DVDLobby 3 to have the dialogs scaled as little as possible (~92% of the 4:3 version) and have added features to allow you to scale the text to suit your display. Before you completely write us off, you may want to take the time to see what we've done and know that we are not done improving on the product and trying to deliver a solution to all needs.

Dan

[schud]

Thanks Dan.

Sorry to sound so thick, but I for the life of me can't figure out where to start with the whole server thing. If you can direct me to a thread that focuses on setting up DVDL and MLServer, for a user who is using a regular pronto style IR remote, that would be appreciated.

Also, I noticed that the DVDL 3.0 feature set advertises "keyboard shortcuts." Do you have a listing of exactly what DVDL functions are available via keyboard shortcuts in the new version? Have you expanded that over what is available in 2.0?

[dreicher]

David,

Keyboard shortcuts remain unchanged at this point. If you've got some requests, make them known and I'll get them in there if at all possible.

Dan

[mcascio]

David,

Don't forget to take a peek at the help file included with DVDLobby Pro 3.

It details how to setup MLServer and the MLDVDLobby PlugIn.

It's also located here:
DVDLobby Pro 3 Help File (http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobby\help_dvdlobby.chm)

If you still have trouble, let us what you'd like to do and we can certainly walk you thru it with just one command.


We'll be adding more details to the help file, but had some users knocking down the door to get it done before the weekend.

[mcascio]

An update to both MLServer and DVDLobby Pro 3 is now available.

This update fixes an issue of MLServer locking up.

Just reinstall MLServer and overwrite the DVDLobby files in your Cinemar folder.

We apologize for this inconvenience. Special thanks to Dan for spending his entire Saturday tracking down the problem and getting the fix available to everyone.

DVDLobby Pro 3 comes with a detailed help file called help_dvdlobby.chm - hopefully a few brave souls will take a gander at it. Perhaps that's why we haven't had too may questions regarding setup. :)

[Johnla]

Originally posted by mcascio

DVDLobby Pro 3 comes with a detailed help file called help_dvdlobby.chm - hopefully a few brave souls will take a gander at it. Perhaps that's why we haven't had too may questions regarding setup. :)


But that's like asking for help, when lost, or reading a map first so you don't get lost...;)

[mcascio]

Either the help file is really good and every body is running DVDLobby Pro 3 smooth as a whistle or I've scared everyone from asking questions. :)

Come on people - throw us a bone. ;)

Give us your thoughts on this latest version...likes and dislikes.

[3-way]

I think DVDLobby 3 is great, but.... I often get an error message when using MusicLobby 1.8 with MLServer that says that a script is causing Flash to run slowly and asking if I want to cancel the script. Should it be run with a version of Flash player newer than v. 6?

While I'm writing, I've looked for the initial release of TVLobby from last Winter (which I lost in a hdd crash) and it seems to have disappeared, although there's a TVLobby plugin in MLServer... Is the initial version still available? Any hints as to when we might see TVLobby and what it will look like?

Thanks.

[schud]

Hi Mario and Dan:

I'm very exited about the server version, and all of the new capabilities it offers. Although I haven't been able to spend too much time with it, I can already see some very powerful features emerging. In honor of DVDL3 I even bought a new 200GB HDD, and spent last night installing the drive and reorganizing the structure of my server based media files :) I love the ability to directly edit the database within the plug-in; I also love the fact that the trailer functionality can play any file format you wish: media files or DVD files. Users who want to keep DIVX, QuickTime, or a ripped trailer from the movie DVD can all have it their way. As long as they've got a compatible media player installed on their PC, they can play any type of trailer they want. I guess the same can be said for movies too! DVDL is format neutral! Media, DVD, Changer, or just put the disc in the tray. You can't really be any more PC (bad pun-that's politically correct, LOL!) than that!

Since you asked, I would like to ask for some additional features, which I believe will appeal to the DVDL customers who are not using touch panels and thin client set-ups. Briefly, those features, which are directed towards remote control users are:

1) A new skin which removes the buttons, and uses 85-90% of the screen for the movie poster and the movie description box. I like the stock DVDL background. Yes, I know you can turn the buttons off, but I think the non touch panel crowd wants to dedicate as much of their screen space to the movie poster and description as possible. However, those with CRT projectors know that the corners are the hardest places to converge your RGB colors, so they may wish to scale the size of the poster windows a little smaller. Could you make the .SWF file that creates the movie poster scalable? Is there another way to accomplish this with the program today?

2) I have noticed that you can now create your own genres with the DVDL3 plug in. COOL! :) Could you please provide a way to directly access a fixed number of genres via a keyboard shortcut? If you're not using a touchpanel or a mouse, the genre feature is just about useless to those withoout those capabilities. IIRC, there are not keyboard shortcuts for the specific genres? Of course, user defined genres would complicate this somewhat, I guess.

3) Make this my first request, as I think it should be the easiest to accomplish and would make an immediate improvement in my use of the program. I would do back flips (well, not really!) if I could get a keyboard shortcut that would allow me to sort the movies in a) alphabetical order and b) reverse date order, i.e.. newest movie first. If you don't do anything else, this would be an immense improvement for me. With this, you can review through your newest movies without having to sort through the rest of your collection. I even forget that I've purcahsed new movies sometimes.

4) A keyboard shortcut for "OK" and "Cancel" on the popup window that displays when you show a message (insert a DVD, press any key to continue).

There are more shorcut functions I would like to request, but that's all I can think of while I'm at work. ;)

Keep up the good work, guys!

[gtrogue]

The new DVDLobby 3 mls doesn't even come close to being centered on my 960x540 16:9 display. The left most buttons are competely off the screen. If I adjust the display setting to bring DL to about the center of the screen the background skin is about 6" from the right edge of the screen. Weird thing is that the T2 skin is centered. Any ideas?

My display has very little overscan on the sides so I don't think that's the problem.

[dreicher]

gtrogue,

What are you Display Settings in MainLobby set to?

Dan

[gtrogue]

X Res: 960
Y Res: 540
X Scale: 83
Y Scale: 83
X Move: 0
Y Move: 13
X Shift: -180
Y Shift: 0


DL 2 is centered with the above settings and as you can see from the screenshot the background skin is pretty much centered. It's only the DL display itself that is off.

Here's a screen shot of DL 3:
http://georgepburdell.net/images/Screenshot.jpg

[schud]

FWIW, I had this problem too, initially.

I just fooled around with the display settings awhile and poof, it was centered. I honestly can't say what adjustments did the trick.

I'm running 800X600.

[gtrogue]

Since Mario asked...
Browsing through movies is painfully slow. It takes three or more seconds after hitting the + key on the keyboard or the > key on the screen for the next movie to come up. DL 2 is nearly instantaneous.

The Edit and Add movie pages are too tall for my 960 x 540 resolution screen so the disposition buttons, Save and the like, are not displayed which makes it impossible to close the window. You have to close ML Server completely to get out of Edit or Add mode and you can never save your changes.

I can't figure out how the sorting options work on the plugin settings page. No matter what I select nothing happens and I don't see any type or "Apply" button. Edit: Got this worked out, see below.

Using the keyboard shortcuts to browse through the movies is way wonky. If I'm sorted by changer location hitting the + key will show every other movie, ie, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. hitting the < and > keys on the screen works correctly. I've seen similar behavior in DL2 if you Sort by the same parameter multiple times.

[gtrogue]

Originally posted by schud
FWIW, I had this problem too, initially.

I just fooled around with the display settings awhile and poof, it was centered. I honestly can't say what adjustments did the trick.

I'm running 800X600.

I had a similar problem with DL 2.
DL 2.15 was not centered. Moved to DL 2.2 and presto chango it was centered without making any other changes.

[smoothtlk]

How many movies u got? I only have 45 and when clicking + or hitting the movie advance there is less than 1/2 second delay then movie pops. Also on my 233 tablet using 802.11b. Don't know if number of movies should make a diff in speed or not.

when in the plugin (MLserver), click on your sort choice. close that window. Launch DVDLobby. you should now see movies advancing using your sort selection criteria. Make sure you are using all the latest DVD3 and MLServer 1.1.0 (second release).

I go from 1024 to 800 res with dvd3 with no prob. Musiclobby and Weatherlobby do have scaling issues which Mario is looking at right now.

Are you making your display changes, clicking the Apply button, the OK, the Save button, restart ML, open DVD3?

[gtrogue]

smoothtlk, I have 287 movies listed in DVDLobby, I have two 300 disc DVD changers- I have more movies I just haven't entered them yet. I can't imagine the slowness is from the number of movies I have. If it is that's a big problem because I'm not even close to having all my movies listed.
I've made display changes but getting the DL display centered causes the background skin to be way off. I'm using all the latest releases, I just downloaded them tonight.


By the way, this is all running on the localhost- 2.8 GHz P4, 1GB RAM, SATA HD.

[mcascio]

gtrogue,

If you modify your settings you can get the proper results you are looking for regarding centering:
Click on the 960x540 button. Then under OPTIONS > DISPLAY set your background image to scale 71 instead of 100.

Then save and restart and your DVDLobby Pro 3 should be centered perfectly.

[gtrogue]

Mario/Dan, any ideas why the browsing is sooo slooowww?

Also, can you use the Internet Event Client plugin in Girder to push ML commands to MLServer? I still use an IR remote for most things, and probably will for awhile, so until MLServer has a USB-UIRT plugin it would be nice if Girder could send commands directly to MLServer rather than having to send keystrokes to DL.

And...
Is there a way to prevent the transport controls from popping up on a client? I display DL on my main display but I also use a laptop and a PPC with DL PPC. I would like for the transport controls to display on the laptop and PPC but not on my main display. Possible?

One more thing (for now)...
When I open DL3 on my laptop client with Thumbs as the default view the first page of thumbnails is not displayed. If I hit the down button the thumbnails then fill in. Any ideas?

[gtrogue]

Have I stumped the panel or am I all alone?
Me so sad. :(

[dreicher]

T,

We're aware of the thumbnails issue and should have a fix real soon. As for moving through the collection - it should be extremely fast regardless of the size of the collection as it's only getting one movie at a time.

Try setting your "Poster Transition Rate" to None and see if that cures the problem. What type of system are your running it on (MLServer and the client). Running MLServer on my HTPC (2.4 GHz) DVDLobby 3 on my Progears and a couple of P3/500's takes less than 1/2 second to change movies with well over 400 movies.

Dan

[dreicher]

David,

I just saw your post...don't know how that one slipped by me. :) Those are all very excellent suggestions and I think very reasonable/doable. Keep 'em coming and thanks for the feedback. We know DVDLobby 2.0 kind of left the remote/tv users out in the cold and wanted to get them back for 3.0. The major part of 3.0, migrating the interface, building the plug-in, adding some features allows us now to start concentrating on solutions for that segment of the market. We've also got some other possibilities in the works that may be of interest to that segment, but more on that later. ;)

Your wish is my command, and I'll get to work on making those a reality. Thanks again for your continued support.

Dan

[dreicher]

Also, can you use the Internet Event Client plugin in Girder to push ML commands to MLServer? I still use an IR remote for most things, and probably will for awhile, so until MLServer has a USB-UIRT plugin it would be nice if Girder could send commands directly to MLServer rather than having to send keystrokes to DL.

T,

Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Hadn't even thought about that, but we can definitely make that happen somehow. I'll play around with options to see what we can do to make this a reality.

Dan

[schud]

Originally posted by dreicher
Your wish is my command, and I'll get to work on making those a reality. Thanks again for your continued support.

Dan

:) :) :)

If only everything in life were that easy! :D

[netarc]

Originally posted by schud
Make this my first request, as I think it should be the easiest to accomplish and would make an immediate improvement in my use of the program. I would do back flips (well, not really!) if I could get a keyboard shortcut that would allow me to sort the movies in a) alphabetical order and b) reverse date order, i.e.. newest movie first. If you don't do anything else, this would be an immense improvement for me. With this, you can review through your newest movies without having to sort through the rest of your collection. I even forget that I've purcahsed new movies sometimes.
I _really_ like this idea ... an additional field in the database for "Date movie added to collection" - and the ability to sort on such - would be great!!

[dreicher]

netarc,

I was assuming we would use the "Date Purchased" field. Is there a need for an additional field?

Dan

[schud]

Originally posted by dreicher
netarc,

I was assuming we would use the "Date Purchased" field. Is there a need for an additional field?

Dan

Well, I'm not netarc, but my vote is definately the date purchased field, as that defaults to the date you enter it into DVD Profiler (or DVDL database, I assume).

[dreicher]

What about (possibly in addition to) adding a custom Genre (like: All, Most Watched and Recently Watched) for "New Releases" that will show the last 14 movies added. Obviously this is moot without the ability to view genres by using keyboard shortcuts, but that too. :)

Dan

[weldon]

Borrowing an idea from iTunes, it would be cool to have "smart genres" that automatically figured out the things that dreicher listed as well as others...

Most Viewed
Recently Viewed
New Releases (DVD release date)
New to this Theater (DVD purchase date)
60's movies, 70's, 80's, etc. (theatrical release date)

Could be fun.

[schud]

Originally posted by dreicher
What about (possibly in addition to) adding a custom Genre (like: All, Most Watched and Recently Watched) for "New Releases" that will show the last 14 movies added. Obviously this is moot without the ability to view genres by using keyboard shortcuts, but that too. :)

Dan

Hi Dan:

I like the "new releases" genre. Could you make the number which defines the quantity of movies considered "new releases" as a variable that the user can define?

[schud]

Originally posted by weldon
Borrowing an idea from iTunes, it would be cool to have "smart genres" that automatically figured out the things that dreicher listed as well as others...

Most Viewed
Recently Viewed
New Releases (DVD release date)
New to this Theater (DVD purchase date)
60's movies, 70's, 80's, etc. (theatrical release date)

Could be fun.

Really excellent! I like this alot!

[schud]

Dan:

So the DVDLobby Set-up menu lists the possibility of having five different hosts, with five different databases. Under what circumstances would I want to consider having more than one host? Five different clients makes sense. What am I missing here?

[dreicher]

David,

In my personal case, I've got 3 HTPC's. 2 modulated to channels on my cable system and one dedicated. 1 of the modulated HTPC's is for kid's movies, so I can change to that host and only be looking at my kid's movies. Make a selection and any adjustments, then back to my "host" for controlling my movie. They're happy and I haven't even left my seat (which is generally rare with kids).

Of course, I never get to watch a movie so this is all theoretical. :)

Dan

[schud]

Thanks Dan. A couple of more questions, if you don't mind. :)

You said: "so I can change to that host and only be looking at my kid's movies."

How do you change to a different host? Are you saying that if I had a setup with three different HTPC's, that I could select any one of those databases? How do you physically do that from the user interface? Sorry if I sound like such a newb! :confused:

I would also appreciate your advice on my particular set-up.

I have a primary HTPC which exists in the HT, and is used only for media playback via TheaterTek, video capture and playback via dscaler, etc. The usual stuff.

I also have a 1.2 TB media server which houses my ripped DVD collection.

In addition, I also have a desktop PC in my home office which I do all my ripping and DVD Profiler entry, etc.

Both the HTPC and the Desktop PC have MainLobby and TheaterTek. I use the desktop PC to test my rips, confirm that they play in TheaterTek via launching with DVDLobby.

Before DVDL3, I would update my DVDLobby database on the desktop PC, and just copy the entire directory to the HTPC. Since both the Desktop PC and the HTPC's drives are identically mapped to the media server, this worked well. (In fact, due to the lack of keyboard shortcuts, I have been keeping two different DVDProfiler databases, and two different ML\DVDL directories: one for "new movies" and one for "Full Collection." I then launched either collection from via Girder and my remote. You can't know how exciting the new sorting features will be for me! )

So, I have now installed ML Server on the media server, thinking that since its a media server, maybe that's the best place to put it. I have DVDL3 on my desktop PC communicating with MLS on the media server. This works. However, when I attempt to launch a movie from DVDL on the desktop PC, it does not launch TheaterTek and play the movie on the desktop PC.

So, all that being said (whew!):

1) Doesn't it make sense to keep a single instance of MLServer on the media server? Or do I need to keep a local copy on each local PC I want to launch movies from? This would seem to defeat the purpose of a Server app.

2) If no, why can't I launch a movie from DVDL on one PC while the DVDL server is located on a different PC? What am I doing wrong? :confused:

TIA!

[netarc]

Originally posted by dreicher
netarc,

I was assuming we would use the "Date Purchased" field. Is there a need for an additional field?

Dan
Doh! Never mind, didn't know that existed already ;) So I presume one can sort (fwd/rev) on this field?

[gtrogue]

Originally posted by mcascio
gtrogue,

If you modify your settings you can get the proper results you are looking for regarding centering:
Click on the 960x540 button. Then under OPTIONS > DISPLAY set your background image to scale 71 instead of 100.

Then save and restart and your DVDLobby Pro 3 should be centered perfectly.

Mario, this didn't work. Any more ideas? All setting the background skin to 71 did was make the background fall short of the side of the screen.

As you can see the screen shot below using my original settings, the background is pretty much centered but the DL3 .swf is off to the right.
http://georgepburdell.net/images/screenshot2.jpg


Edit: I think I have it. I had my DL2 scene set as the initial scene to display so it would popup first then I would open the DL3 scene. I changed my initial scene to the DL3 .mls and voila, it's centered.

[smoothtlk]

shud,
after opening DVDLobby3 and signing in (if password enabled), click on the transport control tab. Then when controls open, click on Host on left side of control. If you have multiple hosts configured in dvdlobby3.ini file, you will cycle through them.

[schud]

Thanks smoothtlk. I don't use the transport controls, just an IR remote.

What about my other question? Can you launch a movie with a DVDL3 client on one computer from MLserver located on another computer? Or should both DVDL3 and MLserver be located on the client PC?

[gtrogue]

Originally posted by schud
Thanks smoothtlk. I don't use the transport controls, just an IR remote.

What about my other question? Can you launch a movie with a DVDL3 client on one computer from MLserver located on another computer? Or should both DVDL3 and MLserver be located on the client PC?

Yes, you can. I have MLServer on my control PC along with DL3 but I also have a laptop with just DL3 and a PPC with DL PPC edition. You just have to add the hosts (MLServer computer) in the Setup area of DL3 on the clients.

[smoothtlk]

You can from any client run any command to any networked PC. There is a new command called MLRedirect that allows you to specify which PC is to execute the requested command. I have posted a lengthy setup procedure on cinemar's forum that outlines how to launch a movie from a pc (in my case a tablet PC) and then use the transport controls to operate that HTPC. At the same time, from the same tablet, you can direct commands to a third PC where a slinke may be attached, or Homeseer may be running.

The existing commands let you pretty much architect your solution any way you need it to be. Let us know what your setup wish is, and we can give you some help with how to accomplish the goal.

Regarding the switching of hosts, I haven't used ML with a IR remote as I use a tablet. But, if the client that you are controlling with the IR remote is configured in the .ini to look for movies on a particular MLServer instance, then you will be viewing only those movies (like Dan's situation for the kid's TV room). I am sure there is a way to program an IR event to switch which host you are pointed to.

[pantherman007]

New product looks great. I'll be ordering as soon as I pick up a DVD changer later this week. Question on the trailer functionality -

From looking at the help file, I see that there's a place in the database to identify a trailer for each movie. What I'm planning to do is rip various trailers (some THX, some DD or DTS, some movies) as VOB files to the HTPC but have most movies stay on the changer. When selecting a movie, I'd like for a few moive trailers, 1 THX and 1 DD/DTS trailer to be picked at random and played via the HTPC, then trigger the actual movie on the changer (Sony). Is this possible (or better yet, easy), given that I'd need to switch inputs on the receiver from the HTPC to the DVD changer at the right time? How would DVDL/MLServer know the right time to switch things over?

I guess I could pre-generate some batch commands (play trailer 1, pause, play trailer 2, pause, switch inputs, play) and have the DVDLobby trigger things that way, but I'd rather have DVDL do this for me and make it truly random.

Blake

[mcascio]

gtrogue,

Are you sure you Saved your scene then after making the change to 71% and then restarted MainLobby?

Is DVDLobby set as your default startup scene or are you starting MusicLobby first when booting mainlobby?

[schud]

Thanks smoothtlk,

MLRedirect was the trick. Very cool feature.

For anyone who cares, here's the command that redirects a command executed off my media server to be actually executed on my desktop PC:

MLServeCmd.MLRedirect|P2400::5004::MLServeCmd.MLFileOpen|<<FILE>>

Where "P2400" is my desktop PC

Thanks again for your help!

[smoothtlk]

Here's an example of a MLConditional statement:

&transportPlay=MLServeCmd.MLRedirect|HTPC1::5004::MLServeCmd.MLConditional|IsRunning##Zoom Player##MLZoomPlayer|PLAYPAUSE##MLRedirect|SERVER1;;5004;;MLServeCmd.MLSlinke|dvd1:play

When one hits the MainLobby transport control Play button, this command gets executed. It looks on the HTPC1 to see if Zoom Player is running, if it is. then it sends a Play button to Zoom. If it is not running, then the assumption is that the DVD Changer is being used and a SLinke IR command is sent to the SERVER1 pc (which has the slinke connected to it) and sends the IR Play command to the DVD changer.

So, you can see how complicated events can be sent to any PC on the network.

[gtrogue]

Can you add an MLConditional command to the default Play macro of DVDLobby?
I have two DVD changers. Both players turn on when I begin browsing my movies in DL3. After I select a movie I would like to turn off the changer that doesn't contain the movie I selected.
Is it even possible to do this with the MLConditional plugin?
Here's what I need:

if changer number is 1 then turn off changer number 2 else turn off changer number 1

What's the correct syntax for the statement above using the MLConditional plugin? Thanks.

[gtrogue]

Dan,
My MLServer takes forever to load up when I start Windows. I have an 18 second delay between the time MLServer loads until Mainlobby opens and it's not enough. MLServer sits at "Loading.... Registration" for 30 seconds or more. Since ML opens prior to MLServer fully loading there is no connection and I have to shut down ML and restart it to make the connection.

It almost looks like MLServer is waiting for a time out on the Registration part because once it moves past that it blasts through all the other stuff. Is there something I can do to make this go faster? Do I need to have some type of registration?

[gtrogue]

This thing is driving me crazy. I installed MLServer 1.11 and now no matter what sorting criteria I select in the DL Plugin DVD Lobby is always sorted by title. The mlserver.ini has the sort as changerlocation but it doesn't make any difference. Someone please help. Between the slow startup and this I am about to throw my PC out the window.

[K-Wood]

Based on a post at the Cinemar forum, the delay in opening MLServer could be due to its attempts to link to the atomic clock. Are you online when you try to open MLServer? If not, then it will try to link to the clock and then time out before continuing loading.

Haven't encountered the sort problem; can't help you there. Be sure to post over at the Cinemar forum.

- Ken

[gtrogue]

Yes I am online. It only happens on startup. If I launch MLServer after Windows has been running for a while it starts right up.

If this has something to do with the registration perhaps Dan can change it so the app starts up and then check in the background. Or better yet, let us register the stupid software so we can bypass all the trial version junk.

Since the MainLobby apps are all moving to a client/server model it would only make sense that MLServer should be included with the MainLobby or DVDLobby license.

Edit: Dan posted while I was ranting.

[dreicher]

gt,

I'm working on finishing up the registration system. To check the trial status of MainLobby Server, it connects to the atomic clock to get the date/time instead of using system time. On occassion, Windows has some difficulty making the connection and ends up waiting for a timeout. Once you receive your registration key, the issue will go away. I'm going to lessen the timeout period in v. 1.1.2 as well, to make things quicker.

Dan

[gtrogue]

Dan, any ideas about my sorting problem?

[dreicher]

gt,

Already fixed it - just need to roll up a few other things and get a release out. There was a bug introduced in 1.1.1

Dan

[dreicher]

gt,

MainLobby includes a 5-client license for MainLobby Server. The issue is not that, it's finalizing the registration system in a way that is as automated as possible whilst protecting our interests and intellectual property. I understand the frustration, and should be able to make things better in the short-term while I finalize the registration system. I know it's taking a while to complete (which is out of character for us in general), but once it's out there is no turning back, so we need to be 100% sure that it's perfect for now and the future.

Dan

[gtrogue]

Couple more things.
No start menu icon for DL PPC shows up on my Dell Axim X5 with Windows Mobile 2003. I have to launch it from the file exporer.

Also, I fired up DL PPC last night and didn't have any images, it was working fine the day before and I didn't make any changes to my setup between then and last night. The title and overview info was there but no image. The genre page also didn't have any information.

[dreicher]

Thanks for the info. I'll take a look to find out what's going on. I think we need to get out a "build" at this point with an updated and current release of MainLobby Server, MLDVDLobby plug-in, DVDLobby Pro 3.0, and DVDLobby PocketPC and make sure everything is in synch for everyone.

There have been a lot of updates over the past week and I think it's time to get to a "everybody's using" setup and move forward from there. Honestly, I think I may be using a version of DVDLobby Pro that is updated over what everyone else is using at this point, which may explain why I can't recreate most of the issues.

Dan

[cmcjo]

Hi Dan,

I am a registered user of main lobby as well.
I plan to have only one HTPC for my movies.
But I need to send the A/V to my modulators as well as DVI output to my HDTV.

Is this possible? and if so, can it be done with the ATI 8500DV card and have both video outputs at the same time going?

BTW: How is the quality of that composite video of the HTPC running through your modulators? Would you say it is comparable to a standard DVD modulated (which is very good)?
I use all Channel plus modulators.

THanks



Originally posted by dreicher
David,

In my personal case, I've got 3 HTPC's. 2 modulated to channels on my cable system and one dedicated. 1 of the modulated HTPC's is for kid's movies, so I can change to that host and only be looking at my kid's movies. Make a selection and any adjustments, then back to my "host" for controlling my movie. They're happy and I haven't even left my seat (which is generally rare with kids).

Of course, I never get to watch a movie so this is all theoretical. :)

Dan

[dreicher]

Joe,

I use a 3-channel modulator (Channel Plus). 2 channels are connected to additional PC's sourcing movies from the Media Server for viewing in any room in the house. Output resolution is quite good (yes, comparable to a standalone DVD Player -> composite out -> modulator). It's certainly not for the sect among us that spend more time watching for dot crawl and black levels than enjoying the movie, but that's another discussion altogether.

I'm not sure of the ability to output simultaneously DVI and composite from a ATI 8500. I'm assuming it's possible, because one is considered a "monitor" and one is considered a "TV" display and you can setup dual display to mirror each other. I use an S-Video output directly to my Living Room TV for viewing directly from the HTPC, but generally - I just use the modulated systems in case I want to finish the movie up in bed or whatever. Again, I'll say - I'm more interested in content when I watch a movie than I am quality. And my kids could give a rip how good Rolie Polie Olie looks are there 13" TV's.

Since you've already got all the equipment, and a 90% chance that it'll work the way you want - I'd go ahead and give it a run. If you can do it, I think you'll have onehelluva functional system that will give you a lot of enjoyment. Good luck.

Dan

[dreicher]

Okay. I have posted updates to MainLobby Server (version 1.2.0) and DVDLobby Pro 3.0. Registered users can update their software at: http://www.cinemaronline.com/login.html

Among some other things:

MLServer
Shortened registration timeout on initial load from 60 seconds to 10 seconds
Added command-line support for calling MLServeCmd's


MLDVDLobby Plug-in
Fixed sorting system - stopped working with last release.
Changed Collection Number data type to Integer to correct sorting by Collection Number


DVDLobby
Added 'Recently Purchased' custom genre to show last 28 purchased movies in descending order
Changed Most Watched and Recently viewed to 28 movies per genre
Fixed thumbnails not displaying when set to startup in thumbnail mode
Added additional information to 3 "smart" genres depending on genre

Mostly bug fixes, but now including the ability to call MLServeCmd's from the command-line. This should lay the foundation for being able to control MainLobby externally via Girder or other programs. From here, we should be able to diagnose and debug any outstanding issues in DVDLobby Pro 3.0. Everything is testing correctly on multiple systems for me - so I'm going forward with the notion that this fixes any outstanding software problems. If you're problem continues after updating MainLobby Server and DVDLobby Pro 3.0, please repost so I can debug and fix. Thanks for you patience.

Dan

[steve]

Dan,

A little bit above, you stated "MainLobby includes a 5-client license for MainLobby Server". Are you saying that only a max. of 5 users may be connected at any one time? When I was at CEDIA, I was told that you get an unlimited license for one address location (e.g., you can use the s/w on, for example, 10 machines at 1 address). This could be a difinite problem in installations having 6+ zones.

Steve

[gtrogue]

Dan, I upgraded to MLServer 1.2.0 and the newest DL3, now the sorting in MLServer works correctly but when you try to sort from within DVDLobby MLServer hangs. Any ideas?

[schud]

Originally posted by dreicher
Mostly bug fixes, but now including the ability to call MLServeCmd's from the command-line. This should lay the foundation for being able to control MainLobby externally via Girder or other programs.
Dan

Sorry to be so thick again, but does this mean that remote control users would use MLSERVE.COMMANDS to control DVDL3 rather than keyboard shortcuts?

[schud]

Originally posted by schud
Sorry to be so thick again, but does this mean that remote control users would use MLSERVE.COMMANDS to control DVDL3 rather than keyboard shortcuts?

Let me ask this a different way,

Originally posted by schud
Sorry to be so thick again, but does this mean that remote control users would use MLSERVE.COMMANDS as command lines via Girder to control DVDL3 rather than keyboard shortcuts?

[schud]

When you update MLServer, is there a way to update it without losing your previous database and settings? Just Replace the EXE?

[dreicher]

David,

While not possible today, that is the hope. Thanks again for the WONDERFUL suggestion. As of right now, you can use this from Girder to change scenes, among other things - so at least it's a step in the right direction. I will be building in hooks for DVDLobby 3.0 as quickly as possible to allow you to do that. If someone is willing to put together a list of things they'd like to be able to do - it would be a great reference for me to work from. I'm thinking we may be able to do and "end-around" around the arrow-key issue by making "generic" up/down/left/right/enter commands that allow you to navigate much of the interface from a remote. I'm also going to work on adding focus indicators to the panels...wish me luck. :)

t,

I've tried unsuccessfully to replicate. I'm going to keep looking for what might be causing this and may need to enlist some more information from you to get it resolved. Perhaps, you could send me a copy of your dvd.mdb and mlserver.ini file from the \Program Files\MLServer\data and \Program Files\MLServer directories, respectively. dreicher@cinemaronline.com

Dan

[dreicher]

David,

Just rerun the install. It will not affect your databases, .ini file or any registry settings from the previous installation. It will only overwrite plug-ins and the .exe that are more recent than what you already have.

Dan

[schud]

Dan:

"Recently Added" genre displays nothing for me.

[dreicher]

Fix coming very soon...

[schud]

How strange. At first, I thought it was because I was connected to a copy of MLserver that had not been updated. So I updated to 1.2 and now ONLY the new genre's work, and none of the old ones. I suppose that's what you're working on. :)

[dreicher]

Alright, last time! Promise! :)

Redownload 'em both and report back, please. 17th times the charm. :)

Dan

[schud]

Originally posted by gtrogue
Dan, I upgraded to MLServer 1.2.0 and the newest DL3, now the sorting in MLServer works correctly but when you try to sort from within DVDLobby MLServer hangs. Any ideas?

Dan,

Me too.

[schud]

404 Error after logging in to cinemar and clicking on MLserver :(

[gtrogue]

Dan, you have email.
Now, smoothtlk and schud have both replicated the sorting crash.

[dreicher]

gt/schud,

Sorting crash was a typo, fixed in the latest release. MLServer has been reposted and is ready for downloading. Dunno what happened there, but it should be fine now.

Dan

[schud]

Hi Dan:

Downloaded new MLS and DVDL3 and all seems to be working well. Good Job! :)

A couple of requests or comments:

1) Does anyone else think that it makes sense that if you select "genres" and then select "Recently Added," (or whatever genre you selected) that you should then be able to return to Overview mode and then scroll through the collection of of "Recently Added" movies? Unless I'm doing something wrong, it appears to me that when you go back to Overview mode, that the sort goes back to the complete collection sorted in movie title or whatever sort order you had before you entered Genre mode. In other words, I would like to browse via thumbnail or overview while limiting the collection to one of the genres.

2) If you can make that happen, then I would like to revisit the discussion on keyboard shortcuts (or MLserve command line options). I would really, really, really (did I say really enough?) like to have two keyboard shortcuts: 1) All movies and 2) Recently Added. I can tell you that being able to toggle between those two shortcuts, in combination with simply sorting the collection in whatever display mode you're in (overview or thumbnail) would take me a long way towards HT Nirvana.

Thanks again for your excellent work!

[dreicher]

David,

Thanks for the feedback. I'm adding it to the list for future releases and I think one way or another, we'll be able to make you a happy man.

Dan

[mdownard]

Originally posted by schud
Here's another MainLobby\DVDLobby user who uses a remote control and displays ML\DVDL on the big screen.

And here's another... the difference is I think the direction Cinemar is going is outstanding and addresses my needs and desires incredibly well.


Mike

[dreicher]

Our users asked, we've answered. In the next day or two, DVDLobby Pro 3.0 will be updated to included a 16:9 look built for television display and remote control. We've worked very hard to bring this to reality for users who've asked for it and are in the process of developing similar solutions for our entire suite of products; including adding TVLobby to the mix. The new interface will be included in an update to DVDLobby Pro 3.0 available free to registered users. We will post a formal annoucement when it's available.

Here's some screenshots of the working interface:

http://www.cinemaronline.com/oob/oobMovies_genre.jpg

http://www.cinemaronline.com/oob/oobMovies_firstletter.jpg

http://www.cinemaronline.com/oob/oobMovies_search.jpg

http://www.cinemaronline.com/oob/oobMovies_movieoptions.jpg


TVLobby teaser. :) Still in development.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/oob/oobTV_guide.jpg

http://www.cinemaronline.com/oob/oobTV_nowshowing.jpg

We're continuing to work to deliver the solutions you've asked for. Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.

Dan

[schud]

OMG! :eek:

Dan's The Man!

Dan:

All I can say is WOW! I never envisioned capability like that!

Just don't drop it on us Thanksgiving eve, as Momma has already told me I'm not playing with the computers or the forum until after the Thanksgiving thrash, err, I mean gathering, is over! :D

Seriously though, for me, this appears that it will be the single most important piece of HT software for my HTPC besides TheaterTek (and of course, DVD Shrink ;) )

Thanks for the update!

[mcascio]

David,

I typically don't have time to actually "configure" things so they work in my house, but I had a chance to demo the new DVDLobby Pro 3 TV version for a few friends of mine while they were in town this weekend.

They know me pretty well and it now takes a lot to impress them. Needless to say they were blown away by the interface and ease of use.

I just handed them a basic streamzap remote and let them at it. I think they spent about 20 minutes just going through all the movies.

It was actually fun to see them interact with the software.

It would be nice to get some games integrated now with the Cover art which we will eventually.

This release is a major step forward for remote control users and a few nights catch up sleep for Dan and I.

It is natively designed for 16:9 screens at 1366x768 but will scale accordingly. I'm sure it will pop on a plasma screen. If anyone wants to donate a plasma for testing, Dan and I will surely give it a good home. :)

Careful consideration went into color choices and large legible fonts.

[boykster]

Damn guys, looking good....

I retract my previous rant about lack of functionality for remote users, and applause loudly.

Seriously, that's 1 nice looking UI, might be enough to convince me to upgrade my old DVDLobby install. Combined with the fact that my RAID system crashed last week (I have a love/hate relationship with linux/software raid), and I'm starting fresh ripping my DVD's <again!>, sounds like time for an overhaul.

Cheers,

Rich

[schud]

Originally posted by boykster
Damn guys, looking good....

I retract my previous rant about lack of functionality for remote users, and applause loudly.

Rich,

Don't do that (well, you can still applaud loudly ;) )! This only proves the old adage that, when there's someone actually listening, the squeaky wheel gets the grease!

The difference here is that Mario and Dan are actually listening, which is what make's this all the more impressive, and will only ensure that Cinemar's "niche" in the market is going to get a whole lot bigger.

I do think I get it though......ML\DVDL $109.99 + $40 streamzap remote = a custom on-screen browzer to navigate and play your DVD collection for $150.00!

Mario,

You should probably go ahead and start selling the streamzap remote as another add-on similar to media jukebox and the thin client software.

I'm sure I'm not suggesting anything that you haven't already considered, but what about a Cinemar branded learning remote with the primary navigation keys already silk screened? That would truly add that extra bit of fit and finish we've come to expect from Cinemar!

I do think this should only broaden the appeal of the Cinemar apps to more customers.

[cmcjo]

Looks fantastic!
This really is the perfect interface for your media collections.

In addition to the genres listed above, (action, adventure..., can I add one that says "KIDS" for just the kids movies.?

Also, do you have plans to add this type of display for music lobby in the future? I hate navigating my collection with the media center box.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

[cmcjo]

BTW: what does that "preview" button do? If it plays a trailer, that would be truly awesome.

[gtrogue]

Dan, I notice that the overviews get cut off. How do you scroll them in the new interface? Does it control any better from Girder?

[denness544]

I haven't been keeping up with Cinemar and the newer products and would like to know I can find any useful guides. I am a registered user and have ML 2.0 and DVDLobby 2.0. I noticed in my downloads, there is Mainlobby Server. I can't seem to find the information on that on your forum. Please if anyone can link me it'll be most helpful.

I recently gave up on DVDLobby awhile back, but now these improvements really interest me to give your product another chance. Thanks!

[dreicher]

denness544,

You can find MLServer information at:

http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.html

and on the Cinemar forum

http://www.caseserve.com/cinemar/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=35

Let us know if you have any specific questions.

Dan

[dreicher]

Okay, tease is over....

Cinemar is very excited to announce the first in a line of component modules designed specifically for display on television screens and controlled via remote control. Registered users of DVDLobby Pro 3.0 can get the new version by downloading DVDLobby Pro 3.0 from the Cinemar login. The new version is designated dvdlobby3_tv.swf and uses the same dvdlobby3.ini file as the standard version of DVDLobby Pro 3.0.

Users should also download MainLobby Server v. 1.2.2 from the login area or http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.html

This release also includes an update to the standard DVDLobby module that fixes the shifting bug in previous releases and an in-progress solution for adding movies from the client (it is not fully operational at this time).

All of the remote contol modules will adhere to the same keystroke layout for programming your remote controls. The remote commands are:

UP Up Arrow or W
DOWN Dn Arrow or Z
RIGHT Right Arrow or S
LEFT Left Arrow or A
ENTER X
BUTTON1 U
BUTTON2 I
BUTTON3 O
BUTTON4 P
PAGEUP PAGE UP or R
PAGEDN PAGE DOWN or F
HELP H

DVDLobby for TV Display uses the right/left arrows to move through thumbnails. Stopping on a thumbnail will retrieve movie information for that movie. Up/Down will navigate through Genres or First Letters. Button 1 toggles between genre/first letter mode. ENTER (X) will select the movie and display options for the movie to PLAY MOVIE, PLAY TRAILER or return to browsing.

Button 2 will open the search dialog. Use the arrow keys to move around the options and ENTER (X) to select an option.

PAGEUP / PAGEDOWN will scroll through overview text.

Button 3 will launch the trailer for the currently selected movie and Button 4 will launch the movie. This component is designed for 16:9 display; however, it will autoshift on 4:3 displays to yield a "letterbox" version. Fonts and font sizes have been carefully chosen to offer the highest level of visibility on television displays without compromising our interface standards.

We will soon be releasing solutions for our weather module and a new TV module. Music and other solutions will be available in the future.

We have changed the design of the initially released screenshots to coincide more with the look of the other Lobby components. Currently, the background skin is fixed.

Dan

[dreicher]

In addition to the genres listed above, (action, adventure..., can I add one that says "KIDS" for just the kids movies.?

Using the MLDVDLobby plug-in for MainLobby Server (the server component that makes it all work) you can assign any Genre you'd like: Kids, Wife (although you may want to use her real name), Dog, etc. to create "Favorites" lists. It's very big in my house.

Also, do you have plans to add this type of display for music lobby in the future? I hate navigating my collection with the media center box.

We are in the process of developing similar solutions for our entire suite of products. Depending on response (so far so good) Mario and I may forego another few nights of sleep to speed the process along.

what does that "preview" button do? If it plays a trailer, that would be truly awesome.

Truthfully, you can set it up to do whatever you want, but most people use it to play trailers.

I notice that the overviews get cut off. How do you scroll them in the new interface?

Page Down or F / Page Up or R will scroll the overview. I haven't tried it with Girder to give you a proper response on that. Hopefully, someone else will chime in there.

Thanks everyone for your kind words. We have been listening, and although it's taken longer than anyone would have liked - the transition to a client/server arrangement has allowed us to develop solutions quickly for multiple platforms (TV, PC, PPC) and we hope to continue the momentum for some time to come. Wait until you get ahold of TVLobby or some of the other goodies we're working on now. It will really allow our users to build a system that is fully-featured with a common (and beautiful - hats off to Mario) interface across multiple display/input devices.

Dan

[dreicher]

I do think this should only broaden the appeal of the Cinemar apps to more customers.

David,

We're officially putting you in charge of "spreading the word". :)

Dan

[denness544]

Look what you did! I just upgraded to DVDLobby 3.0 =X

[lido]

Dan/Mario-

Congratulations to both of you on the release of this newest *Lobby product. The rate at which you are delivering high-quality programs is astonishing. You two have taken automation control to a whole new level over the last few months, and if I may speak for the rest of the AVS community, we thank you.

Your dedication to delivering a product that is second to none is not unnoticed, and the customer support you deliver is amazing.

Keep up the good work, your product is clearly unequaled.

-Lido

[boykster]

Well, I've just spent about 20 minutes playing with the new DVDLobby_tv interface, and man it's COOL!

Hats off to you guys...

I added some dummy movies using mlserver (add from internet), setup dvdlobby_tv (took me abit to figure it out, but it's working now), an bam! there were the movies...uber cool. And on top of that, if I go to mlserver and add another movie (while dvdlobby is still running) it gets added to dvdlobby "automagically"...good stuff indeed.

I did notice that the "Genres" aren't updated on the client automatically (or maybe I didn't wait long enough), but having the new movies show up is great....

Now, to rewrite some of my software to work with this new toy...hmmm....

Cheers!

Rich

[K-Wood]

Dan and Mario: Why did you decide to do the dvdlobby3_tv as a .swf layer instead of a .mls scene? Is it still possible to design a button in ML that opens up the DVDLobby .swf layer?

I guess I'm a little confused about the whole swf thing . . . .


Unrelated question: What's going on with the Cinemar forum site? It seems to be down.

[boykster]

good question K-wood...I stumbled around trying to figure out how to use the _tv version for a few minutes before I realized what was going on (not an mls scene, but a swf)....

Rich

[dreicher]

Wow, everyone. Thanks. I'm blushing. I think you've convinced us that we're heading in the right direction with this - and definitely motivated us to keep going. We hope to continue to provide our users with what they want and add value to the Lobby suite of products. Thank you all for your continued support, feedback, and patience.

Ken,

DVDLobby 3 TV was created as an .swf just like the rest of the lobby components. An .swf is nothing more than a Flash outputted file. In my NoDoz induced fervor to get it out the door, I neglected to create a corresponding .mls file. An .mls file is just a container for buttons and .swfs that MainLobby reads and loads the appropriate elements. To create your own .mls for DVDLobby 3 TV:

1) On the MainLobby menubar, click 'New'
2) Click 'Options'
3) If there are any values in the textboxes for BackgroundFX, OverlayFX or Background Skin - remove them.
4) Click the 'browse' button to the right of the BackgroundFX text box.
5) Select dvdlobby3_tv.swf from your hard drive.
6) On the menubar, click 'As' to save your .mls file
7) Add any buttons you'd like to the stage. For this type of display/control - consider adding any button, setting the alpha to 0% (completely transparent) and assigning a keyboard shortcut to the button. This will allow you to add more functionality to your remote control to change scenes, send MLServeCmd's, etc. without affecting the look of the interface.
8) Save it as dvdlobby3_tv.mls
9) Click 'OK' and it should load the .mls file for you.

You can then link to it as a scene in MainLobby, add buttons to the stage, etc. I will add a predone .mls to the next update. I'm assuming there will be some "issues" or feature requests that I can also roll up very soon.

Dan

[jfaith]

Dan,

This new TV version is great! I think many people would now consider this product vs. some of the closed box solutions out there. I personally will be using a combination of PC client and IR universal remote control.

Jeff

[boykster]

Any hints on how to close Mainlobby using a keystroke (other than ESC)? I've been able to map all the keys for the DVDLobby3_tv setup, other than exit (ESC) using girder. For some reason, ESC either isn't getting passed, or isn't being recognized.

I tried using girder "Close" application, and it throws an error in ML (in french no less). I need an "elegant" way to close / restart ML for various reasons (my server software likes to make sure software is 'fresh'), and to keep the genres up to date -- if this is "fixed" (ie, genres update automatically as the dvd's do) then this won't be an issue...

EDIT: Never mind...I figured it out...I just set the girder target to mainlobby.exe ONLY, and the error doesn't raise.

I'd check the cinemar forum, but it seems to be down at the moment. Too bad, because I also need to read up on how to create the commands to launch my movies....


Also, Dan, I've been able to raise a few application errors in MLServer (some in the DVDLobby plugin)...

In the DVDL plugin - Press "Test" before selecting anything in the listbox (movies)

Error: Run-time error 381: Invalid Property array index.


Cheers!

Rich

[sleonard]

Hi

I'm in the process of researching and designing a whole home entertainment system based on HTPC's and a home network. So far this is what I envision:

HW: Several HTPC's throughout the house, 1 in a home theater using a PJ for display, 1 in living room connected to an HDTV, and several others located in bedrooms/home offices using computer monitors (as big and nice as I can afford). 1 file server using RAID5 and several TB storage for holding home videos, ripped DVD's, recorded TV, recorded radio, and music. I will not be using any standalone consumer electronic boxes such as DVD players, jukeboxes, DVHS recorders, or anything you would normally find in an A/V rack. This is PC only. The exceptions to that last rule are cable/satelite STB's and a 5.1/7.1 reference amp to drive speakers in the theater. I am thinking of putting in some touchscreens into walls for additional control as well as using PocketPC via WiFi. Home automation stuff built in to the house (I know very little about HA yet but I want it tied in with the entertainment network on all displays)

SW: This is the reason for this post. I have been looking strongly at SageTV as the upcoming 2.0 looks very powerful and will do a lot of what I want to do, esp. the network capable PVR functions. I recently found out about the Lobby suite and think it is absolutely beautiful and it will also do most of what I want but I am worried about the network PVR functions that SageTV does so well. I have seen a few posts by Mario about an upcoming TVLobby app and would like to see it compared with Sage. So here (finally) are my questions:

1) Will TVLobby handle multiple tuner cards located in multiple HTPC's and use the file server/network for watching live TV, PVR functions, and network streaming of recorded content?

2) Will it support OTA HD tuner cards now? In the future?

3) Will it support OTA HD tuner cards with all the features listed in Q1?

4) I saw the screenshots on page 6 of the EPG. Will it require a subscription? or free like Sage? Can it use XMLTV?

5) umm, I forgot my last question already. :confused: Need to take my Ritalin. :D

This will be a multi-year DIY project. I'm very patient and I am spending a lot of time on research but would like to narrow down my choices over the next few months.

[Steve Goff]

Originally posted by mcascio

I just handed them a basic streamzap remote and let them at it. I think they spent about 20 minutes just going through all the movies.


So is there a Streamzap CFF that one can use for a Pronto or Pocket PC to control DVDLobby or Mainlobby?

[dreicher]

sleonard,

The Lobby Suite is a "front-end" solution with some built-in functionality for some things, but mostly allows the user to overlay our interface on top of the capability of other programs - including Sage TV. Honestly, at this point, we don't know where TVLobby will evolve: whether it will stay as a EPG with ability to communicate with other programs or if full PVR capability will be worked in over time.

The beauty of the Lobby suite is that it will allow you to have a common, intuitive interface across all of your hardware devices. Mario and I have been prototyping the setup you explain as we see it as the future of home automation/entertainment:

Set-top boxes with control via remote - displayed on TV's or standalone monitors. Webpads/PDA's with the ability to change "hosts" to control a TV in the bedroom or living room at the push of a button. And a media server (or several) to serve media files and record broadcast.

TVLobby will be able to utilize XMLTV information from the very beginning. If all your looking for is a nice frontend to networked PVR, Sage TV 2.0 ("Studio") will suit your needs nicely and adding anything on top of that may be unecessary; however, if you want a way to also source movies, music, images, home automation/control, etc. in a unified interface - our suite is one of a few options available to you. We are currently the only solution that offers a unified look/feel/setup across the PC/PDA/TV display/control platforms.

Good luck in your quest and let us know if we can do anything for you.

Dan

[dreicher]

Steve,

We will be working on a Pocket PC remote that will send the keyboard shortcuts necessary for the TV display stuff; however, one is not available at this time. You can, however, create one yourself that sends the keys specified in the launch post whilst you wait - plus you can add additional keys for changing scenes, sending MLServeCmd's, etc.

Dan

[boykster]

Dan,

I have a couple of quick questions:

When using the new DVDLobby_tv swf, and issue a command to launch a movie (MLServe.Something), I assume that the command (FileOpen for example) is executed on the machine that the server resides on, is this correct?

So if that's true, but I have 2-3 "clients" (pcs that I want to display DVDLobby, as well as play the movie locally on), I should run MLServer on each of the "client" pcs?

And if that's the case, is there an easy way to share the database of movies across MLServer installs?

I've been playing with some ideas on how to do this, but if you have suggestions, I'm all ears.

Cheers, and thanks in advance....

Rich

[smoothtlk]

boykster,
There is a MLServeCmd called Redirect that sends the command to whatever client you have on the lan that is also running it's own instance of MLServer. So, your File Open can be executed on the PC you choose.

Each client can connect to one or several MLServers. The DVDLobby plugin (with a movie database) can be running on any one of the MLServer instances. You can segregate your movie collection, or aggregate them. Your choice.

[dreicher]

Rich,

I'm going to be working on a "synch" solution for the database across multiple clients, as many of our dealers have requested this feature.

You are correct in your assessment that you'll want to have a copy of MLServer running on each client you want to display movies on. Launching of the movies on a disparate client can be accomplished by using the MLRedirect command or (more likely in your case) changing hosts to the PC you want control of. We haven't added support for host switching in the TV version yet (or remote control commands) because we weren't sure how popular the solution would be. Look for those capabilities to be added soon. The other option is to run MLServer on each computer and just run DVDLobby connecting to "localhost". You'll then be controlling the computer you are viewing DVD information on (which is probably the most likely situation when using TV display). At any rate, there are many ways to accomplish the task you're attempting.

Hope that puts you in the right direction, but it should go the other way: if you've got some specific needs that we need to address - then we're all ears. :)

Dan

[boykster]

hmmm...thanks smoothtlk,

That makes things interesting...

Now to choose the "best" way of handling all this...

Cheers,

Rich

[cmcjo]

Hi Dan,
I upgraded to the latest DVD lobby and paid via your website. When should I expect the link to download? Also, how do I update to the latest Main Lobby 2.3c version?
THanks

[smoothtlk]

cmcjo,
you should get an email with a link and password to the registered download page. There you will have links to the products you have purchased. 2.30c is also there. If you have 2.30b, then just replace the mainlobby.exe with the one in the 2.30c file.

[cmcjo]

Yeah but I thought you get the link within a few minutes?
It's been about an hour.

Now I sound impatient.

[cmcjo]

I was just hoping they didn't close for the holiday.

[Steve Goff]

Originally posted by dreicher
Steve,

We will be working on a Pocket PC remote that will send the keyboard shortcuts necessary for the TV display stuff; however, one is not available at this time. You can, however, create one yourself that sends the keys specified in the launch post whilst you wait - plus you can add additional keys for changing scenes, sending MLServeCmd's, etc.

Dan

I have a 1024x768 LCD monitor hooked up to the VGA port of my HTPC, and watch movies through the DVI connector from the graphics card or the DVI connector of the HOL3D HD-Aux card, on a 1280x720 DLP projector. I'd like to view the DVDLobby interface on either the LCD screen or, perhaps, the DLP screen. I own a Streamzap remote and IR receiver, that I got with my HOLO3d card, a Pronto, and a Pocket PC, and have a CCF file that works with the Streamzap codes to run the HOLO software with the Pronto or the Pocket PC using a program from PDAWin that lets you use CCFs on a Pocket PC. Can these in combination let me control the DVDLobby interface interface via IR using the pronto or Pocket PC? Sorry if this seems a little dense, but its important to my decision.

[mcascio]

Joe,

You're all set. Check your email. :)

[cmcjo]

Hey Mario, Thanks
Already downloaded. I am going to get the musiclobby too. That looks great.

Happy Holiday.

[dreicher]

Closed for the holiday? Now, that's funny. :D

Dan

[mcascio]

Hey Mario, Thanks

Already downloaded. I am going to get the musiclobby too. That looks great.

Happy Holiday.

And remember, the Lobby Suite makes a great stocking stuffer or heck, stuff your Turkey too. :)


MusicLobby in jukebox mode will be the hit of your Xmas jubilee. :) IT's even more fun with spiked eggnog. ;)

[dreicher]

Steve,

I'm not intimately familiar with PDAWin and it's ability to send keystrokes to your PC from a .CCF - perhaps someone in the forum is. At any rate, there's a way to make it happen and I'll figure it out. Unfortunately, we're not ready to roll out MainLobby for the PocketPC just yet - otherwise that would definitely get you going.

Dan

[mcascio]

Originally posted by Steve Goff
I have a 1024x768 LCD monitor hooked up to the VGA port of my HTPC, and watch movies through the DVI connector from the graphics card or the DVI connector of the HOL3D HD-Aux card, on a 1280x720 DLP projector. I'd like to view the DVDLobby interface on either the LCD screen or, perhaps, the DLP screen. I own a Streamzap remote and IR receiver, that I got with my HOLO3d card, a Pronto, and a Pocket PC, and have a CCF file that works with the Streamzap codes to run the HOLO software with the Pronto or the Pocket PC using a program from PDAWin that lets you use CCFs on a Pocket PC. Can these in combination let me control the DVDLobby interface interface via IR using the pronto or Pocket PC? Sorry if this seems a little dense, but its important to my decision.

At the same time Steve, you can use your streamzap to control DVDlobby 3 or even your Pronto. When time permits, I'll put together a Pronto TSU6000 color remote specifically for it. In the meantime, you can download a keyboard IR commands from RemoteCentral. I actually bought a LiteOn Airboard wireless keyboard with receiver and just learned the necessary keyboard shortcut commands into the Pronto. Works like a charm.

[gtrogue]

Dan, when I open the DVDLobby_tv.mls the screen is blank, black, nada. The other two DVDLobby skins work fine. Any ideas?

[mcascio]

gtrogue,

Make sure you've unzipped to the Cinemar folder and not placed the SWF into a sub folder.

[gtrogue]

I did Mario. Any more ideas?

[mcascio]

You may walk thru Dan's step by step:
1) On the MainLobby menubar, click 'New'
2) Click 'Options'
3) If there are any values in the textboxes for BackgroundFX, OverlayFX or Background Skin - remove them.
4) Click the 'browse' button to the right of the BackgroundFX text box.
5) Select dvdlobby3_tv.swf from your hard drive.
6) On the menubar, click 'As' to save your .mls file
7) Add any buttons you'd like to the stage. For this type of display/control - consider adding any button, setting the alpha to 0% (completely transparent) and assigning a keyboard shortcut to the button. This will allow you to add more functionality to your remote control to change scenes, send MLServeCmd's, etc. without affecting the look of the interface.
8) Save it as dvdlobby3_tv.mls
9) Click 'OK' and it should load the .mls file for you.

[gtrogue]

Where's that step by step. How'd I miss it? It's working now. Thanks.

[gtrogue]

How about another question?

My movies are always sorted by title in DL even though MLServer shows them sorted by changer location. Is this normal?

[dreicher]

T.,

For the TV display, they're all returned by title. I'll check into making that correspond with the sort option in MLDVDLobby plug-in.

Dan

[Steve Goff]

Originally posted by mcascio
At the same time Steve, you can use your streamzap to control DVDlobby 3 or even your Pronto. When time permits, I'll put together a Pronto TSU6000 color remote specifically for it. In the meantime, you can download a keyboard IR commands from RemoteCentral. I actually bought a LiteOn Airboard wireless keyboard with receiver and just learned the necessary keyboard shortcut commands into the Pronto. Works like a charm.

Cool! Will the CFF work with the Streamzap IR receiver, or do I need to buy an airboard?

[gtrogue]

Dan/Mario, You guys know there's a bandwidth exceeded message when you try to access the Cinemar forum, right?

[sleonard]

Originally posted by dreicher
sleonard,

The Lobby Suite is a "front-end" solution with some built-in functionality for some things, but mostly allows the user to overlay our interface on top of the capability of other programs - including Sage TV. Honestly, at this point, we don't know where TVLobby will evolve: whether it will stay as a EPG with ability to communicate with other programs or if full PVR capability will be worked in over time.

The beauty of the Lobby suite is that it will allow you to have a common, intuitive interface across all of your hardware devices. Mario and I have been prototyping the setup you explain as we see it as the future of home automation/entertainment:

Set-top boxes with control via remote - displayed on TV's or standalone monitors. Webpads/PDA's with the ability to change "hosts" to control a TV in the bedroom or living room at the push of a button. And a media server (or several) to serve media files and record broadcast.

TVLobby will be able to utilize XMLTV information from the very beginning. If all your looking for is a nice frontend to networked PVR, Sage TV 2.0 ("Studio") will suit your needs nicely and adding anything on top of that may be unecessary; however, if you want a way to also source movies, music, images, home automation/control, etc. in a unified interface - our suite is one of a few options available to you. We are currently the only solution that offers a unified look/feel/setup across the PC/PDA/TV display/control platforms.

Good luck in your quest and let us know if we can do anything for you.

Dan

Thanks for the lightning quick reply Dan. That's the kind of thing that companies can do to earn my respect and allegiance.

Let me make sure I understand correctly. Using the setup I described earlier I could use Sage for the networked TV/PVR functions, one or more media applications to catalog and play ripped music and DVD's and home video, and other HW/SW for home automation and security system and your Lobby suite would put an intuitive (and VERY nice looking) GUI on top of everything no matter what display I was using at the time.

In other words, the Lobby suite is really just a powerful interface for the HW and SW that actually does all the work behind the scenes. Not that I mean to make it look less powerful because, IMO, it makes it more powerful by letting me choose the various different 3rd party solutions I like best for a particular task and then make it all look and act like it was custom made to work together seamlessly.

If this is the case then, if I were you, I would not try to compete with Sage at all by adding PVR functions and instead call them up and start working with them so that you can provide the best looking front end available for the best networked PVR.

[schud]

Great Work Dan. This looks very promising.

I think you've got a hit for the handheld remote crowd.

I think everything in the TV version will work well for me except for one thing: (so far, anyway ;) ) I would like to be able to launch the movie and the trailer directly, like you can with the standard DVDL3.0 with the "p" letter.

You see, I've got a Crestron touch panel, which affords more flexibility than a handheld IR remote, but less than going the tablet pc\thin client route. My little Crestron panel would be very similar in capability to the Phillips Pronto remote.

The reason I want to do this is I can program my Crestron panel to page flip directly to the TheaterTek transport control page when the "play movie" or "play trailer" buttons are selected. A generic "select" button doesn't offer that kind of flexibility.

It could just launch the currently selected movie without going into "movie options" mode.

What do you think? How many times must I say please?

[dreicher]

sleonard,

You're right there. That's pretty much what we do. We do offer built-in functionality for some basic tasks via MainLobby Server (our server component), but mostly it's plug-ins communicate with hardware/software devices that are made by people who specialize in that area. It allows the end user to choose TheaterTek, Zoom Player, etc. for movie playback based on their needs and budget. We allow you to put a nice looking interface across your multiple control devices that looks like it was done just for you and the ability to customize it (more or less) to your needs.

By doing this, you are open to use the best of grade for each particular piece of the puzzle and not be tied to one application to serve all your needs (which none can). We're like BASF - we don't make the products, we just make 'em better or easier to use or look nicer. :)

Currently, we rely on J. River's Media Center for music cataloging, but that will open up in the future. We use our own system for movie cataloging, editing and adding from an online database.

The other thing about our server software is the ability to "tie it all together". Using our server and a macro, you could for instance:

Start the movie in TheaterTek, dim the lites, change sources on your receiver via IR/serial, mute the kids, whatever you can imagine - all in one command. And all from one button or command in MainLobby.

We have no interest in getting in the PVR solutions game. SageTV, Showshifter, etc. all do a fine job and we're not in the business of playing catch up. We've had a longstanding relationship with Dan Kardatzke, President/CEO at Frey Technologies and are both looking for ways to tightly integrate our products as we continue to evolve. It's a win-win situation. They get an interface to dream of and we get tighter control over very popular hardware/software solutions thereby enhancing our value to the end-user.

Again, good luck in your quest and I'm confident we'll win you over in the end. :)

Dan

[dreicher]

David,

Three times and you've got yourself a deal. :D

Dan

[schud]

"Please," "Please," "Please," and how 'bout "with sugar on top" for good measure! :D

Cool. This gives a different direction to go with my touch panel layout while I impatiently, err, I mean patiently wait! ;)

[dreicher]

David,

Okay - thought of something (which is something in and of itself). We've "held" four buttons for the TV versions: U, I, O, P. In the DVD version, only button 1 and 2 are being used - so I'm going to use button3 for trailers: "O" and button4 for movies: "P". Just so you don't have to change midstream.

Dan

[schud]

Originally posted by dreicher
David,

Okay - thought of something (which is something in and of itself). We've "held" four buttons for the TV versions: U, I, O, P. In the DVD version, only button 1 and 2 are being used - so I'm going to use button3 for trailers: "O" and button4 for movies: "P". Just so you don't have to change midstream.

Dan

Yes!

[dreicher]

Okay, that's done. It will be in the next update. Should have made you ask 4 times. :D

Dan

[dreicher]

Anyone else have anything on the client side they'd like to see real quick. I think I'm going to post an update with David's request and the .mls included yet tonight, but want to shove in anything else that's hanging out there. A quick scan of the last few pages doesn't yield much in the way of feature requests - although, with all the kinds words I didn't mind rereading. :)

Dan

[sleonard]

Originally posted by dreicher
sleonard,

You're right there. That's pretty much what we do. We do offer built-in functionality for some basic tasks via MainLobby Server (our server component), but mostly it's plug-ins communicate with hardware/software devices that are made by people who specialize in that area. It allows the end user to choose TheaterTek, Zoom Player, etc. for movie playback based on their needs and budget. We allow you to put a nice looking interface across your multiple control devices that looks like it was done just for you and the ability to customize it (more or less) to your needs.

By doing this, you are open to use the best of grade for each particular piece of the puzzle and not be tied to one application to serve all your needs (which none can). We're like BASF - we don't make the products, we just make 'em better or easier to use or look nicer. :)

Currently, we rely on J. River's Media Center for music cataloging, but that will open up in the future. We use our own system for movie cataloging, editing and adding from an online database.

The other thing about our server software is the ability to "tie it all together". Using our server and a macro, you could for instance:

Start the movie in TheaterTek, dim the lites, change sources on your receiver via IR/serial, mute the kids, whatever you can imagine - all in one command. And all from one button or command in MainLobby.

We have no interest in getting in the PVR solutions game. SageTV, Showshifter, etc. all do a fine job and we're not in the business of playing catch up. We've had a longstanding relationship with Dan Kardatzke, President/CEO at Frey Technologies and are both looking for ways to tightly integrate our products as we continue to evolve. It's a win-win situation. They get an interface to dream of and we get tighter control over very popular hardware/software solutions thereby enhancing our value to the end-user.

Again, good luck in your quest and I'm confident we'll win you over in the end. :)

Dan

I think you just did :cool: As soon as I get Sage 2.0 and some of the other stuff set up on a test system I'll be d/l your trial version!

[KidSquid]

Dan/Mario...

The Cinemar forum is down....

[smoothtlk]

Dan, possibly circular navigation through the Genres? currently they are either down to the bottom or up to the top of the choices. Faster if it's circular.

Also, it is working a bit funky with a touchscreen (yeah, I know it wasn't designed for a touchscreen - but it looks good!) when clicking on a thumbnail, it says 781 of 52 and then the movie that is clicked on, doesn't show up as the poster. If this is out of scope, don't worry about it.

[gtrogue]

Dan/Mario, I have one small request, for now.;)
Can you add the changer location and changer number to the UI? Those of us with multiple DVD changers have no way of knowing which changer the discs are in because they are always sorted by title. Maybe you could add it under the year on the left side of the screen.

[schud]

A tip for those programming keyboard shortcuts via Girder: it appears to me that, at the present time, that the shortcuts only work with lower case letters.

Otherwise, everything works great!

I'm providing a standing ovation for Dan and Mario! :D :D :D

[dreicher]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to be bring circular navigation to all versions of DVDLobby in the near future.

T.,

I'll work out a solution that doesn't adversely affect the non-changered among us and still blends with the interface. Actually, Mario will - but I'll ask him nicely. :D

smooth,

I'll take a look into it. If we can accomodate a touchscreen interface without chaning the UI, we might as well give it a try, but it could be difficult without introducing any buttons (which we won't be doing here).

sleonard,

Glad to hear it. Do us all a favor and keep some notes on your journey and post some updates on your progress. I think a great many of us are looking to the future to do exactly as you're proposing, and would love some recon to start from.

schud,

Nice catch. Thanks.

Everyone,

Thanks for your feedback and support. I will be taking some time over the next 36 hours to catch up on sleep and enjoy The West Wing marathon on Bravo. :) Might even spend some time with my family. I hope there still around the house somewhere. Have a safe and happy holiday and, most importantly, show off the Lobby suite to everyone you have over!

Cheers!

Dan

[SteveB]

Dan,

Not sure you've caught this but when I'm changing device in setup when I start typing the name of my AVServer I get to "s" and it immediately defaults to the search bar?

No mad rush, enjoy the family and turkey.

Happy thanksgiving to you guys over the pond!!

Steve

PS Cinemar forum has been down for me for 36hours!!

[Sundog_AK]

I have a couple issues with various a couple of the Lobby components. I had originally only intended to note the DVD Lobby issue..but figure might as well get the other ones out there too.

DVD Lobby 3:
I have one glitch with the TV front end for DVD lobby. The thumbnails on the bottom right panel do not show the thumbnaile graphics (just grey but yellow outline shows up). The main graphic above the movie rating shows up fine. The thumbnails also show up fine in the original DVD Lobby 3 MLS file so I don't think it is a cover art issue.

I also had the same problem as one other poster that the dvdlobby3_tv.mls file you have in the current zip file that comes up as a black screen. Using the instructions on this forum I got it to work but otherwise I would have had no idea how to get it going.

ML Server:
I downloaded the MLServer 1.2.1 update (from 1.2.0) and now it seems to be very inconsistent on loading virtual drive paths for DVDs on hard drive that worked fine in 1.2.0 with Zoom Player. It isn't the script since it is the same as before, and if I hit test over and over it will eventually load and play normal. Other times works fine on first pass. I may just zap the directory and see if something got hosed up in the upgrade or just go back to 1.2.0. It doesn't seem to be a computer resource issue. Fortunately, I am in the testing/fiddling phase so it isn't a production box yet.

Help Files:

I know time is always a constraint and help files are the last to get dealt with, but as new user I found it very time consuming to try and track down the various help files. Some are on the web site, some are in CHM files, others in readme files, and yet others are on sites like this and other forums (e.g., the controls for the TV MLS file for DVDLobby). A link on your web site to the various "most current" help files or "forum" how to's would be extremely helpful and less frustrating for "newbies", or a central folder in the program folder with the help files.

Versions: It would also be helpful if there was some indication of the date/version on the download page for registered users. The DVD Lobby3 zip file is obviously "newer" since the TV MLS file was added, but you couldn't tell unless you consistently follow the web forums.

MusicLobby:
Something that should be added to your help file on your web page for MusicLobby is that special characters (specifically the "#" symbol) in an album title folder will prevent load up of the album cover art if the art is stored in that same folder as the music files (MC 9 displays just fine with symbols in folder name). I fiddled around a long time thinking it was a cover art issue.

There should also be a note on that same page that loading a large playlist or your entire music library in MC 9 and then running MusicLobby will drag things to a crawl within musiclobby. It didn't click in my mind when I first started trying out MusicLobby that it was the playlist size that was the issue since it would work fine sometimes (with smaller playlists selected) and other times grind to a halt to where I had to terminate the program to regain control. It would be helpful if MusicLobby had some way of looking at the number of songs first before trying to swallow the whole deal or at least allow a graceful exit and/or way of selecting a smaller play list before going off the rails. Ideally, the data path between MC9 and MusicLobby could handle large data sets so it wouldn't matter either way....but I understand the limitations of the various software connections at the moment. However, not knowing that limitation made me think the program was buggy and I came close to giving up on using it.

Anyway, such are my "quick" comments at the moment.

Happy Thanksgiving..... :)

Chris

[schud]

Hi Dan,

Hope your enjoying your holiday.

It appears that MLS 1.2.2 is not launching on start-up, even when the check boxes are checked.

I've confirmed this on two PC's.

Hope you enjoy your day off.

[smoothtlk]

schud,
Do you have MLserver.exe shortcut in your StartUp directory? Remember, MLServer won't start up auto on boot unless it is. The two check boxes are to Hide and start the server once the MLServer.exe is running.

[midi-guy]

For those getting a blank screen after choosing the new DVDlobby_tv.mls,
All you need to do is open the dvdlobby_tv.mls file in notepad and change "BackgroundFX=d:\Program Files\Cinemar\dvdlobby3_tv.swf" to "BackgroundFX=c:\Program Files\Cinemar\dvdlobby3_tv.swf"

Dan,
I know that the "tv" mls is geared more towards remote control/keybaard navigation, but can you add the ability to use the mouse also?.
Specifically, movie selection and the choices under the options menu don't seem to be mouse enabled.

Happy turkey day to all. :)

[icecow]

Can MusicLobby do mp3 searches via PDA?

example:
put 'idol' in the artist box, and 'white' in the title box and get 'billy idol-white wedding' as results(and maybe a few others)?

can MusicLobby in theory and practice handle a PC with 50 gigs of mp3s?

the new musiclobby has a sweet look, but I'm more concerned about features that give computer-smart people quick access and power.

(I just got a ipaq and put 512 megs of ram in it)

want to know,
cow

[schud]

Originally posted by smoothtlk
schud,
Do you have MLserver.exe shortcut in your StartUp directory? Remember, MLServer won't start up auto on boot unless it is. The two check boxes are to Hide and start the server once the MLServer.exe is running.

Hi smootlk,

The answer to your question is no. However, every other version of ML server that I've used up until now has apparantly copied this file to the startup directory, because I've never had to copy it before now.

Thanks for the tip, though. That will fix me up for now! ;)

[slocko]

If you are looking for a pc to install your lobby products, take a look:

http://products.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=fmc901x&seg=hm

[midi-guy]

Slocko,

IMO, you'd be better off building your own PC - probably at a lower cost.
From looking at the components used, I'll say that you can easily save your self about $500- $800.
Besides, it's got some parts, i.e. Soundblaster Audio - that I would rather not use in a HTPC.
Also, this thing is WinXP Media Center Edition centric, so kinds of defeats the purpose if you want to use ML/MuL/DVDL etc.

[weldon]

I like the case design and the remote on that Gateway, but I don't really need to pay for XP Media Center and all that.

[SteveB]

Cinemar forum still down :(

[gtrogue]

Maybe the guys didn't pay the bill. :D;)

[SteveB]

Back up :)

[gtrogue]

Dan,
One of your teaser screenshots shows a search dialog. Is this feature included in the released version? If it is, how the heck do I get to it?

[schud]

Originally posted by gtrogue
Dan,
One of your teaser screenshots shows a search dialog. Is this feature included in the released version? If it is, how the heck do I get to it?

gtrogue:

Note the keyboard shortcuts information above. Specifically, the letter "i" (and yes, it must be lower case).

[dreicher]

Welcome back everyone. Hope everyone was able to enjoy their holiday. I'll be making an update available shortly that includes these updates to the TV version of DVDLobby.

Button 3 plays trailer directly
Button 4 plays movie directly
Displays changer number/changer location if it's available; otherwise, doesn't show at all (will require an update to MLServer).
Circular navigation added to genres/first letter
Updated .mls that uses a relative path

I'm not sure how to handle touchscreen support at this time. I'm still trying to devise a way that it can be done without adding any elements to the visual interface. Hopefully, we'll have a solution soon. We're also trying to put together the an update for MusicLobby and MusicLobby PPC. I'll post when the update is available.

Dan

[gtrogue]

Originally posted by schud
gtrogue:

Note the keyboard shortcuts information above. Specifically, the letter "i" (and yes, it must be lower case).

Man I'm retarded. I even reread that post before I posted. I only be reeding at a therd graid level. ;)

[russbri]

Hi all, just to let you all know about my site concerning slides which can be used with pre-movie type software, "DVD DressUP", including trivia slides, movie facts slides, concession and exit slides, discussions and more. These can be used in DVD production or Home Theatre setups such as myHTPC.
Here is the link (http://dvddressup.com)

Russ

[schud]

Russbri:

I think you posted in the wrong thread. This thread's about DVD Lobby 3. It's hard enough to keep threads on topic without other people cross promoting their products within other product's support threads.

:rolleyes:

[russbri]

I am so sorry, I read the thread and thought that trivia slides which can be used within DVDlobby was on topic. My mistake :(

Russ

[gtrogue]

Dan,
What exactly does the Search function sort on? When I type in "Lord" and hit Search Blackhawk Down is the first movie that comes up, followed by several more movies that I have yet to figure out how "Lord" relates to them, and The Lord of the Rings is about the sixth or seventh movie displayed. If I type in "the lord of" it doesn't find anything. Does it not do partial title searches? Is something wrong with my setup?

[schud]

I have the same question as gtrogue.

[dreicher]

Guys,

It will search title and overview and return results in alphabetical order. I'll look into why "the lord of" didn't return any results. Admittedly, I need to take a deeper look into the search function in the plug-in - and will be doing that shortly.

Dan

[schud]

Dan:

My media library server has MLS 1.2.2 installed. For the first time, I checked the CPU load on the server while a movie was playing on the HTPC via DVDLobby.

The server CPU load is running at 95 to 100%. Does that sound normal?

Task manager indicates that ML server is indeed using the majority of CPU cyles.

The server CPU is an Intel Celeron 2.0 GHZ.

Movies appear to play fine.

[CThornburgh]

Dan,

the new interface is extremely slick...one question though: whats the best way to take advanatge of it with an airpanel? I much prefer the new UI, though it was clearly designed to be simple to run with a remote, I would like to be able to use it with the touch screen on the AP. If I drop buttons onto the interface (probably just 4 arrows), what mlserver commands should i assign to them to make them reproduce the arrow keys on the keyboard for navigating the new interface?

Or, is there a touchscreen version on the way?

Thanks for the great work!

Charles

[schud]

Originally posted by schud
Dan:
The server CPU load is running at 95 to 100%. Does that sound normal?


Well, who knows. I rebooted the server and now CPU load is <5%.

[dreicher]

For the users wanting to utilize the new "look" in a touchscreen environment, can I get some specific why's? I feel that trying to accomodate a PC and TV display in the same version is what got us "into trouble" in the first place and diverging the two is the idea solution. Having said that, what specifically do you like about it that we can adapt into the "PC/touchscreen" version?

Is it the result sets being returned as thumbnails? The background skin?

We need to diverge the products so we can create a "best of both wolrds" solution, not a single "compromise of both worlds" solution that wouldn't appeal as much to either segment. I'd love to see a dialog started that helps us get there and work to that rather than trying to adapt a TV solution to the PC or a PC solution to a TV and begin working toward that.

Dan

[CThornburgh]

Dan,

I think you hit on a couple of the key issues: The results as thumbnails are much easier to flip through, the overall layout of the screen is cleaner and easier to look at. And the new looks is displaying a different set of information i believe. I am not saying that we should compromise both versions, but do believe that you have made some substantial improvements to the friendliness of the layout that I would love to be able to take advantage of as well.

Once I've spent more time with it I will give you a more complete and intellgible answer.

Sounds like a touchscreen update is underway...is that right?

Charles

[dreicher]

Charles,

We can certainly adapt the touchscreen based on a defined set of what our users want. I think the TV display and the current touchscreen solution give us a good starting point and melding the two together will be fairly painless from our end. I just want to be clear of what the core appeal is before moving to far on rewriting the touchscreen. I definitely like the thumbnail returns and could implement that with some degree of ease; however, keep in mind that the TV version is a subset of the capabilities of the PC version, has no buttons so it looks cleaner, the fonts are ridiculously oversized and navigation is laid out in a way that would be uneccessarily frustrating for a touchscreen user.

Think about if you wanted to see all movies starting with 'W'. In the current version, you only need to touch two buttons to make that happen, as opposed to button, arrow 20+ times.

We feel we're very capable of supporting a suite of products that allow our users to have the best, most intuitive interface with a common look across PC, TV, Pocket PC platforms and want to continue to work to that end. In search of that goal, we feel the best way to make that happen is by supporting three different versions of each component designed for the particular interface/control device in mind.

I think, however, there are some elements that would work very well in a touchscreen environment and in cooperation with our users - let's make it happen.

Please do lend your thoughts once you've had time to dig a little deeper and we'll get going on a solution.

Dan

[midi-guy]

My thoughts...

The TV mls is simple and intuitive.
One does not have to 'switch' screens to display thumbs , genres or movie descriptions.
I haven't used the search functions as the genres allow me to narrow down my choices before selecting a movie.

[mcascio]

Due to the release of the TV version of DVDLobby - we've seen many requests for screensavers for larger 16:9 displays.

We've created modified some of our screensavers to accomodate this and added a new one.

They are attached here.

1) Fading Spotlights (Autosize to any display - 4:3 or 16:9)
2) Falling raindrops on your window (Autosizes to any display - 4:3 or 16:9)
3) Falling Snow Flakes (Autosizes to any display - 4:3 or 16:9)

Enjoy.

[cmcjo]

Hi:
I am finally getting around to putting DVD lobby 3 to work.

I am having some problems.

I have designed a simple interface in ML 2.30C.

I have 5 buttons that when clicked should go to another location.
I have "movies" that should go to the DVD pages. In the "Link to mainlobby scene" field, I point to--C:\Program Files\Cinemar\dvdlobby3_tv.mls. (that is where the dvdLOBBY_tv scene is located)

However, whenever I click the "movies" button, it goes to a black blank page.

What did I forget to do?

[dreicher]

Joe,

Check you dvdlobby_tv.mls file and make sure it is pointing to C:\Program Files\Cinemar\dvdlobby3_tv.swf and not D:\... - The first release was pointing to D:\

Dan

[cmcjo]

Thanks dan, It's pointing to c:

[cmcjo]

OK, I got it working.
It was the options menu for the dvdlobby_tv under overlay fx was pointing not pointing anywhere.

Thanks

[mcascio]

Joe,

Once your on the DVDLobby3_tv.mls scene, select OPTIONS then you'll notice the overlayFX field...that's the field Dan was referring to is pointing to a file on the D: drive instead of C: :)


Also, I've put together a USBUIRT/Sony Changer/Girder GML file.

Along with that I've identified the MLServeCmd necessary to work flawlessly with a Sony Mega Changer.

So now for the cost of MainLobby/DVDLobby/USBUIRT and your Sony Changer - you can emulate the Kenwood Escient system for pennies on the dollar. :)

If anyone is interested in the GML file and the MLServeCmd - shoot me an email. I'll be updating the docs/help files in the meantime.

Note that this is more of a temporary solution until the USBUIRT plugin is complete for MLServer. ;)

[cmcjo]

I can see a very slight learning curve here for us non-programmer types...

Anyway, I just have a few questions.

1. Is there a user manual for ML Server, if so where is it.

2. Am I the only one that notices dvdlobby3_tv scene is slow to populate the movies? Sometimes it takes 5 seconds. Sometimes 2 seconds. And sometimes it doesn't populate at all until I scroll to accessories or another genre and that back up to all movies. I'm using P4 1.8 w/512 ddr

3. Sometimes If I press arrow left or right once to scroll through the movies, the selection does not change, even if I wait for 10 seconds. But if I press it twice within any amount of time, it moves 2 places and skips a movie? And sometimes I have to press the arrow twice to change movies selection 1 space. Is this normal?

4. Can someone post the syntax to paste in the ML Server "DEFAULT PLAY MOVIE ML SERVER CMD" fielld? I just want to press "play movie" and the movie should start. This is what I have now, Theatertek launches, but no movie plays.:

MLServeCmd.Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|C:\Program Files\TheaterTek\TheaterTek DVD.exe

Theatertek exe is in c:\programfiles\theatertek

That's all I can think of for now, I'm sure there will be more.

Thanks very much.

[mcascio]

Hi Joe,

There is currently no overall user manual for MLServer; however, if you select the plugin from MLServer then press the HELP button, it will provide you with a sample and proper syntax for each plugin.

There is also a help file included with DVDLobby that has some sample MLServeCmds - including TheaterTek control.

We haven't had reports of intensely slow display time. Are you running everything locally or is it over a wireless network? If wireless, how strong is your signal? How are you controlling the interface? IR keyboard or is it hard wired?

The MLServeCmd syntax is really simplistic when you take a step back and just look at it in smaller segments. In your instance you said you have this in the DEFAULT PLAYMOVIE command:
MLServeCmd. Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|C:\Program
Files\TheaterTek\TheaterTek DVD.exe

IF you look at it closer you'll notice the command is a Macro and the first command is utilizing the TheaterTek direct plugin which tells it to close TheaterTek if it's open. Then you pause for 1 second. Next it calls the MLFileOpen plugin to open up TheaterTek. So at this point the Command is doing exactly what you have told it to do...nothing more...nothing less.

There are several ways to launch movies using TheaterTek. First you'll want to make sure you are using the latest version - download the patch update from their website. Next there is a config option within TheaterTek that will start playing the movie automatically when you start the program. Make sure this box is checked.

Probably the simplest way to launch a movie using TheaterTek is to associate all IFO files with TheaterTek. You do this by going to Window's Explorer and right click on an IFO file then click PROPERTIES. Set this file type to OPEN WITH TheaterTek.

Now to configure the DEFAULT PLAYMOVIE command properly.
Try this:
MLServeCmd.Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|D:\Video\<<FIXEDTITLE>>\Video_TS\Video_TS.IFO

This assumes that you have configured all of your movies to the above listed drive name and structure you can modify it to whatever your setup is.

ANother way to do this is for each movie, specify a file to load, which in this case would be that particular movies Video_TS.IFO file. When you edit each movie you'll see a field for this.

If you do it that way, then your MLServeCmd would look like:
MLServeCmd.Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|<<FILE>>

The text <<FILE>> just gets replaced with the IFO file you've selected for that movie.

There are even more ways to skin this cat, but these are some of the more simpler options.

Hope this helps.

[cmcjo]

Running all programs locally. Using a wireless logitech keyboard.
If I reboot the PC, I still have to click the arrow twice for every command.

I guess because my movies are spread across 4 hardrives, that I will have to use the override mlservecmd play movie command for each movie?

This is not working for me though, does it look right?
Here is my file field: F:\Above the Law\VIDEO_TS.IFO

Here is the syntax in the override play movie mlservcmd field:
MLServeCmd.Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|VIDEO_TS.IFO

[cmcjo]

ahhh..
I see now.

MLServeCmd.Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|F:\Above the Law\VIDEO_TS.IFO

[mcascio]

Joe,

While you could create an override command for each movie, I think it is unnecessary for your setup.

Take a look at the image below. When you edit a movie you have the option to specify a specific file.

In the example below, I've specified a network location although yours will be located on the same computer.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/avsforum/mlserver.filelocation.jpg

Just select the three dots next to the file field and browse your hard drive for the IFO file named VIDEO_TS.IFO for that specific movie.

Then for your default Play Movie command copy/paste exactly what's below:
MLServeCmd.Macro|MLTheaterTek|EXIT!MLPause|1!MLFileOpen|<<FILE>>

Leave "<<FILE>>" just as it is. That is a substitution variable that looks for the value you specified for that movie and automatically replaces it for you. I think that's where your hangup was.

That's all there is to it. :)

Then from now on the only thing you have to do is specify the IFO file for each movie.

Really there's only 1 step to maintaining your collection from here on out.

[schud]

It's easy to make launching movies via DVDLobby and DVDL Server harder than it really is! Believe you me, I know! :D

[mcascio]

schud,

If you've got any ideas to make it easier to explain to people, we're open to suggestions. :)

Some people seem to pick it right up and others struggle a little.

[cmcjo]

WOW! This is easy stuff!!!!
I cant believe how hard I made it out to be. I even skpiped a really great Turkey Dinner my wife made.

10 minutes ago I was saying, I cant believe Mario designed this program that requires me to copy and paste that code for each movie!!!! THen modify the file to launch.

Now I see his post, and I can now see the simplicity.

Thanks for that. This is really awesome stuff.

I cant believe anyone would NOT use this for there A/V Systems.

[cmcjo]

And yes, I am one of those strugglers...

[mcascio]

Joe,

Sorry you missed your Turkey Dinner. It's OK I'm drinking Diet Coke and eating potato chips for dinner. :)

It's actually even easier than that but became a little more complicated since you had 4 different media drives. :)

With just 1 drive, you wouldn't have to enter any variable for each movie as long as you followed some simple rules for directory structure.

[cmcjo]

Not a very healthy dinner.

Anyway, how about the c:/ folder that stays open when I launch the movie?
Can I close that automatically?

[schud]

Originally posted by cmcjo
Anyway, how about the c:/ folder that stays open when I launch the movie?
Can I close that automatically?

You still don't have something set-up correctly. I experienced that once, but I don't remember what I did wrong to correct it! :confused:

[mcascio]

Joe,

Can you post the default MLServeCmd you are using?
Then post the file you are specifying for a sample movie.

There shouldn't be a window opening up.

[schud]

Hi Mario,

I have two days remaining on my MLServer installation. What do I do to upgrade it?

[mcascio]

schud,

Dan's working on the registration process. If it's not done in the next couple days, we'll release another 30 day extension so users don't have any lapse in usage.

[cmcjo]

I'll post this when I get home tonight around 4:00.
Thanks.
I'm just happy it actually works when I press "play movie"

And did I mention how nice it looks on my 65" Hitachi using DVI connections!

[mcascio]

Joe,

Are you using the TV version? It's specifically designed for hiresolution screens so I'm sure it looks phenomenal on your 65" screen.

I had a chance to check it out on a friends 50" plasma a month or so ago and even I was impressed on how sharp it looked. The colors really pop on those bad boys. :)

[cmcjo]

Yes I am using the dvdlobby3_tv version. It looks great. Very impressive work. THanks

I have the 65XWX Hitachi TV that is ISF calibrated, and your software does a great job at displaying the colors.

[mikemav]

Mario, Dan-

I have been trying out my demo copy of the Lobby suite for the last day or two and and most impressed so far. I think you will have another system sold here before my 30 days is up. I am currently a Kenwood Entre/DV5900 user, so I am used to this level of coolness. The fact that I am loving your system so far, which as you pointed out is quite a bit less $$ than the Kenwood or Escient is my best compliment. My real motivation to look at change has been the fact that I know things will not just be DVD discs for long. I do not want to be limited to DVDs and CDs and MP3s, but access other media, especially ripped DVD files on my HD and other newer forms of media the Entre just cannot access. I even posted about this in the epic Entre topic here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=3027080#post3027080
Anyway, I'm sure I will have many questions during my evaluation process. Two that come to mind now are these:
Since this is a Flash based interface, are their any plans to make the client side for other platforms? I am mostly a Mac guy, and while I use a PC as my server (and can control it via Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection very well from the Macs) a Mac version of DVDLobby or MusicLobby thin client to connect to a PC MLserver would be awesome.
Also- maybe this question belongs int he MainLobby topic, but I was wondering if there are any RS232 control applications or plug-ins written for the Kenwood Severeign receiver (VR5700 or 5900?) I sqw a port somewhere there is an app written for the DV5900 changer (not sure how to get it...perhaps I cannot play with it in the trial version?) I have not seen anything yet about the recevier, which also has RS232 control. Crestron has a module written for it, and of course the Entre controlls it. This I see as a necessary feature for those looking to replace the Entre/Sovereign system with the Lobby suite. I would like to have the receiver change inputs depending on what type of media I select, be it from my changer, HTPC, or other device. RS232 control is just so much more reliable than IR. I suppose I could get the protocol and write the commands manually, but if someone has already worked on this please let me know. Thanks!

[slocko]

I have to agree that having the receiver automatically switch inputs when you play a dvd or an mp3 is so nice. Usually is something you can only achieve with the expesnive creston solutions. IR is just not as realiable, but as a short term solution viable.

Kenwood was supposed to make the protocols available. Maybe you guys can contact them to see what kind of answer you get?

What is the status of the Kenwood plugin? It never seemed to get past the Beta point.

[Oliver Klohs]

Slocko,

you can use the Kenwood plugin now for transport control and selection of the disk. Unfortunately the cursors, enter and menu are not available.

In my setup I let DVDlobby select the movie and control the movie with my pronto. With the TV version of DVDlobby this can be controlled by keyboard/pronto too, very cool.

Oliver

[mcascio]

mikemav,

If you are using the trial, that means you haven't had a chance to play with the DVDLobby TV version we recently released. I think you'll really be a convert after seeing it. Unfortunately, we haven't had time to put together a trial of it.

We do have plans to make a thin client run within a browser - which really isn't too far from reality but we're trying to plan our steps carefully and take our time.

Our MLServer software was the first step in this process.

There is a program that accepts command line parameters and can control the 5900 from DVDLobby. Just select a movie and it will trigger it evertime.
DVDLobby Pro Help (http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobbypro.html)

Stop by the above page and select HELP from the left side menu. Look for the section on controlling a Kenwood changer in the Play Behavior / Building Commands section.
You can play with it in the trial version too.

We also have an RS232 plugin that you could use to change inputs. Yet another option that I've recently been playing with is the USBUIRT. Yes - it's IR, but I've never had a problem with the IR not working from this device. For $55, you really can't loose...accept IR and send IR.
I've been using it to control my Sony Changer as well along with switching components.

Switching inputs is so easy and I'd be happy to walk someone through it if they need help. Slocko - when you gonna convert? :)

Recently I've been playing around with Voice Recognition as well, but that's another thread. Using a combo of HomeSeer and the Slinke, I simply say Watch Television and my TV turns on, sets the right channel on the TV, VCR goes to the right channel and my receiver selects the proper input.
Cool stuff.

[mcascio]

Originally posted by Oliver Klohs
Slocko,

you can use the Kenwood plugin now for transport control and selection of the disk. Unfortunately the cursors, enter and menu are not available.

In my setup I let DVDlobby select the movie and control the movie with my pronto. With the TV version of DVDlobby this can be controlled by keyboard/pronto too, very cool.

Oliver

Oliver,

You could use IR to control the arrow navigation. LIke I mentioned above for $55 (USBUIRT) you could have everything you need to access every feature of the Kenwood. :)

[slocko]

Mario,

I received my atech case two weeks ago. Now just to put it all together.

Trust me Mario, as soon as I have it done, I will be ordering. In a way I'm glad it has taken me this long since you have come such a long way from the first release.

[cmcjo]

I didnt get a chance to post my file last night.
What resolution should I use in the software itself? Should it match my Video display resolution?

What resolution would you guys recommend for a 65" Widescreen via DVI?
Using a ATI 8500 DV video card.

[Oliver Klohs]

Mario,

I'd need an airpanel to make effective use of the USB UIRT and I am expecting a trial V150 next week - we'll see how I like it.

I am not so sure as of now which solution I'll prefer as I am very much a hardkey guy and now that you have DVDlobby TV.... but then that might change soon if I like the airpanel ;)

I think it is also a good place to tell you how much I am impressed with the lobby products - you guys are working very hard and it shows in your product - great work !

Oliver

[mcascio]

slocko,
That's great - it sounds like you getting closer to having your system built.

cmcjo,
It really depends on what the native resolution your 65" is capable of. Regardless, DVDLobby will scale to fit your monitor no matter what resolution you choose.

Oliver,
I've heard a lot of users that are happy with their Smart Displays - I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Also, thanks for the kind words. Much more to come that will be sure to impress. ;)

[schud]

Originally posted by mcascio
schud,

Dan's working on the registration process. If it's not done in the next couple days, we'll release another 30 day extension so users don't have any lapse in usage.

Well, I'm out of business! Trial Expired! :mad:

[Oliver Klohs]

David,
there is a new version which also runs 30 days.
You can download it from the Cinemar website.
Oliver

[schud]

Thank you for the suggestion Oliver.

I installed MLServer V1.2.3 last night, and it did not provide another 30 days. Just popped up the registration dialog box asking me to register. I sure wish I could.

Another succesfull Friday night in the 'ol HT! :rolleyes:

[mcascio]

Hi Guys,

Dan is working on the registration process as I type...hopefully we'll have an update for you all soon. Thanks for your patience.

[Oliver Klohs]

David,

sorry it didn't work.

I did a completely new install on another PC so that was probably the reason that I started fresh with another 30 days.

I may have MLServer running but have no DVDchanger at the moment - not much better...

Oliver

[schud]

Originally posted by schud
Hi Mario,

I have two days remaining on my MLServer installation. What do I do to upgrade it?

Originally posted by mcascio
schud,

Dan's working on the registration process. If it's not done in the next couple days, we'll release another 30 day extension so users don't have any lapse in usage.

I posted my original request for assistance with the expiring registration problem on 12-7-03. That's almost one week ago. I wanted to avoid sitting here, like I am right now, with my Lobby products dead in the water on Saturday night. I believe I requested assistance in plenty of time to allow you to issue the new trial version. Why you have chosen to let your customers down, with a nebulous "hopefully we'll have an update for you all soon. Thanks for your patience" is very disappointing to me.

You guys have always been good with your customer service. I emailed Dan last night asking for help with this issue. 24 hours later, no reply. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. That's more disappointing.

Follow through and deliver on the commitments you make.

I also would have thought you would have understood how funky registration schemes which disables software and causes systems to become non-functional is very controversial, and not thought highly of, with many users of this forum? Obviously not.

I wonder what the rest of the community would think about software which you purchase, and then becomes non-functional 30 days later without recourse? I think I know what they would think!

C'mon Mario. Please provide me access to the software that I bought and paid. This is unacceptable to me.

[midi-guy]

David,
Have you tried deleting the MLServer registry keys and then re-installing afterwards?

I think they're in HKLM\Software\MLServer

[schud]

Originally posted by midi-guy
David,
Have you tried deleting the MLServer registry keys and then re-installing afterwards?

I think they're in HKLM\Software\MLServer

Thank you midi-guy. I appreciate your help very much. I'm sorry I didn't ask earlier.

Dan and Mario,

There's no hurry now. I'm back in business.

[mcascio]

Hi all,

We apologize for any lapse of usage.
We have posted a file that you may download to extend MLServer:
http://www.cinemaronline.com/downloads/mlserverreg.zip

Extract this file to your computer and shut down MLServer and any clients such as MainLobby that may be running. Then just double click the file.

I guess it's a good sign that people require the software each and every day.

While it's certainly no excuse, we ask everyone to remember that it is the holidays and a busy time for all. Dan and I do both have families that may require attention from time to time so we can buy ourselves another solid month of development.

I think our level of customer support goes well beyond what most companies offer and will continue in the future.

[Oliver Klohs]

Mario,

you are deserving of some time off for sure, but when most of the product suite is not usable anymore because of a small registration issue I can understand Schud.

That being said you fixed the problem and deserve very well to spend some time with your family for the rest of the year, I will keep my next dozen feature requests for january 2nd :)

Oliver

[mcascio]

Hi everyone,

I've put together some diagrams that should help some of the newbies using a Mega Changer understand how DVDLobby Pro works. While this doesn't cover every possible configuration, it does hopefully cover the basics of integrating with a Mega Changer. If anyone catches an error or I'm missing something - let me know.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/images/tvasmonitor_diagram.jpg

http://www.cinemaronline.com/images/usbuirt_ppcdiagram.jpg

http://www.cinemaronline.com/images/airpanel_diagram.jpg

[Oliver Klohs]

Hi Mario,

found three errors: Each example is missing a projector ;)
Kidding aside example 1 and 3 are the options I see for myself.

I just cannot imagine that I'll like it to pick up my airpanel simply to increase the volume on my Preamp.

Oliver

[SteveB]

Changer? Who needs a changer, where's the Video Server? :p :p

Steve :p

[mikemav]

Is there as USB-UIRT plug-in in the works or available for MLServer? I do not know Girder, and do not want to learn if direct support from MLServer is available or immenent. I would love to be able to send IR commands directly from the MLServer. Also, I have not bought a USB-UIRT yet (I am still new to all this.) Does it have a cable out for IR probe or mini-jack into changer, as shown in Mario's drawing? How about a mini-jack for IR in? That would be cool. I already have a Xantech IR distribution system. Instead of figuring out where to put the IR receiver eye of the UIRT, I would love to cable an output from my IR hub right into the board. That way it could be put behind or even in the HTPC witough need for an access hole in the case (since I already have an IR eye connected to the Xantech hub.)

[Jgabrius]

With a Sony 875p nearly fully loaded, do I have to manually enter each DVD title or does DVDL provide for auto-discovery?

Thanks!