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Tuesday, 5 November 2013

XBMC New Aeon MQ5 Skin – Movies UI sneak peek

XBMC Aeon MQ5 V1.5.1 was released as final last week and can now be found in the official repository.
I am currently in the process of testing MQ5 with a view to update all my HTPC’s from MQ4. To read what’s new take a look at the first post on the MQ5 thread here.

THE SUPER SKIN THAT WORKS LIKE A LITE SKIN

“The Aeon MQ 5 uses in the base the Ace Skin code, with this was possible to include many resources in the code without sacrificing performance.
The Aeon MQ 5 has a performance a lot superior compared to its predecessor Aeon MQ 4.”

Allot seems to have changed under the hood with this new MQ5 skin, the way you customize the menu’s and submenus for example, is totally different to how it was done in MQ4 and seems to be easier to use.
You can see my previous post about the Aeon MQ4 Movie Library here to compare some of the screen shots between the two skins.

Main Movie Menu

The Recently Added / Random / In Progress titles feature, has been moved down from a top menu and can now be accessed right above the main XBMC movies menu.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies1

Aeon-MQ5-Movies2

Upon highlighting a title from the list of Recently Added titles

Aeon-MQ5-Movies3

Upon selecting OK on a title, there are options to Play Movie or Play Trailer

Aeon-MQ5-Movies4

As with Aeon MQ4 there are many different views to choose from, some of these views are new to MQ5.

Glass List view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-GlassList1

Right List view – I like this one for use with Music Artists where I would normally use Low List view in MQ4.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-RightList1

Movie Info page – Things have been changed about a bit on the Info screen, the option “Director’s Movies” is new I believe and will list the movies in your collection by that particular director.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Info1

Movie Playback Info overlay - I love how the clear logo (Middle right side) is now just displayed over the actual video rather than in the darker overlay frame area.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Playback1

Movie Playback Pause

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Playback2

When you pause initially it looks like the above and then after a few moments of inactivity it changes to look like the below screen shot.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Playback3

Wall view – This view now scrolls from up to down whereas in MQ4 I had it scrolling from left to right, not sure if you can change this in MQ5?

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Wall1

New panel overlay that appears after a few moments of highlighting a movie title.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Wall2

Wall 3D view – This looks similar but with the default theme, there is now a nice red glow appearing around the currently selected title.

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Wall3D-1

Coverflow view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-CoverFlow1

Low List view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-LowList1

Multiplex view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Multiplex1

Panel view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Panel1

Poster view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Poster1

Shelf view – Quite like this one now!

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Shelf1

Show Art view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-ShowArt1

Showcase view – Fanart Style

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Showcase1

Showcase view – Thumbnail Style

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Showcase2

Wide view

Aeon-MQ5-Movies-Wide1

Summary

Just a quick peek at the movie library in the new Aeon MQ5 skin. I have only briefly used the MQ5 skin on a test machine, but I am hoping that some of the small navigation and UI bugs that are present in MQ4 are going to be all ironed out in MQ5?

Aeon MQ5 feels like a much more polished product compared with MQ4 and I am looking forward to deploying this new skin on to my HTPC’s once I am happy with the testing phase. I’ll probably throw up some more screen shots in later blog posts, showing the other areas of XBMC, especially the Live TV / EPG as that has been massively improved in MQ5 over MQ4.






www.phaze1digital.com

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Im currently running MQ5 on my XBMC 12.2 Frodo margo release. How do I get the main menu movie feature (first feature show in the above article). I seem to just have a single blank movie case shown. I have to actually click movies before I can see any of my content.

Thanks,

Unknown said...

Im currently running MQ5 on my XBMC 12.2 Frodo margo release. How do I get the main menu movie feature (first feature show in the above article). I seem to just have a single blank movie case shown. I have to actually click movies before I can see any of my content.

Thanks,

CW-KID said...

Your talking about the 12 recently added movie titles above the main XBMC menu? They should just start appearing on their own. Try changing it (the skin widget) to something different like "In Progress" or "Random" do you get movie titles showing then?