XBMC Aeon MQ5 Skin – A look at the TV Show Library

I’m really liking the new Aeon MQ5 skin and I am looking forward to updating all my HTPC’s to use this new skin, they currently have Aeon MQ4 running on them. Today I am going to take a look at the TV Show Library screens. For comparison you can see the older Aeon MQ4 skin TV Show Library screens here.

TV Shows – Main Menu

Here you can see Recently Added TV Show Episodes being displayed, this can be changed to show Random or In Progress episode titles instead.



Pushing up on to one of the Recently Added episodes the main menu changes to the name of that particular episode “A Perfect Christmas” in this case, I really like how it does this. Beneath the main menu it displays the name of the TV Show and the Season / Episode number, of the episode you currently have highlighted.



Selecting the OK button on the episode immediately starts playback of that episode from the main XBMC menu!



Episode playback with Information overlay



Episode playback with Information overlay and transport controls



TV Shows – Sub menu

Episodes Recently Added / TV Guide / TV Shows Genres / TV Shows Years / TV Shows Actors / TV Shows Studios /



TV Guide

I am not exactly sure what the purpose of the TV Guide is? It appears to display TV Shows from my collection that are currently airing on TV.

For example The Walking Dead shown on Monday is Season 4 Episode 5



If I click on that Walking Dead episode from the TV Guide in the screen shot above, it takes me to The Walking Dead series in my own library / collection.



TV Shows Genre





TV Shows Years



Upon selecting 2013 it displays only TV Shows that are from that particular year.



TV Shows Actors

This lists all the actors from the TV Shows you have in your library, however its not as good as MCE / My Movies…

Its just one long list of all actors from all TV Shows, this would be much better if it was more like My Movies, where on each TV Show info page you could select actors from there and if it would then only list the actors from the TV Show you are looking at and if it then showed their bio’s this would be much better and like how My Movies does it. This is not how it works in XBMC with this skin at least.



Selecting an actor simply displays the TV Show(s) he/she was in, but only from the TV Shows you actually have in your own library / collection.



TV Shows Studios



Selecting BBC then lists TV Shows from the BBC etc.



TV Show Library

After entering the TV Show library proper, my preferred view is Poster view.



TV Show – Information Screen



TV Show – Seasons in Panel View



Episodes in Wide view

Each episode has an episode image and a synopsis description.



Episode Information Screen



Some of the other views TV Shows can be displayed in.

Banner Info View



Banner view



Showcase view – fanart style



Shelf view



Panel view



Multiplex view



Right List view



Coverflow view



Glass List view



Low List view



Summary

I think the XBMC main menu and the TV Show Widgets are a big improvement over Aeon MQ4. Also some of the new views are nice such as Glass List and Right List. I also really like the Banner Info view which is perfect for displaying TV Shows in your library. The TV Show actors is a bit of a let down and could be improved if they looked at how they do this in the My Movies / MCE system.



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How to rip and convert TV Show DVDs for XBMC – Part 4

In Part 1 we looked at how to rip your TV Show DVD disc(s) to a VIDEO_TS folder(s) on the computer, in Part 2 we then looked at how to encode the episodes in to individual .MKV video files.
In Part 3 we looked at the resulting MKV files, their file size and Codec information, checked if they played and looked at a file renaming tool.

In this post we will look at Step four in our five step process - 4. Import the video files in to the XBMC 

TV Show library with TheTVDB.com scraper

The default TV Show scraper in XBMC is TheTVDB.com, a scraper gathers metadata information and artwork images, so your titles are displayed correctly in the XBMC media libraries.

I am currently using the Aeon MQ5 skin on this PC so all XBMC screen shots are from that skin.

Before you start an import you can review theTVDB.com scraper add-on settings in XBMC and that it is installed and enabled. Go to Settings – Add-ons – Enabled Add-ons



then select TV information



You can see I have TheTVDB add-on present and its enabled



If you right click the mouse or press C on the keyboard to bring up the context menu you can select Configure.

 

There isn’t actually a lot to configure however as you can see on the screen shot below. The main thing is that you have TheTVDB add-on installed which it should be as its the default for XBMC.



Updating Video Library

Now if you have already previously setup your sources in XBMC for TV Shows, its just a case of running a Update Video Library and your new MKV files will be scraped and added in to the TV Show Library, to do this you can (in this skin anyway) go to the TV Shows menu press down and select Video-Update Library.



You can also turn on a setting so that every time you open XBMC it will update the Video Library automatically. Settings – Video – Library – Update  Library on Startup



Adding a new Source

If you haven’t setup any sources in XBMC to point to the location of your TV Show files i.e. its a new / clean installation of XBMC, then you will need to add a source. To do this in this skin, I would go to TV Shows menu push down and select Files



You can see in the screen shot below, all my sources in XBMC. I split my TV Shows in to different sub-folders on the file server, if they were DVD rips or VIDEO files etc. And also I have the Kids TV Shows in separate folders.

If you are wanting to add a new source to point to your TV Show VIDEOS folder then select the Add Videos option at the bottom.



You will then see a screen similar to this one, click browse to browse to the location of your TV Show VIDEO files.



I am using a Windows Home Server so I select from this list Windows Network (SMB). If you are using a NAS as your media storage device then you may need to select another option.



Browse the network and select your file server



Select to your TV folder share



Here you can see my content type sub-folders, I am going to select the VIDEOS folder



And then I select OK



I am then presented with this screen, which confirms the SMB path I just selected. Also under “Choose a name for this folder” give it a meaningful name like “TV – VIDEOS”.

Click OK to continue adding the new source.



You will then see a screen similar to this one, ensure “Folder Contents” is set to “TV Shows” this is known as the content type.

You should see The TVDB listed as the scraper. If you click settings here you will be taken to the same settings screen I showed you earlier on in the post.

Click OK to add the source



After clicking OK above I am prompted: “Do you want to refresh info for all items in this path” you can select Yes here and your TV Show content should be added to the XBMC media library.



To confirm - the new source I just added can be seen in the sources list, the one named TV – VIDEOS FILES



If you right click any source with the mouse or press C on the keyboard to bring up the content menu. You can select “Scan for new Content”.

This will force XBMC to scan for new content in that particular source / location only.



Step 5. Delete the temporary DVD rip folders to get your hard drive space back (Optional)

Now that you have converted your TV Show DVD rip in to the MKV files and imported them in to the XBMC media library, there is no real need to keep the large VIDEO_TS folders in your temporary rip folder. If you remember in Part 1 I ripped my DVD in to the folder “Temp DVD rips” on my file server. I am now going to delete these temporary DVD disc rips to save on hard drive space.

Step 5a. Sit back and relax and watch a TV Show !

You are now here, kick back grab a beer and watch the DVD TV Show you just converted to MKV and imported in to XBMC !!







Harold Steptoe: “You dirty old man!”

Summary

I will keep this short as I need to wrap this up now, if you have any comments or suggestions for improvements please let me know.





www.phaze1digital.com