Time for Kodi Helix, time for a new skin?–Part2

Part one can be seen here, which covered the top level menus, in part two we will delve a bit deeper in to the user interface of the 1080XF Kodi skin and have a good look around.

Live TV main menu



TV Channels

I like the little progress indicators under each channel, so you can get a rough idea how much longer is left for that show to run.



TV Channel – Information



One thing I’ve noticed and I am not sure if this is a Kodi or skin issue, is when starting to play a TV Channel its not always automatically brought up to full screen, I have to press the full screen button on the Harmony Universal remote control or press back a few times to put it in to full screen mode.

TV Channel Playback / Guide Overlay



TV Channel Playback / Information



TV Channel Playback / OSD Menu



OSD Menu – Channel schedule

If you select the highlighted button on the OSD menu it the brings up programs that are airing on the channel you are currently watching



Also on the OSD menu are settings for Audio / Video the Record button and some transport control buttons.

Radio Channels



EPG (Guide Timeline)



TV Recordings



Home main menu

On the home menu there are default tiles for New Movies and New Shows and two widget panels.



The widgets on the main menus are driven by the ExtendedInfo Script add-on, this is not automatically installed with the skin I don’t think, so you need to ensure its installed.

In the Skin settings under Home –> Manage Custom Home Widgets - you can change what the widgets will display such as:

trending movies / trending shows / playlist / spotlight / upcoming movies / in theatres now / popular movies / top rated movies

When changing the widgets function you may need to exit from Kodi and restart it to get them populating.



New Movies – Landscape View



New Shows – Info List View



Movies main menu



Movies Library – Thumbnail View



Movies Library – List View



Movies Library – Info List View



Movies Library – Panel View



Movies Library – Poster View



Movies Library – Banner View



Movies Library – Fanart View



Movie Information Page

There seems to be a bug with missing Aspect Ratio icons / flags as on some titles it does not get displayed, but I believe its on the list to be fixed.

In this screen shot the video format flag is missing, because this particular title is a Blu-ray ISO? I need to check that out.



Moving left reveals the poster



The Choose Art option was pretty crippled but I’ve convinced the developer to add more Artwork Downloader add-on options to run it in Solo mode and full GUI mode, these as yet have not been implemented.

In this screen shot you can see I have added myself the option to run Artwork Downloader in Solo mode as I changed the skins code.



The final release version will look more like this however, where Manual mode is GUI mode and Background mode is SOLO mode in Artwork Downloader.



Movie Playback - Information



Movie Playback – OSD Menu

On the OSD menu there are buttons for Audio / Video Settings, Subtitles, transport controls, info and bookmarks.



In part three we will be looking at the TV Shows and Music libraries and Weather areas.

PART THREE HERE

Time for Kodi Helix, time for a new skin?–Part1

UPDATE

The 1080XF skin covered in this series of blog posts has been replaced / superseded by the Xperience1080 skin. Essentially it is the same skin with a slightly different theme, but made by the same developer. So you should install Xperience1080 from the Kodi repository not 1080XF.

END OF UPDATE.. Continue reading...

I’ve recently been testing Kodi version 14 aka Helix (formally XBMC) on my test PC and I’ve been searching for a new skin to replace Aeon MQ5 which I have been using for a few years now. Aeon MQ are great fully featured skins with all the bells and whistles and artwork on show, but I’ve become tired of all this eye candy and plan to tone things down in Kodi Helix with a more modern cleaner looking skin.

My favourite candidate so far as a replacement skin is 1080XF which is developed by a clever chap called Piers and is a metro style skin.

Home menu - here we can select “New Movies” or “New Shows” tiles. The fanart panel in the middle by default shows a Spotlight of both your Movies and TV Shows and the poster panel on the right hand side shows on going TV Shows.



Movies menu – here we have two default tiles on the left hand side (which can be changed and customised). “Movies” will open your movies library proper and “Video Add-ons” will as the name suggests show you all your Kodi video add-ons.

The large fanart panel in the middle by default is set to display new movies. The two tiles on the right hand side are custom tiles, I have added the Apple Trailers and Youtube add-ons here.
Using this great website here called MetroIcons, you can create your own metro style icons for use on these main menu tiles.



If you push up on the the main movies menu (or any of the main menus) you will then see the sub-menu items.

There are no in-built GUI options for customizing these sub-menus, but you can customise them by editing some XML files of the skin, to change what the sub-menu items do.
For example on the screen shot below, I have added the following to the sub-menu -  “New Movies” and also “PG-13 Movies” and “Kids Movies” these are video playlists I created.

By default these sub-menu items linked to Years / Actors / Directors, but as I rarely use those I changed
them to suit my needs better.



TV Shows menu – here we have two default tiles on the left hand side, ”TV Shows” will open the TV Shows library proper and “TV Guide”.

The fanart panel in the middle shows recently added TV Show episodes in your library and on the custom tiles on the right hand side, I again used the MetroIcon website to create two matching icons for the BBC iPlayer and ITV Player Kodi video add-ons.



As with other skins, TV Guide will show you episodes that are currently airing on live TV for TV Show titles you have in your library.



On the TV Shows sub-menu I have again customised this by adding “New Shows” in replace of “Years” and completely removing “Actors” and “Studios” from the sub-menu.



Music menu – here we have on the left hand side the default tiles Music and Music add-ons. The artwork panel in the middle by default is set to “Featured Albums”. In the skin settings you can change what these widgets do.



I’ve just changed mine to show “Most played albums” instead which is more useful.



On the music menu we have four custom tiles on the right hand side, as there is no main Concerts menu in the 1080XF skin for my first tile here I added a favourite to point to the Music Videos (aka Concerts) area.
I also added two icons for Youtube and the Vevo - Kodi video add-ons.

On the music sub-menu I replaced “Songs” with “Recently Played” and replaced “Years” with “Recently Added” which are far more useful.



Applications menu – in this area you have six custom tiles, I have populated mine mainly with shortcuts to my IP security cameras as you can see.

We also have the default tiles of Applications / Games / Pictures / Program Add-ons.

Its worth noting there is no top level menu item for Pictures in 1080XF.



Weather menu – the weather features in 1080XF are excellent and look stunning. The skin uses the OpenWeatherMap Extended add-on and you also need to download a weather image pack.





Live TV menu – here we have the default tiles for TV Channels / Radio Channels / EPG / Recordings / Timer and Search



TV Channels



Radio Channels



EPG Timeline



Settings menu – here we can find all the various Kodi settings and also the Skin settings tiles.



Summary

That’s it for part one, a quick look at the top level menus and in part two I will delve deeper in to the media library views.
1080XF is a gorgeous modern clean looking skin and could be just the thing for moving forward with Kodi version 14!

PART TWO HERE

Windows 7 Media Center, Music Library re-building problem.

I am seeing some very strange happenings with the 7MC Music Library and with music files stored on Windows Home Server machines. This is not just an isolated issue as I have seen the same problem at several different sites on different WHS servers / networks etc.

I posted a thread here on the Green Button and this is how I described this problem.

“I saw this in the beta's / RC and still see it now. When entering the 7MC music library (Albums) view the library looks like its rebuilding itself.

The number of albums is increasing slowly, the covers aren't visible and the default icons appear and then disappear, flashing, it eventually gets to the correct numbers of albums count, but becomes unresponsive you have to exit and go back in to the Music library several times before it finally settles down again and you then see all your albums with the covers.”

It seems others are reporting similar problems with 7MC as well.

I’ve got an official support incident logged with Microsoft, I just hope they have a solution for us?

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Story , Media Center

Phaze1 Digital

Windows Media Center in Windows 7 Beta 1 in HD Action

A user on TGB called clifgriffin has released some rather nice videos of Media Center 7 in action on his blog. Worth a look if you have not seen Media Center 7 yet. So head over there and take a look and see what your missing!

Windows 7 Build 6956 - Media Center screenshots

I was reading this thread on the Green Button here page 19, seems there's a newer Windows 7 build doing the rounds and here's some new screen shots of Media Center in that build.

There's an option in the guide to color code shows by category.

Similar movies and future recordings integrated.

While watching a movie you can view the cast, and view other movies they have directed, produced, or acted in.

Check out the thread here on this page where you can view full sized screen shots.

If your wondering where to get your hands on this build take a look see here.