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TV-Guide changes (skinners please read)

Written by infinityloop, on 11-11-2008

Until now, we used icons in TV-Guide to mark that an entry is scheduled to get recorded.

If the show was quite "short", then this icon overlayed the text and just did not look good.

So we thought about a different approach and came up with the following solution.
Instead of adding a icon, we just use a different background graphic now, which will make scheduled recordings to appear like this in the TV-Guide.

(click image)

This change will be part of our RC4 release and it will not "break" existing community skins.

If someone would like to incorporate this useability enhancement into his skin, then he simply has to add the following files into the "Media" folder.

tvguide_recButton_Focus_left.png
tvguide_recButton_Focus_middle.png
tvguide_recButton_Focus_right.png
tvguide_recButton_noFocus_left.png
tvguide_recButton_noFocus_middle.png
tvguide_recButton_noFocus_right.png

As you can see, each button consits out of 3 elements to avoid distortions when it gets stretched to the length of the entry in TV Guide.

If these files are not present, then the TV-Guide will just use the icons as it did before.

I would like to thank bavarian and harley for the creation of this nice useability enhancement.

Quote this article in website

Users' Comments (6)

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Posted by revs, on 11-11-2008, , Registered

1. Much better

Much better! I really like the look of that, clearer than the red dot!

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Posted by rmeredit, on 12-11-2008, , Registered

2. Conflicts?

Yep, much better! But what about recording conflicts?

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Posted by dq, on 15-11-2008, , Guest

3. series recordings

Brilliant!
I wonder what items that are part of a series will look?

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Posted by jonaskp, on 04-12-2008, , Registered

4. Not too happy about it

I can see the reason when the programs are short (not a problem I have experienced, but others might have tehse problems often), but honestly I don't really like this change.
The red circle is the universal sign for "Recording", so its very easy for new users. Now, we have to learn some colour codes (Red is probably recording, so that one is pretty easy). And as others said, what about conflicts and alerts.
Also, this probably means that we won't be able to have the Guide show what channels are available and which are not, since that would have been easiest with some colour-coding.

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Posted by Caleb, on 10-12-2008, , Guest

5. Media Portal refinment

I love media portal and its options but the quide is why I and everyone in my office and who we sell media centers to wont change look at this
http://www.alternative-media- solutions.com/vistaimages/ guide.png then look at this http://www.team- mediaportal.com/images/ stories/files/Blogs/teamBlog/ tv_guide.jpg messy as crap hard to read guide needs to be simpler and then you will have alot more ppl moving over and paying, which we would donate for every sale but will only happen if the guide is fixed. Good work on everything else though but look at media center for refinment to media portal

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Posted by markius, on 10-12-2008, , Registered

6. @Caleb

I don't think the Blue3 guide is all that much different from the VMC guide.

The only real differences that I can see are that MP shows 10 channels where VMC show 7. Also the VMC guide is "flat" where MP is sort of "rounded".

Looking at the two pictures you can see that the VMC guide is showing a period where there are only 14 shows on (all are half an hour or so long). The MP screenshot is showing a much busier period - 40 shows on the first 7 channels!

Personally I think the red highlight bar is a vast improvement over the red icon.

M

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