LinuxMCE

This is a place where I plan on documenting some of the things I'd like to see improved in LinuxMCE, categorized by "annoyance level", and some longer-term thoughts of no significant importance.

If you're looking for "What is LinuxMCE" or "What do I do to get media applications running in Linux" see Linux Media.

If you're looking for "How do I set up LinuxMCE" see the LinuxMCE website

LMCE Improvements

Highest Annoyance Level

1. Cover art and additional data is not automatically downloaded for music
   • Yes, I know there's a tool to do it - but it took me 3 days to get my movies straightened out - by my calculations, I'm looking at well over a year to do the music
   • I understand why this is complex for movie files that have no metadata, so I don't think that's too bad, but if Windows Media Player (which I hate with a passion) can go and pick up cover art for MP3s automatically, there is no reason LMCE can't.
   • I do like the ability to choose from all the different cover art available for some titles, but this should not be the default behavior. Perhaps the cover art search could automatically select the first thing it finds for every file, then let the user go back and select something different if he feels the need.

High Annoyance Level

1. When browsing media on my Nokia N810 orbiter, there is text over the cover art, making the text and cover art completely unreadable.
   • The screenshots of UI1 do not seem to have this issue - am I doing something wrong?

Medium Annoyance Level

1. When browsing my video collection on my Nokia N810 orbiter, any synopsis that is too long will simply be cut off, so you can't read the whole thing.
   • The MythTV video plug-in dealt with this by providing a little button that presented a pop-up containing only the description.
2. Imported DVDs are not tagged as Movie of DVD quality
   • This must be done from the web interface every time
   • This breaks the filters in the file list
3. The genre field is not populated by the cover art and metadata retrieval tool
4. In the file list, titles starting with "The" are all sorted alphabetically by "The" instead of the next word in the title, which is just wrong...
5. On the orbiter, when viewing recorded TV within MythTV - there are no buttons to do commercial skip or to access or navigate the on-screen menu

Low Annoyance Level

1. Although LinuxMCE can rip DVDs, it cannot transcode them
   • This means movies take up twice as much room as they need to (but storage is cheap so this isn't too bad)
   • This means I have to get all the tracks on the DVD, including the menu, special features... I don't want any of that - gets in the way of the movie
   • This means that many portable devices cannot play the imported file - so I can't take a movie on a plane as easily.
   • MythTV has a plug-in that does this - it has a pretty good interface, and is fully automated
2. The photo screensaver resizes images to the same aspect ratio as the display, distorting them badly.
3. The "Video" scenario includes recorded TV shows and Movies
   • There should be a "Movie" scenario and a "Recorded TV" scenario. I'm having trouble making this happen - I haven't figured out how to setup an event to turn on the filters in the file list yet.
4. On the orbiter, when viewing recorded TV within MythTV - the last viewed live TV show title and channel is displayed instead of what is actually being watched.

Lowest Annoyance Level

1. The photo screensaver runs when the display is off, creating unnecessary disk reads
2. The webpage http://dcerouter redirects to http://dcerouter/pluto-admin
   • There is no easy way to get to http://dcerouter/mythweb or http://dcerouter/pluto-admin/weborbiter.php
   • I have overridden this behavior and inserted a page with links to those important pages
3. A movie synopsis retrieved from Amazon is usually a "review" rather than a "description"
   • MythTV's video plug-in uses IMDB instead of Amazon, which provides much much better descriptions of the movies
4. The main page of the web admin (http://dcerouter/pluto-admin/) says the Help button refers to "a local copy of the online documentation" when it actually refers to the online documentation.

LMCE Long-Term Project Ideas

Portable Media Directors

We have lots and lots of neat little devices that make our media portable such as MP3 players, portable video players, and even our phones. LinuxMCE already manages all our media within the home - what if it could manage all these devices too? When a portable media device is connected to the LinuxMCE system, new options would be available to manage the media on the device including the ability to:

• Synchronize selected groups between the device and LinuxMCE system
• Add new media to the device from the LinuxMCE system
• Add new media to the LinuxMCE system from the device

LinuxMCE may also automatically transcode the media into the proper format for the device to save space or combat technical differences, such as the device's probable inability of playing DVD images.

It may also be possible to run a lightweight version of the LMCE Media Director on some devices.