Improvements/Wishlist for Posterwall (HT 4.0)

Another great improvement would be to remove TV Show Name from the info panel while playback as it should be obvious which show you are watching. Instead put maybe the Episode Number and/or Season Number.
So instead of "Lucifer A Lot Dirtier Than That" let it be "S06E06 A Lot Dirtier Than That" or "E06 A Lot Dirtier Than That"

 

They should write both information TV show name and episode number/name

 

May I ask why you think the TV show name is important? Completeness?
There is definitely not enough space for this in the current way so that the episode name would be cut off extremely often. In this case "TV Show Name S0XE0X" and "Episode Name" need to be in different rows.

 

When you're watching TV shows of large numbers of episodes and several seasons, you may forget where you're. Actually we've got so much offer from streaming platforms that you got confused. IMO the name is necessary and they can place it on the top of the screen, which are so large that there is space for whatever you like.

 

In my household it's always "which episode is it? The ep name has never entered into our conversations. In fact I learnt to drop the ep name off the file as often HT and tiny Mediamnager would think it was the title of a film.

 

It follows the bookmark rule in Settings/Playback/Bookmarks so if you play beyond the "Start Bookmark Time" the counter resets.

If you want to set to zero, mark as watched (and then unwatched if you want to).

I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but I guess it stops you losing your place if you accidentally restart.

 

Updated with changes of the latest FW.

@mirror any update on the play button (see no. 4)?

 

Checking.

 

It works now, thanks a lot

Can you please change the following in order to make it more consistent?

Scanning with TMDB and TVMaze displays TV Show Name (this is the preferred behavior imho)


While scanning with TheTVDB gives TV Show Name Season (in case there is only one Season)


On Watching the behavior is similar. TheTVDB shows TV Show Name Season while TMDB uses TV Show Name (I didn't test TV Maze but I assume its the same). Here the best solution would be TV She Name - Season. Would it be possible to change it this way? It might be more complicated because the display name in "watching" will be different than the one on the "TV Show" category for example. If its not possible I think it should be like TMDB.


And last but not least would be the integration of trakt.tv in order to be able to sync status across different devices and get playback statistics about how much you have watched. Here are some example of how it is implemented:
On Popcorn Hour devices: https://github.com/pchtrakt/pchtrakt
On VLC https://github.com/XaF/TraktForVLC

This way one could even sync the play status even with server solutions such as Jellyfin.

 

The preference should be the show name only, not including the season info on Watching or on the TV screen. If Watching is going to show detail, it should show a screenshot of the episode or wallpaper of the series with the SxxExx - Title below the image. My preference is still the show, when I click Enter it takes me to the episode summary of the next unwatched episode.

Having Season info on both of those images seems cluttery, especially once you get into shows with longer titles than 4400.

 

It could be like Netflix, A-Prime Video or HBOMax as we use it daily!!

 

I don't use those ever Some users may, but I have a feeling the audience is more of those who have their own content built up over time, the same people who used to use Me8ear, Popcorn Hour, Dune, Nvidia Shield, Zappiti etc. and ran things like Plex, Kodi or Zappiti Video.

I could be mistaken, but that's the impression I've gotten following the forums.

 

I completely agree with the video wall that there should only be the TV Show Name. But on the “watching” section it also shows the progress bar of the Season you are watching. So it is inconsistent to put the Name and then the progress of the season. It also already shows the wallpaper of the episode you are watching or the next following episode.
Plus you just press play on the poster and the next episode will automatically be played.

 

You're right, I'm using Zappiti Video and Zidoo but also streaming platforms as well. Then daily users will appreciate to have a common system.

 

I don’t think that would be a good idea. Their aim is to trough a lot of new content you might like into your face so that you keep engaged with their platform and continue paying.

 

I've gone through more screenshots from your AVS Forum review and looked at some from Plex and Kodi as well. If the idea behind Watching is to tell you the show you're on, no need for anything else. If it's meant to be an Up Next type feature, it should include season and episode info.

Plex:




Zappiti:




Zappiti gives two different options, Current shows you the show you're watching where Next is specifically about the new upcoming episode. Next only shows the background for the series though, not the image of the episode which is what I would prefer, but at least it says the season and episode number like Plex.

So I guess it depends the desired functionality for Watching, should it be like Zappiti's Next feature or Current feature? Do you want to know the show or the episode? For me I use Current because I may not want to watch the next episode, I may want to watch something out of sequence where there is no continuing story line like Animaniacs or MTV Cribs. So in this instance I would rather Watching just be about the show.

 

Thanks for the screenshots! I think Plex, Emby, Jellyfin show too much information.
If you look at my screenshot on the first page you can see Infuse which behavior I just want to copy^^
I like the idea of two different options like Zappiti but (agree with you on the background) while I like the “next” view I don’t know any way how to incorporate the progress bar. Or do you think that it wouldn’t be a problem to see the next episode and the progress bar of the season?

 

I like the idea of a progress bar though haven't used one before. It's a good snapshot of how far into a season you are, I'd probably use it and jump to a show I haven't watched in a while if it meant dusting off another season, or just crushing one before starting something new.

For a home page it's mostly on track, I would have Watching, Recent & Genre based on the layouts I saw last night, I wouldn't put anything else on that homepage until I learn more about the widgets. How I use Zappiti Video is always going into Current to watch TV, if picking a movie I'll either go into the genres screen, select something alphabetically, maybe by most recently added, or into all movies and use a filter like most recently released or duration. I essentially hide anything watched already to reduce the amount of stuff on the screen but if someone else is over or we want to watch a classic I'll put that filter back on and go pick something.

Right now my biggest annoyance on HT4 is the episode screen, looking at your Dirty Little Secrets screenshot and comments last night, it sounds like the background is the episode screenshot. If using TVDB there's going to be a lot of ugly looking poor quality backgrounds, whereas at least with TMDB you'll get better quality ones. But say something like Ren & Stimpy that doesn't have HD content, you can't upload those episode screens to TMDB, so then you end up with nothing, which is a bummer. I want a nice visual presentation, that's why I use this instead of just a basic file explorer view. Below are a couple more screenshots, first what a season looks like. When you apply a background, you can apply them individually per episode, across a whole season, or across the whole series. I tend to pick 1 background per season if there's multiple available to help differentiate seasons, and then you get a lot more variety on something like The Simpsons or South Park. There's a lot of great backgrounds out there for these sorts of shows. I also like the clear, blatantly obvious tickbox that shows what has already been watched.



When you access an episode, you still retain the same background and have a small image of the screenshot, so if it's poor quality, it still looks better than blowing it up to be the whole background. My partner has Kodi and from memory using the theme she's running it shows similar, a screenshot of the episode and a consistent background based on whatever you set for the season. I think it helps on the episode summary screenshot below that the season info is included too. I've found a lot of shows that don't have season posters, so you can't rely on artwork to tell you the poster. Below you can see clearly this is season 1, going back to your Dirty Little Secrets example I can only see it on the poster or if I squint at the file path. I think a lot of work needs to be done improving the episode summary screen but those would be my 2 biggest requests (episode screens w/ consistent background and season info).



And using the filter you can remove clutter by taking out anything you've already watched.



I'm super low tech, I scrolled past the technical part of your review on the AVS Forums, I know the hardware is going to play anything I have, I'm using a 10 year old plasma that's dying, for me it's all about ease of use and good UI design, and that's where I'm trying to fill my knowledge gaps atm before I confirm my Z9X order or cancel it.

It would be good to see more options in the Custom Layout screen as well. But I imagine a lot of the things I'm thinking about are likely covered by widgets. But I digress, I think I've derailed things enough for now

 

I've been wondering about this since I first got the device.....why is a full source scan necessary when HT detects a file has changed? Why not scan only what changed? Every time something gets added to my TV show source, HT does a full scan over over 12,000 episode files and updates posters for no reason just to pick up what has changed. This seems like an unnecessary system process. I looked at this same functionality in Plex and Kodi and both apps detect the file change but only scan what has actually changed.

This should be considered for HT in the future.


I also agree with the suggestions on the "watching" feature. The Zappiti options would be really nice to have as I currently don't like how it only shows the TV show name. It would be nice to have it show episode name

Would also be nice to have a view for recently added (or a another widget) that shows recently added episodes and not just the TV show name.

More options would be nice for all users. I see a lot of people on this forum shooting down certain ideas because its not something they personally want on their HT setup.

 

Your previous choices about the posters of a TV Show are ignored and replaced by something else when the system scan new contents? Do you use the online system or the posters are saved in local?