Media Player Remote

Greetings

Have just completed a project using the Media Player remote that ships with C-Touch. Love the concept.
I designed my own interface and have come across a few issues with the config file.
I thought I would share my experience with the product.

1. StatusLabelLeft - It does not matter what value you place for positioning in the X axis it always sits in the same position. StatusLabelTop positions it nicely in the Y axis.
2. ShuffleAlbums and RepeatTrack do not appear at all
3. Although you can select the font to use it does not appear in the list of fonts to import/export to the C-Touch.
4. I have it accessing Internet radio stations, the problem here is that the menu button becomes unavailable after the station is selected. I have to shut the client down and restart it to get it to become available. This is a hassle when you want to change source.

Wish List if the source code is going to be Opened / Updated.

• Select different fonts and colors for the labels.
  
• Media Player is running on Windows Home Server. During my testing I would send it to fetch play lists for songs that are no longer on the hard drive and would error. The error occurs on the media player and requires the user to click OK. A message to this affect appears on the client. Now the WHS is running without keyboard / mouse / screen. Is there a way that acknowledging this on the client that it could clear the error on the WHS media player? (Client (Person) has access to WHS via VNC but not via C-Touch)

Just a word to the wise for those that follow my foot steps. Turning the volume "Off or Muting" the amplifier does not stop the media player from streaming media from over the Internet. Leaving it playing in this manner will eat into your Internet mileage.

 

Have you tried the same thing on a generic AV server. Such as a Thecus / Synology NAS device. WHS is great if you want all the windows oriented formats but I find that iTunes is taking over as the front end. Most NAS devices which support PnP (plug and play) AV protocol over networks support both iTunes and file sharing. What this means is that PC's as servers are becoming a thing of the past.

So before all the tweaking is done in Windows, perhaps it can be done in more generic / more popular devices which dont require service packs and protection from foreign code. The additional joy is there is no setup time other than installing the hard drives and user rights. I notice that 1000GB hard drives are $260 and movies take up only 4GB or so.

As most of these devices run over gigabit LAN there is ample bandwidth for 10 users. The HTML driven network servers have very few updates and run smoothly for years at a time. The best part about it is they also interact nicely with your iPOD and other portable devices.

Bearing in mind that TV's are now coming with ETHERNET ports we can forget about HDMI and everything else. Data streaming is certainly the way of the future.

As for touch screens in general I wish someone would come up with a jog/shuffle device for them. Pressing your way through multiple levels and options is tedious and droll.

 

Hi Colin Smith,

I wish I could take credit for the concept. Thanks for the feedback and it's good to hear the software is in use.

1. StatusLabelLeft - does sound like a bug, I'll look into this
2. ShuffleAlbums and RepeatTrack are not actually applicable to windows media player. Buttons that aren't used by a particular media server get hidden on startup.
3. Fonts - to make the font transfer over to the CTC you will need to use the font in the PICED project somewhere, perhaps on a hidden page. One this is used in the PICED project it will allow you to transfer the font over the CTC with the standard project transfer method. unfortunately there is currently no other method for doing this.
4. I hadn't planned for internet radio control from the CTC. This would be why the menu button disappears. I'll have a look into what I can do with this.

5. Different font colours for labels should be do-able, I'll take a look into this as well.
6. When an error occurs in Windows media player unformtunately there is no clean way of getting rid of this.

Regards,

Matty