A couple of questions. Any suggestions welcome.

[Mick]

Firstly I'd just like to say what a fantastic job the developer has done!

Very nicely designed and written application. I only purchased yesterday and am very impressed indeed. Thank you for all the hard work.

If possible I'd like to ask a couple of questions. The first relates to Movie integration.

I noticed from the manual that My Movies is recommended. This is fine for me as I use My Movies exclusively to manage my movie library. However, I had completely removed the native "Movies" menu strip from 7MC and therefore had not configured it at all. As a result, no movies showed up in MCC. This is fair enough. I wasn't sure how MCC would interact with the My Movies 7MC front end and when it didn't work I made the assumption that MCC interacted with the native "movies" library instead and that the My Movies recommendation was purely because MM can create very complete metadata which can be stored in the correct format for the native library to use i.e. DVDID.xml files and corresponding xml files in the DvdInfoCache file. 
So, I added my main movie share to the native movie library (which is a UNC path to a share on my WHS), I also deleted the local DvdInfoCache folder and created a symbolic link to the hidden DvdInfoCache share that My Movies for WHS creates and now the native movie library contains all of my (non ISO) movies complete with metadata. However, while MCC now sees all of the titles and can launch playback, it is not displaying any cover art or metadata for any of the titles. Is there a way to manually refresh the MCC movie library data or can anyone think of anything I may have done wrong?? Perhaps it's an issue with having my movies and metadata stored on a network share rather than locally?
Any suggestions would be gratefully received. If I need to provide any further information regarding my setup please feel free to ask.

My second question relates to TV. This functionality is fantastic and is working perfectly for me so far. However, I currently have a dual tuner config (one DVB-S and one DVB-T). Any channels that are available on both tuners are merged in the guide e.g. BBC1 is available on both DVB-S and DVB-T so I've merged the channel into a single guide entry and set the tuner priority to DVB-S first and DVB-T second. All working fine however, MCC still lists two BBC1 channels. This happens for all channels that are available on both tuners. Is this correct? Interestingly only the first entry for each channel in MCC displays the channel logo (acquired using "My Channel Logos"). Not a major issue at all but I thought I’d mention it. Again, if any further information is required please just ask.

Lastly, this isn't a question but a very small suggestion (sorry if this is the wrong place to make it). Would it be possible to add an "i" button to the “classic remote” so that you can bring up the context menu in Media Center? I appreciate that with all the other great features it's not a necessity but it would be handy on occasions.

Thanks in advance and keep up the great work!

Best regards,

Mick.

[lopez1_de]

Hi, I'm glad to hear that you like MCC.

To your question #1:
What MCC does is to get a movie list from 7MC. The movies have to be stored in the native movie folder (local or network doesn't matter). MCC now reads the mymovies.xml file (which is hidden) from the particular movie folder (each movie should be in it's own folder). I can't remeber exactly. Maybe you have to active this xml export in the MM options? 
Maybe we can optimize the MyMovies behaviour a bit. I expected that the mymovies.xml is a standard output of MM. I will review this.

To your second question:
I think I have overloocked something (MergedChannels). I never had attached two receivers until now. But I have two 7MC and I will connect both receivers to one 7MC to locate the problem. I hope it's not to tricky to get the merged channel infos and will release an update soon.


To your suggestion:
I want to add the possibility to let you choose the buttons for the last button row. It's something for the next release.
It's also nice to add a button which steps forward (20sec, 1min, 2min, 4min or so) with every click to forward commercials easy. This is a feature I was missing a long time in WMC.

Thanks for the great input!

Regards,

Markus

[Mick]

Hi Markus,

Thanks for replying so quickly and for the information.

I managed to get the Movie metadata working but the results have raised a couple more questions Hope you don't mind.

My Movies does indeed create the mymovies.xml files automatically. They were all present and correct in each of my individual movie folders. I believe the problem I was experiencing is probably a combination of the following

1. The metadata (including cover art) only seems to work for DVD movies i.e. movies ripped to folder structure (moviename\Video_TS\). I have several movies in avi, wmv, MPEG-2 format (converted for various reasons). While each of these movies are stored in their own folders along with a mymovies.xml file (and folder.jpg, mymovies-front.jpg, mymovies-back.jpg, etc), MCC lists them and allows me to start playback but doesn't display metadata. This may be something you can look at (assuming I haven't done something wrong).

2. I store many of my movies (DVD and Blu-Ray) as ISO's because I like to use Arcsoft TMT for playback and having My Movies auto mount the image so that 7MC then uses its own autoplay feature is the tidiest solution with the highest WAF. Obviously these don't show up in the native 7MC movie library (at least not without http://mikinho.com/wmc/mount-image/  ) so I wouldn't expect MCC to see them (it does with Mikinho's software installed but there are other issues I won't go into here for the moment). The reason I mention all this is because when you mount a DVD ISO, 7MC usually prompts you to playback using either its built-in player or any registered third party application (Arcsoft TMT, PowerDVD, etc). As I always want TMT to do the playback I use a registry key to tell 7MC that it doesn’t support DVD playback and therefore it always launches TMT without prompting. The upshot of this is that the movie library doesn’t actually display the DVD folder rips. Once I changed the registry back to enable DVD support, the movies showed up in the library AND in MCC. Oddly, once MCC has the list I can change the registry again and the movies still get displayed in MCC with full metadata.
You probably know about this registry key already but for anyone else reading this it’s a DWORD called “HideDVD” stored in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Start Menu. A value of 0 enables DVD support and a value of 1 disables it.

In short, MCC’s movie section currently works perfectly for anyone storing DVD movies as folder rips and using the built in 7MC player for playback. If like me you introduce other movie storage types and/ or third party players there will be complications. If this is something you’d like to investigate and would like any further information from me please just let me know. If this is by design and there are no plans to change it then I fully understand (the product already does sooo much for such a small price).

One final thing related to the above (promise . The classic remote does actually function within Arcsoft TMT’s 7MC integrated player however, whenever I press a button it changes TMT from fullscreen to windowed mode. Do you think this is something that can be looked at or is it outside the remit of MCC?

Regarding your information about future plans for the classic remote control, that sounds great!! I’ll look forward to seeing this when it’s ready.

I’ll also wait to hear how you get on testing a multi-tuner setup. Again, if you need anything from me to assist, please do not hesitate to ask.

Sorry to ramble on. I appreciate your help and hope that some of the above might actually be useful information.

Kind regards,

Mick

[lopez1_de]

1. The metadata (including cover art) only seems to work for DVD movies i.e. movies ripped to folder structure (moviename\Video_TS\). I have several movies in avi, wmv, MPEG-2 format (converted for various reasons). While each of these movies are stored in their own folders along with a mymovies.xml file (and folder.jpg, mymovies-front.jpg, mymovies-back.jpg, etc), MCC lists them and allows me to start playback but doesn't display metadata. This may be something you can look at (assuming I haven't done something wrong).

Uhm, this is pointing me to something. MyMovies is getting movie infos also for avi, mpeg and so on. Not only for DVD's. I was always storing this files into video folder. I have a look on what's possible in the future.

2. I store many of my movies (DVD and Blu-Ray) as ISO's because I like to use Arcsoft TMT for playback and having My Movies auto mount the image so that 7MC then uses its own autoplay feature is the tidiest solution with the highest WAF.

Why not let 7MC play the ISO's which are mounted by MM? (I have never tried.)

Sorry to ramble on. I appreciate your help and hope that some of the above might actually be useful information.

It's a pleasure. And all the infos are very interesting and useful. 

[Mick]

Why not let 7MC play the ISO's which are mounted by MM? (I have never tried.)

  Good question. Two reasons really;

1. For ease of use. It's nice for the wife to have the same interface to navigate when playing back either DVD's or Blu-Ray's.

2. (More important from my perspective) In TMT5 the new SimHD technology does a very nice job of upscaling and even without it PQ is, IMHO, still better than the native 7MC Codecs/ player.

Thanks again for getting back to me and for looking into my questions. Like said, anything I can do to help just let me know.

FWIW I think you're practically giving this away. I know many people moan if software is anything but free but MCC is ridiculously good value!!

I can get everything I want right now by using "My Movies for Android Pro" for my movie library and MCC for EVERYTHING else (classic remote issues with TMT5 not withstanding) but getting everything in a single product/ interface (which I think MCC will do in the furture) will be awesome!!  .

Kind regards,

Mick.

[RikF]

"Why not let 7MC play the ISO's which are mounted by MM? (I have never tried.)"

I also use this solution to play Blu-Ray ISOs in my library.  7MC can't play them, but when combined with TM and MyMovies, WMC lets me keep all my disks safely on the shelf!

[Mick]

Hi Markus,

1.5.4 is a very nice release!! Many thanks.

The mymovies.xml/folder.jpg metadata reading is spot on and I love what you've done with the classic remote.

My previous posts about duplicate TV channels could well have  been down to the system I was testing on so please disregard for the moment  .

Did you have a look into what would be involved in getting MCC to automount ISO's so that media center's autoplay would kick in? Not so worried about DVD but now MCC monitors the same folders as MM and reads mymovies.xmls all my BD ISO rips show up but obviously won't play when launched from MCC.

I may be able to help here if you're interested in getting this to work. I think it would be of huge benefit as BD stored as ISO is the MM recommended solution.

Thanks as always for listening.

Mick

[Mick]

Hi Markus,

I see you've added ISO support in the latest version . Looking forward to testing this.

Thanks.

Mick