We’ve spent a lot of time, of late, talking about the excitement of the latest version of MythTV. But it is an exciting topic. Video under MythTV is especially important. On the DVR side of things, MythTV has significant attraction. But as a media center application for the playback of video files, the competing software packages change, to software like XBMC and Boxee.
In version 0.22, MythTV unveiled MythUI, which is a complete rewrite of the Myth user interface. New themes were released and several old ones modified. Last night, we did a series of screenshots to show off some of the theme magic available.
Terra(The New Default Theme)
Now, Terra shows off the options for a Watch Recordings menu displayed in a manner other than traditional list style, using a horizontal scrolling menu for each program on the DVR side.
But what about for watching videos? As we mentioned in our previous post, JAMU offers an automated method of getting metadata on video files based on their names. There was metadata support in MythTV before, but the inclusion of this new script and other frontend features greatly simplify it out of the ‘box’. A script already exists, but will likely be incorporated as part of version 0.23, that allows for recordings to be exported with metadata information to MythVideo.
If you enlarge the image, you will notice that JAMU has added the episode metadata, including description, to these episodes of St. Elsewhere. There is discussion of adding additional options for screenshots for MythVideo(the feature is there for Recordings). If you look at the above image, every episode is using a stock poster.
Graphite
Graphite is being shown off as another new theme for MythTV 0.22 which shows off several of the new features you can enjoy, namely posters and fanart in the Watch Recordings menus. If you note the picture below, you’ll see the ABC show Castle, has a poster, and each episode has an autogenerated screenshot.
The next two images show the background art available in this theme for shows. All of the art shown was imported by the JAMU script.
Here is the popup, with the extra art and metadata, for a movie we brought in, and a TV episode. It offers a lot of information, which can be used to sort videos by year, genre, season(if TV show), etc.
Here is an alternate display of a directory of movies under the Metallurgy theme, also a theme newly included into MythTV 0.22. As you can see, the automated process didn’t bring in posters for everything. This can be corrected manually, by entering in additional information to better identify the item.
All in all, MythTV offers an exciting new and themeable interface that brings it on par with XBMC and Boxee, products that are not in the same category as MythTV, but perform some of the same functions. MythTV still has a ways to go in some areas, however, but it has come a long way.
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- Video under MythTV (gadgetwisdom.com)
- MythTV 0.22 Release Candidate 1 (gadgetwisdom.com)
Blogging… MythTV on Design http://bit.ly/1NZkQt
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
@dmfrey http://bit.ly/45DK6I and http://bit.ly/1XO9zo – Have additional parts in the works. Going to assemble them all when done.
This comment was originally posted on Twitter