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Progress on my home theater PC + Room


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2 hours ago, DOS76 said:

I didn't like that I couldn't go to the next episode with out navigating to the arrows and hitting enter instead of the arrows just going to the next episode just seemed unintuitive on the desktop compared to what I already had.

I  more ordinarily use the Chrome Plex app when casually watching things on PC. I only really use PMP when I have it setup in my living room with an actual remote control (Harmony 890). So I don't really have an issue with navigation so much. I don't really like that you go into TV/Movies/whatever and it first has recommendations before you get to your library in alphabetical order. When I'm using PMP, it's for a well planned movie night, and I know exactly what movie I'm going to watch. With Netflix, I understand having "recommendations" because someone else manages that library, but with Plex, I know what's there, and I know what I want to watch. But I can see where it would be useful for family members and stuff, people that don't really see the "behind the scenes" of their media content.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/18/2017 at 0:47 PM, Pyrometheous said:

PLEX was a bit of a "must have", I'm sad that Plex Home Theater isn't a thing anymore, it would be cool if I could make the PLEX interface match the BigBox interface, but I can deal with PLEX Media Player. At least I'll have DTS HDMA available when I watch my movies now. But BigBox is a really awesome front end for launching the media player from, but I do wish I could make it so Plex doesn't show up countless times in the wheel. But it's a small price to pay for the added convenience of it.

Nice set up. I use PLEX also. For the countless wheels in the sub menus, see this ticket I opened to have programs load from the top level in BigBox. I endlessly hound @Jason Carr about this, but until he sees that more people want it, I doubt it will be implemented any time soon. As of today, it has 17 votes which places it in the top page of requests if you sort by number of votes. I think the more votes it has, the more likely it will see the light of day. Maybe a plugin can take care of this? 

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1521/ability-to-launch-a-program-or-game-from

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1 hour ago, JaysArcade said:

Nice set up. I use PLEX also. For the countless wheels in the sub menus, see this ticket I opened to have programs load from the top level in BigBox. I endlessly hound @Jason Carr about this, but until he sees that more people want it, I doubt it will be implemented any time soon. As of today, it has 17 votes which places it in the top page of requests if you sort by number of votes. I think the more votes it has, the more likely it will see the light of day. Maybe a plugin can take care of this? 

I went ahead and added a vote to it. But honestly, I think you can basically already set this up in BigBox. You just need to do all of the artwork custom, and setup a new "platform" called "apps" or something. I don't know if it'll do the "modern" "metro" Windows 10 apps (I don't think they have executable binaries). I'll work on something tonight, and if I find a good way to launch HTPC friendly apps from BigBox, I'll do a post in downloads with the artwork I put together, and put together a tutorial on YouTube sometime this week.

I think that doing this on a more automated level in LB/BB, would require a database of metadata for common Windows programs/apps. I'm not aware of one off the top of my head, but if there is one, I'm sure a plug-in could be made to import that metadata and streamline the process.

EDIT: Actually this article goes into how to create a shortcut for the "metro"/"Modern" apps, so you could just add them in LB like you would a PC game using a shortcut on the desktop. Again, I'll go ahead and toy with this, and see if there is a way I can export the metadata from LB for easy replication on other's setups. The only potential problem I would see is not having remote control support on the Windows 10 Netflix app (or potentially other apps as well). I tried a "remote control" mod for the Netflix app once, but it was terrible, and the button mapping was inconsistent in some menus, it basically locked your mouse pointer in a grid, which didn't always line up with what you wanted to do. I think you can launch Steam Big Screen from LB already, but I'll need to doublecheck, although, I just create desktop shortcuts for steam games, then add the shortcut to LB, and then it launches from BB fine.

*EDIT 2:* I got impatient and remoted into my tester HTPC from work. I was able to install Netflix and add it to an "Apps" platform I created. Right now I have Netflix, Plex Media Player, and Windows Explorer(just pointed to C:\Windows\Explorer.exe). Being able to launch an explorer window from BB could be beneficial I think, so that you can access files and do stuff like that. If your LB/BB is setup on an HTPC, you could probably use a Logitech Dinovo or a Lenovo N5902 to navigate with, to do simple things like install a new game on steam or whatever.

Edited by Pyrometheous
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Thanks for the vote but maybe you mis-understand what the ticket is for. When you are in Bigbox in the top level Platforms menu scrolling past Arcade, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo - all the platforms and you come to your PLEX or Jukebox or KODI platform, instead of clicking one of those and going into a submenu with repeating PLEX wheel art, it simply launches right into PLEX or Jukebox eliminating the need at all for the sub-menu. I don't want the Jukebox app to be in an apps platform. I just want to launch it straight from the top level wheel. Does that make sense?

I think if it gets implemented, people will use it, they just don't know they need it yet. I didn't do a very good job explaining it in the ticket.

Here is a video that has my custom PLEX Media BTW. I don't show it in the video, but when I select PLEX, I'm offered another submenu with the word PLEX repeating on the wheel like yours does in your video.

 

You can launch Metro Apps too BTW. I have a few set up on my system. Can't remember off the top of my head how I did it but if you google Windows 10 Apps location or something like that, you can find the hidden folder with the apps in it. I can't remember if I added the app directly or if I had to create a shortcut to it. Maybe I should make a tutorial on it. Hmmm...

 

Edit: Saw your edit right after I posted this. I haven't messed with remotes since I'm using this mostly on a cabinet.

Edited by JaysArcade
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39 minutes ago, Pyrometheous said:

Being able to launch an explorer window from BB could be beneficial I think, so that you can access files and do stuff like that.

Neat idea.

I wish I could remote from work. LOL - Hell I don't get enough done as it is with Facebook, I can imagine the work I would miss if I could play with Launchbox all day.

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@JaysArcade gotcha, ok, that would be a nice feature, I totally see what you mean now. My bad :P yeah, I didn't see your most recent post until after I did mysecond edit. Okay, so I think I understand. I think a submenu for apps as a "platform" is probably a decent compromise, but a toggle for specific "games" to launch directly, instead of an "all or nothing" solution would be better for that.

But I do think it would be awesome to have the ability to launch an app directly from the main platform wheel in BB.

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2 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

I wish I could remote from work. LOL - Hell I don't get enough done as it is with Facebook, I can imagine the work I would miss if I could play with Launchbox all day.

Yeah, I don't do it often, but sometimes it gets slow and I can't resist. I LOVE working on creative projects and modding the hell out of the visuals in an interface. I remember when PHT was a thing I would tinker with themes all day, until I got everything looking just right. I loved the Night theme, but the new version on openpht doesn't seem to look right. Though, to be fair, I've only tinkered with openpht for a couple hours.

But yeah, I can get a little obsessive about it. I actually installed my entire steam library (about 120ish games) just so I could map it all to LB and make sure that all of my custom art work (using the Translucent steam .psd that's posted in the downloads section). I actually worked really hard to find all ESRB covers (making them when I can), instead of the PEGI rating system, and that was explicitly because ESRB is my local rating system, and I think it's nice to have it all look uniform. I get creative when a cover doesn't exist for a game :P

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3 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

I can understand the enthusiasm. I configure my set up way more than I play any games on it. I need to join Emulator-aholics anonymous or something, LOL. Tinker, tinker, tinker. Get ALL THE THINGS working on my cabinet!

I'm actually in the same boat, I tinker far more than I game. Kind of sad really, I've actually just started making time to game, and started a let's play/live stream channel on YouTube just to make it an obligation to myself to relax and have fun and enjoy all of my hard work.

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