STV Import: MovieTimes Movie Listings Import v0.57 Beta

[Humanzee]

cool, It all worked first try this time.

Suggestions:
1) I noticed that most of the poster art is actually in pretty high detail. I think it would be neat if you could click on the poster or select an option on the left in the Movie Details screen and go to a new screen where the poster is as large as possible to fill the screen, with only a single back command. That way it would be easier to appreciate the poster at a size you could actually see.

2) If you are like me and have a wide screen display the "list of movies" doesn't lay out very well to make good use of the available screen real estate, even at only 4 rows. (see pic) It would be nice if there was an option to change to a thumbnail or landscape style of lay out. Have as narrow a navigation pain as possible on the left. On the right have maybe only 1 - 3 movies showing. Big poster movie art with the title below. Then the user can move horizontally (I guess vertically would work too) to get to the next set of thumbnails. Basically, I would rather look at more movie poster than as much blue as I currently do.

Well done Aperry, this all looks awesome. I actually don't get out to the theaters much, and with commercial detecting I don't even really know what movies are coming out. Now at least I can know what I want to add to my netflix cueue.

So next we look forward to figuring out the trailers. I have already watched some of them full screen with VLC player and they don't look half bad.

[montgomeryt]

I got mine to work but when you try to read the detail for a movie it ends up in the wrong place on the screen. I added the mod thru the dynamic menus and exited - ran the update and everything was there. Just not in the right place.


Any ideas ?

[aperry]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

Suggestions:
1) I noticed that most of the poster art is actually in pretty high detail. I think it would be neat if you could click on the poster or select an option on the left in the Movie Details screen and go to a new screen where the poster is as large as possible to fill the screen, with only a single back command. That way it would be easier to appreciate the poster at a size you could actually see.

This is something I have already thought of, and eventually may put that in.

2) If you are like me and have a wide screen display the "list of movies" doesn't lay out very well to make good use of the available screen real estate, even at only 4 rows. (see pic) It would be nice if there was an option to change to a thumbnail or landscape style of lay out. Have as narrow a navigation pain as possible on the left. On the right have maybe only 1 - 3 movies showing. Big poster movie art with the title below. Then the user can move horizontally (I guess vertically would work too) to get to the next set of thumbnails. Basically, I would rather look at more movie poster than as much blue as I currently do.

The problem here is that I have tried to use the themes as they exist in the current version wherever possible. I wanted the look and feel of the import to replicate Sage's look and feel wherever possible. It is a very slippery slope once you start changing things up. There are only one or two places where I have deviated in the current setup, like changing up the details screen a bit to increase the heght of the top sections so I could get a 4th button in there.

I'm not saying I'll never go down that road, but for now, I'm sticking with the stock SageTV themes wherever possible.

Well done Aperry, this all looks awesome. I actually don't get out to the theaters much, and with commercial detecting I don't even really know what movies are coming out. Now at least I can know what I want to add to my netflix cueue.

So next we look forward to figuring out the trailers. I have already watched some of them full screen with VLC player and they don't look half bad.

Thanks... For the trailer playback, as I mentioned previously, I'll probably do the SageTVPlayer program that is part of the placeshifter package. Using that won't require you to purchase placeshifter as it is MPlayer under a different name, and MPlayer is an open-source product. I may add support for external players at some point, but I want to get it working this way first.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by montgomeryt

I got mine to work but when you try to read the detail for a movie it ends up in the wrong place on the screen. I added the mod thru the dynamic menus and exited - ran the update and everything was there. Just not in the right place.

Are you running SageTV version 5? I know that there were some theme changes going from 4.x to 5, and I remember seeing something like this on my details screen when I first made the switch. I had to make some changes specifically to this screen to get it working again.

That may be what you are experiencing (but in reverse).

[ldavis]

I have gotten the new version to work on my server but the config file will not load on the on a client.

[jlabrue]

Hey aperry,

Looking good so far. I am still having a problem getting it to load the location file. The config stays properly and it doesn't error on the ampersand no but after setting my zip coee (73013) and (Re)Load the Theaters, I get nothing. If I go in and manually copy the theaters I wnat into the Active section, they will appear and I can get movie data. It just won't list them so I can go through and select the ones I want to make Active. Could you try my zip and see if you are experiencing the same problem?

Thanks for all you effort. So many people have been chomping at the bit for this!

[aperry]

Originally Posted by jlabrue

Hey aperry,

Looking good so far. I am still having a problem getting it to load the location file. The config stays properly and it doesn't error on the ampersand no but after setting my zip coee (73013) and (Re)Load the Theaters, I get nothing. If I go in and manually copy the theaters I wnat into the Active section, they will appear and I can get movie data. It just won't list them so I can go through and select the ones I want to make Active. Could you try my zip and see if you are experiencing the same problem?

The MTSA author changed how he indicates that there are no theaters in the active/inactive. I'll get the STVI updated tonight to work with the new data.

Thanks for letting me know.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by ldavis

I have gotten the new version to work on my server but the config file will not load on the on a client.

I don't have a client setup. I run everything on one machine.

I don't know if this will work, be sure to backup your whole MovieTimes folder before trying this... These instructions assume Windows XP.

You did backup the existing MovieTimes data, right? If not, do it now. Last chance...

Make sure you have totally exited SageTV. Server and clients.

Try setting up a share on your server machine. Call it "MovieTimes" and hook it to your "C:\MovieTimes" folder. Make sure that everyone has read/write access to that share (you need write access to be able to save config from the client).

Right-click on your "My Computer" icon in your server's start menu and go to Properties, and in the window, go to the Computer Name tab. Make note of the "Full computer name" on that tab, ignore any trailing period.

Go into the config.xml file in your C:\MovieTimes folder, and change all occurrences of "C:\MovieTimes\" to "\\servername\MovieTimes\" (where servername is the computer name you noted above). Make sure you get them all, and double-check your work...

Load up SageTV on the server and on the client and you should be able to navigate the MovieTimes data.

If that did not work and you want to get back to where you started, restore the files you backed up at the beginning of these steps.

[mechling-burgh]

Aperry,
Love the plugin the one thing I do notice is if the showtime list is to long it goes off the right side of the screen. Is there anyway in Studio to have it wrap around if it is longer than the display area.

[aperry]

I thought I had turned word wrap on for that area. I know I did at one point after noticing the same thing you did.

Anyhow, thanks for letting me know, I'll take a look...

[mike1961]

Humanzee - how do you get this to work with Nielms Dynamic Menu? I put the MovieTimes folder on the server's drive (not sure if it matters which drive since there are two) and changed the references in config.xml. I then included this code in my menu.xml:

<internalScreenMenuItem
title="Movie Times"
screen="MovieTimes"/>

but I know there is something I'm doing wrong. I'm trying to get this to work with SageClient and the dynamic menu. I cannot even get to the config menu. It just says unknown internal screen MovieTimes.

EDITED Got it working. I see I had to specify screen = "MovieTimes Main"

Thanks,
Mike

[aperry]

Originally Posted by aperry

The MTSA author changed how he indicates that there are no theaters in the active/inactive. I'll get the STVI updated tonight to work with the new data.

Ran into a little bit of an issue on this so I did not get an update completed last night. I should have something to release tonight.

[montgomeryt]

Originally Posted by aperry

Are you running SageTV version 5? I know that there were some theme changes going from 4.x to 5, and I remember seeing something like this on my details screen when I first made the switch. I had to make some changes specifically to this screen to get it working again.

That may be what you are experiencing (but in reverse).

Yep, I'm running version 5 and the stock theme with a few addons

Dynamic Menu
Movie Listings
Exit Sage
Multi-Function Stop

That's it.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by montgomeryt

Yep, I'm running version 5 and the stock theme with a few addons

Dynamic Menu
Movie Listings
Exit Sage
Multi-Function Stop

That's it.

So that we can eliminate some variables, can you try loading the MovieTimes STVi into a "stock" SageTV3.xml base file? Follow the instructions in the PDF to add a menu item through Studio, then navigate to the movie details screen like you did here.

If it works this way, then try adding on the others one-at-a-time and seeing which one breaks the movie details screen.

By the way, the reason I asked about the version you are running is that the layout of the screenshot you posted is not consistent with what I'm seeing. Specifically, the upper-right section does not have an outline around it in my stock MovieTimes-only install.

I'm really thinking that one of the other imports may have something in it that is interfering with the theme I am using.

[montgomeryt]

Originally Posted by aperry

So that we can eliminate some variables, can you try loading the MovieTimes STVi into a "stock" SageTV3.xml base file? Follow the instructions in the PDF to add a menu item through Studio, then navigate to the movie details screen like you did here.

If it works this way, then try adding on the others one-at-a-time and seeing which one breaks the movie details screen.

By the way, the reason I asked about the version you are running is that the layout of the screenshot you posted is not consistent with what I'm seeing. Specifically, the upper-right section does not have an outline around it in my stock MovieTimes-only install.

I'm really thinking that one of the other imports may have something in it that is interfering with the theme I am using.

Good point and thanks for the feedback. I think I'll totally revert and then import it first and thanks for your work on this. This has always been a useful feature I've wanted!

[mike1961]

Two things:

1. I can't seem to get the Load Theatre list to work. I'm not sure what is wrong.

2. There is a minor bug I found. I have my network Z drive mapped to D:\SharedZ on the file server. So, I want to map to Z:\Movietimes but selecting directories forces me to map to Z:\SharedZ\MovieTimes. It's like it's picking up the folder SharedZ even though there is no SharedZ on the Z drive (but there is on D since I do not want to share everything on D). My workaround was simply to modify the properties file and it then finds the config and location files. The other thing I notice is that I can't map to a unc like \\server1\sharedz\movietimes but I did change it to \\\\server\\sharedz\\movietimes in the properties file and everything worked.

Mike

[mike1961]

At the command prompt when I type MTSA it works on my SageClient computer (Intel 2.66 ghz) but I keep getting a "The Application Failed to Initialize Properly" xc0000135 Click OK to terminate the application" on my AMD 3800/2X server.

Any ideas what this is. I want to get this plugin working but I'm stuck.

Thanks,
Mike

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mike1961

At the command prompt when I type MTSA it works on my SageClient computer (Intel 2.66 ghz) but I keep getting a "The Application Failed to Initialize Properly" xc0000135 Click OK to terminate the application" on my AMD 3800/2X server.

Any ideas what this is. I want to get this plugin working but I'm stuck.

Thanks,
Mike

Is .NET installed on your server?

Gerry

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

I tried the new download, but still no luck. I am not sure if I grabbed the correct version, though. I downloaded a file named "aperry-movietimes-stv-import-v051-beta.zip", but all the files it contains appear to have the same timestamps and sizes as the previous version I downloaded (everything is dated 5/7/2006, and for example, the mtsa.exe is still dated 4/19/2006). Have I grabbed the correct file?

Ok. I grabbed the newest upload and am still not having any luck. Other people have reported success with this version so I am not sure what the problem might be.

I am running Sage 5.0.1. I use a couple of other STVi plug-ins (comskip, intelligent suggestions), but as per an earlier suggestion, I have tried importing the MovieTimes STVi into the stock SageTV3.xml and still did not have luck.

Everything seems to be working correctly with the exception that the List Movies and List Theaters screens both report that no movies are found. Other than that, the config.xml is working correctly, I successfully enter a location and the mtsa.exe is downloading the moviedata.xml, posters, trailers, etc with no problem. All of my files are in the standard C:\MovieTimes\Media directory, so the config.xml should be pointing at the right place to find everything.

Any thoughts?

[joe123]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Is .NET installed on your server?

Gerry

What is this exactly and does it invade privacy (like tracking cookies)?