STV: nielm combo STV (v1.8 Oct 19)

[nielm]

This is a bit of a combination of a lot of people's work and apart from the new features I have added, includes items from the mlbdude 2, and malore's STVs.

The new big features are: fully customisable menu system that can launch external programs, complete weather reporting suite (including animated images), an RSS news reader, an integrated IMDB, improved screen saver and ability to set default padding.

Go to Nielm STV page for more information screenshots and download.

Supplemental information can be found on the Sage Community wiki. Feel free to add more information!

Any problems, please post here!

feature list

• OriginalV2 STV-based
• Mlbdude-2 style main menu with context icons and video window
• Fully customizable main menu with ability to run external programs
• Mlbdude-style recording schedule on main menu (with color coded borders+listeners)
• Graphical disk space used and disk space required indicator
• RSS news feed reader with ability to launch web browser
• Weather reporting suite with full Weather.com integration, multiple location support and ability to display animated images
• Mlbdude-2 weather viewer for backward compatibility (needs mlbdude2 STV installed)
• Mlbdude-style folder based video library with folder.jpg icons and info.my metadata
• Enhanced standard Music library with folder.jpg icon support
• Optional: Mlbdude-style folder based music library
• Malore's custom EPG views
• IMDB search button on detailed information pages
• (v1.2) Constrain favourite to timeslot
• (v1.2) mlbdude2 beta automatic recompression (UNTESTED!)
• (v1.3) malore's commercial skip (UNTESTED)
• (v1.3) malore's closed captioning support (UNTESTED)
• (v1.3) malore's Upcomming Favourites
• (v1.3) Mlbdude's updated Guide screens: Browse by Station/Category/Upcomming movies (rightclick/options in TV Guide)
• (v1.3) Mlbdude's updated 2-pane SageRecordings views
• (v1.6)Updated screen saver: smooth movement, fading, truly random, user-customisable image
• (v1.6)Added ability to set default padding for new favourites/manual recordings
• (v1.6)Integrated IMDB search
• (v1.8)Experimental semi-transparent OSD in Overlay

Credits
Thanks to mlbdude, malore and salsbst whos work I have blatantly copied
Thanks to EsatzTom for the hosting
Uses code from the rsslib4j project


History

V1.0 -- 25 Aug 2004:

V1.1 -- 26 Aug 2004:

• STV fix only -- fixed URL in Yahoo news feeds
• changed web hosting from my dodgy belgian ISP to sage-community.org (thaks ErsatzTom)

V1.2 -- 26 Aug 2004:

• STV fix only --
• Fixed 'Watch Now' for video file
• Added Favourite limit by Timeslot
• Added (UNTESTED) mlbdude2 beta automatic recompression

V1.3 -- 21 Sept 2004
Bugfixes:

• Main menu rec-shecd: corrected clickability.
• IMDB search corrected to search airing name
• Malore menus font size handling fixed
• Malore menus options dialog fixed
• Fixed menu title font on archived recordings menu
• In Weather screens, STOP button/CloseFile command takes you back to the main menu
• Reworked upcomming recordings widget to make date/time have more room
• Java update: corrected minor bug in rss newsreader (HTML not decoded correctly)

New Features:

• Auto-Adjusting number of displayed main menu items (between 6/7 and 9/10 (depending on whether recording schedule is visible)
• new menu "Upcoming Favorites by malore" added
• Closed captioning by malore added (UNTESTED)
• commercial skip by malore added (UNTESTED)
• Added First run logo to airings (icons zipfile update)
• added "Easy Search - Title" to main menu internal screens
• added "Easy Search - Person" to main menu internal screens
• added "Easy Search -- All" to main menu internal screens
• added "Easy Search -- Description" to main menu internal screens
• Added mlbdude menu: "BrowseByStation CSM"
• Added mlbdude menu: "SageRecordings w/ Optional Preview & AutoCategories Two Pane Vert CSM"
• Added mlbdude menu: "SageRecordings w/ Optional Preview & AutoCategories Two Pane Hor CSM"
• Added mlbdude menu: "Upcoming Movies - CSM"
• Added mlbdude menu: "BrowseByCategoryTitle by CSM - New"

V1.4 -- 28 Sept 2004
Bugfixes:

• Fixed bug of mlbdude SageRecordings menus where selecting a playing video would not go to full-screen...
• Fixed bug of malore custom views panels getting unsynchronised.
• Fixed non-responsive 'Browse by Category/Station' views
• Improved ComSkip startup (may need comskip 0.31)

New Features:

• Added dynamic menu option DontScaleItems to limit menus to 6/7 items per page
• Added Commercial skip to file detailed info page -- no longer need to use Malore recordings menu for comskip!
• Added option to start comskip in a minimised window for debugging: nielm/comskip_debug_output=true
• Playback with Commercial skip and .smi Closed captions should now work also for .avi files (commercial detect still needs the original .mpg)
• Removed redundant 'Malore menus options' in detailed setup/enhancements
• Weather report suite Rotan views now support up to 10 layers
• (java update) Improved RSS newsreader so that it now reads the RSS2 feed of this forum

v1.5 30 Sept 2004
Bugfixes:

• Fixed bug where commercial detect in background didn't work

V1.6 -- 14 Oct 2004
Bugfixes:

• Fixed bug in mlbdude sage recordings showing preview if Video preview == never
• Included bugfix from salsbst where WRS got stuck on an image
• Allowed disabling of background commercial processing without needing to restart Sage

New Features:

• Added ability to set the frame rate (required for commercial skip) (detailed setup->enhancements)
• Improved screen saver: smooth movement, fading, truly random, user-customisable image (Properties file: nielm/screensaver_logo)
• Added ability to set default padding for new favourites/manual recordings (detailed setup->enhancements)
• Added new internal screen name: "Setup Wizard - Summary Page"
• Integrated IMDB search (internal screen name "Imdb Search")
• Enabled shadowing on text of WRS

V1.8 -- 18 Oct 2004
Bugfixes:

• Ability to disable the smooth scrolling screen saver (detailed setup->enhancements)

New Features:

• Experimental semi-transparent OSD when using the Overlay renderer (detailed setup->enhancements)
• ability to remove some of the commands on Recording Detailed Info screen (see properties file nielm/detailview/*)
• ability to run a custom command on a recording (see properties file nielm/detailview/custom_command*)
• improved background updating of newsfeeds (they all update simultaneously now)
• WRS now has network timeouts (thanks salsbst)

[mikejaner]

Hey!!!

Am I the only one without Studio now?!?!?
I am seeing more and more people putting out STV's. I'm beginning to think I missed an announcement or something.

LOL

[salsbst]

Looks great, nielm! Will try it out when I return from vacance.

[heffe2001]

I'm DEFINITELY gonna give this a try sometime this week, the weather stuff looks awesome .

[mikejaner]

I have been testing it for the last hour, and I have to say this is a great skin. I love the weather stuff. I especially like the fact that you have it configured it for DC by default. Anyways, no bugs as of yet, which means you have been very careful with your construction of this skin. Good work, and thanks for your time and effort!!

[chrysek]

awesome, looks pretty cool I must say you've done a great job!!!!

If you would also include commercial skip feature this would rock and roll

Anyway I did install it on my client pc and it looks very very cool...

[nielm]

Thanks all...

You can thank salsbst for the DC default config -- I am in Belgium!

I don't have any plans yet to include commercial skip (nor mlbdude recompression) as I do not use it myself, and I am not sure how it works! You could always ask malore to include my features in his STV

[nielm]

There is now a wiki for this STV where supplemental information can be added.

The source code for the java classes can be found at
http://www.sf.net/projects/sageplugins/

If anyone wants to make a GUI for building the menu XML (it is beyond my java skills), the sagemenu java classes already contain code for writing their own XML, so 'all' you need to build is the GUI front-end for editing them

[chrysek]

After using your STV on my client PC I must say its great, it is awesome, what I like is the ease of usage, Watch TV on the first menu, then when you are watching something you get a menu with so many options, you can go right to the place you want to go, very very accesible for usage. Loving it...

Seriously I'm loving it.... If it only had commercial skip in addition to all the other features it would simply be da best STV

Once again, thanks for this great STV!!!!

[tcdrake]

Looks great! Can't wait to try it out. Thanks for your hard work!

[littlerm]

Wow, it looks great! Is there any chance that you will be adding malore's commercial advance?

[edbmdave]

Two questions.

One, do you support the changing of the image file name for folder.Jpg like MlbDude did? (This prevents the folder.jpgs from showing up as images in the Imported Pictures, I renamed my folder.img).

Two, Did you (by chance) grab the protion of the Beta MLBDUDE2 skin that allows for Compression of files?

Thanks

[nielm]

1) the folder.jpg file name is set in the properties file (library_image=folder.jpg), so if that it what you mean, yes I probably support it (not actually tested it yet though)

2) no -- I only took certain screens from the MLBdude2/malore skins, so no compression stuff, nor commercial skip (which is why they don't appear in the feature list).

[Opus4]

A tip regarding images: SageTV will not add hidden images to the picture library. So, an alternative is to set the hidden attribute for image files you don't want added to the lib. Ex: When you use Windows Media Player to rip music CDs, all of the image files it adds are hidden & thus are not in the lib.

- Andy

[edbmdave]

Originally posted by nielm
1) the folder.jpg file name is set in the properties file (library_image=folder.jpg), so if that it what you mean, yes I probably support it (not actually tested it yet though)

Thanks. Perfect will test it.

2) no -- I only took certain screens from the MLBdude2/malore skins, so no compression stuff, nor commercial skip (which is why they don't appear in the feature list).

Thanks. Did not know if you might have grabbed it as part of the section you copied or not...

One More Question: is the IMDB lookup just an additional screen or will it create and populate the info.my file for that movie? (THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!)

[DFranch]

Looks really good. I can't wait to get home and try it out.

[ellweber]

Nielm,

I can't sem to get to your links. I've tried several different computers and browsers (PC/Mac, Mozilla IE...) and none of them can get to any ...brutele.be URL, yours or any others I have tried.

The message I get back from the failed link is: "The operation timed out when attempting to contact homeusers.brutele.be."

Am I the only one having this problem? What silly little thing am I overlooking? Who's on first? Help!!!

Thanks,

Lynn

[trevorst]

I loaded it today and the text in the recordings menu is to large on my setup. each line overlasps the one below by about 30%.

[Booboo]

Well done, Nielm
I love the skin. I am having one issue. WHen I play a file from the imported Video Library (clicking Watch Now), it appears in the upper right hand corner and cannot be changed. In Mlbdude 2, when I click on Watch Now, it would open the player in full screen (like the DVD one). Any ideas? THanks.

[Crim]

I just got it to work (freak'in great BTW) but I'm messing around with the Weather module, I'm trying to get it to work with Boulder Colorado USA like how it works with Washington DC.

My question is if theres an easy way to config this? If not then thats cool, I'll figure it out with alittle more work.

Great job on this, only problem is that I'm also working with MLBDUDE2's Beta Compression skin so it's kind of hard to loss a useful feature.