Re: Call for a Gnome Media Center

[Alex Jones <alex weej com>]

I think what is needed here is an (albeit huge) co-ordinated effort into
some kind of GNOME Media system, where a video player (Totem) and a
music jukebox (Rhythmbox) and a media centre (???) can share code,
libraries, UI conventions, and importantly, one database.

I don't see a lot of point in bouncing along otherwise - I fear the
result will be a half-baked mess with no consistency.

On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 19:13 +0100, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 17:51 +0100, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Thought someone from Fluendo should chime in on this as Elisa been
> > mentioned. In general we would be interested in having Elisa
> > be the media center add-on to GNOME. So the question is what the
> > community would expect from a 'GNOME media center'. 
> > 
> > We are already using as mentioned by many gnome related technologies,
> > but since the media center GUI is so different we feel a lot of the
> > stack is not really relevant, the same goes for the HIG. While we try to
> > do intelligent GUI design with Elisa there is IMHO not really that much
> > of the HIG that applies directly, but of course we try to use it for
> > inspiration.
> > 
> > We do want to integrate as widely as possible with other applications,
> > be that through upnp a/v and DAAP etc. and I think that it would be
> > mutually beneficial for both Elisa and the rest of the media
> > applications if we managed to create a standard for how to store media
> > files in the form of a certain directory layout and naming and so on.
> > 
> that should be the first step. Right now, I have to create separate
> music databases whether I use banshee or rhythmbox (or at least that's
> how it was last times I switched from one to the other).
> 
> Also, making this 'database' keep videos, photos, etc, would be a good
> first step.
> 
> > I guess from our point of view we would be interested in hearing what
> > requirements/expectations people have for something like a media center
> > solution to be included as a 'part of GNOME'.
> > 
> > A media center interface is in some sense an alternative GUI to the
> > desktop, so my thinking so far is that we should both do a GNOME menu
> > entry for Elisa and a GDM entry to log directly into Elisa.
> > 
> for the GNOME interface (to be run on a GNOME desktop), I really think
> this is very much needed. While we, at least myself, are ok with music
> (rhythmbox and banshee are great) and photos (gthumb and f-spot), we
> have nothing similar to this for videos. It would so be really nice to
> have a simple interface to all your music and videos and photos, without
> having to run the full GDM Elisa session.
-- 
Alex Jones
http://alex.weej.com/