Re: Call for a Gnome Media Center

["Martin Meyer" <elreydetodo gmail com>]

I for one would like to see a network file browser of some kind in any
media center app. If I run this Gnome Media Center on an HTPC in my
living room, I want to be able to access the media stored *anywhere*
in my house. The majority of it is on my desktop, but when someone
comes over with a Windows laptop and I want to play a video off it,
I'm not going to want to open an SSH window and mount the share!

I guess my main point is that not all video you want to play needs to
be in your "Personal Media Database" thing, it could be anywhere. This
volatile media doesn't need to remain present after it's played.

I know this is not really at the core of this discussion but I think
it's an important consideration for such an application to be
successful. If this is a real Gnome Media Center then Nautilus should
be able to provide some assistance here, no? After all, totem and
mplayer and xine all support playing directly from smb shares.

Martin Meyer

On 2/13/07, Alex Jones <alex weej com> wrote:
> 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/
>
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