XBMC Remote Control for WP7

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello all,

I have recently created a new XBMC Remote App because well I like programming

It's cheaper than the ones available and works with XBMC 10.0+. I have created some extra featurs that I thought would be useful which weren't present in the other apps.

Pictures:
The app has full support for pictures, you can download them from XBMC right to your phone, watch a slideshow on your phone and have extensive controls when playing them on the Media Center, like zooming and scrolling ....

Library updates: With one click of the button you can update your music / video library

Subtitles: A button is available to open the subtitles window and select the subtitle you'd like (very handy for us non-native english speakers)

Furthermore, all the basics are available: browsing libraries, remote control, ...

Currently I'm working on some features to be able to pin certain media types to the Start Page and later in Mango also to the phone's start page.

Please let me know iwhat you think of it and if you have any good ideas about new features, requests. I'd be glad to work out something.

Here's a deep link to the application: http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=9a2f8f94-5dae-e011-a53c-78e7d1fa76f8

 

[Dave Blake]

We have a forum for guys like you... its called the Application Spotlight forum. This is the place we made just for developers to showcase apps. Welcome to the WPC and thanks for posting your App with us.

 

[dirtbikr]

I just bought it. I have two computers and three apple tvs running XBMC in my house, so I decided why not .

The app is very metro styled, it works with the phone and flows very nicely. A few suggestions possibly:

Not sure if it's just me, but I have over 500 movies and it took a while to load them in when I first clicked. Scrolling is kind of choppy because of the long list or the way it's cached or something (I believe).

My movies are not being displayed in alphabetical order. Raising Arizona comes after Remember Me for example on my list.

The background seems to be at full intensity and it makes it a little difficult to read some of the titles at times. Maybe darken the background images 25% or so? When I went to watch Breaking Bad, the titles were definitely obscured by the bright whites in the background image.

The volume slider works, but maybe implement (+) and (-) symbols or make the slider more user friendly, it seems tacked on there.

The spacing on the list of my TV series is inconsistently spaced at first, and then after you scroll a little bit the gaps fill up.

The jump list does not have all of the letters present with the non-used letters grayed out. The closer you can stick to the built in jump list the better I personally feel. As of now using the jump list requires some hunting on my part to find the right letter since it's not always in the same space.

When swiping in the remote view, if you don't place your finger onto a completely unused portion of the remote, it will press a button before swiping. ie: on the main remote page, when you swipe left to get to now playing, I will hit the right arrow key as I'm swiping to the next page.

On my TV shows list, every time I click into "L" (Love Bites) and click back it's a different random album art, but still brings me to Love Bites. Just now I clicked into it when it said 16 and pregnant, clicked back and it showed Californication, clicked in and back and it said dragon ball z.

A shutdown option would be nice where it pops up the shutdown menu, so the need to go to the remote is taken away (not sure if you can directly implement shutdown commands or not).

General speed is pretty good, but it can always be smoother. I think for a 1.0 release it's damn good!

People don't want to buy something they can't try. I suggest implementing something like a trial where it allows you to open the app 15 or 20 times, then locks you out until you buy it. Don't limit functionality, make the people yearn for it, make them love it in the first 15 tries, then make them buy it.


Okay, now the awesome:

Setup was a breeze, doesn't get any better than that. Having multiple supported profiles is great as well.

The remote part, besides the swiping issue and volume slider I mentioned above, ROCKS! A+ man, I'm a sucker for it. I love the audio feedback when I click a button. The only thing I would like even better is haptic feedback and audio feedback as an option. If it gave a quick vibrate to let me know I hit the key, it would keep the family even happier since they wouldn't have to listen to multiple clicks...

Interface is slick and intuitive.


I did not test the music or the pictures, but I am curious about your slideshow implementation, so I will be test driving that.


Overall I think you have a super solid base to work from. I love XBMC, and I love being able to control it so directly without having to jump into the remote and scroll forever. I guarantee you once I show this to my mother she will buy it too for her phone to use at her house.

I'll be your guinea pig any time and if you want more feedback let me know. Please don't take offense to any of my suggestions, they are merely meant as constructive criticism .

I'll go ahead and rate it in the marketplace now, I really like it!

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello dirtbikr,

First of all, thanks for buying my app.
Secondly: Many thanks for the great review, really kind of you to reply in such depth.

A few answers to your items:

Alphabetical movies: Definitely a bug, I'll look into it

Background images: good idea, look into it

Volume slider: it goes in chunks because otherwise it makes a lot of calls to XBMC and some arrive earlier then others. I'll check whether I can make it a little less chunkier and see if I can fit the + and - buttons somewhere

Spacing: The placeholders are there because the images aren't loaded yet. I don't know whether it's easy to fix but I'll check it

Jump list: I figured if you don't have any items (movies,music, ...) starting with that letter, there's no use in being able to jump to that list. I believe it's actually the behavior of the phone as well

Swiping remote view: This is a hard one, it's quite hard to detect whether the user wants to click the button or not. You only know that if he doesn't swipe, which takes a while, so if you do that the button will react sluggish. Maybe I can fix something to cancel the action if a swipe occured.

Album art: I've seen this, and I think this is a bug in the XBMC API. Altough the behavior you describe shouldn't be from the API. I'll look into it.

Shutdown: Will be there in the next version (At the bottom I got a list of changes I'm going to make)

General Speed: There's one main problem with the Windows Phone which I have broken my head over over and over again. Windows Phone will take WebRequests and fire them in bursts. That's why it takes sometimes a while when you're navigating before you're click actually comes through. Unfortunately the only thing you can do to prevent this will not be certified by MS. I was hoping Mango would resolve this, but no luck :-(

Audio/Haptic feedback: Good idea


Some things I'm planning for the next release:
-Aforementioned bug fixes/enhancements
- More Windows Phone like behavior:
The Start page should become dynamic, you should be able to add tiles to the list and add commands on the start-page which you like/use mostly. Other than that I would like it to be able to pin a movie/music album/tv show, season ... to the Start screen which you can then use to go directly to that item. I would like to this in the first place for the apps start page and with the Mango release also for the Phone's start page.

- More commands:
-Access to OSD
-Shutdown-restart control
- ...
- Running under locked screen

-XBMC status page with stats like memory usage, disk space, ... (low priority)

I don't know whether I'll be able to get everything in the next release, but I'm definitely going to try it. I think I will be releasing updates in smaller steps so you can enjoy the new features while the others are being developed.

Well, that was it. Thanks again for the very nice comments and constructive criticism is always welcome!

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello again,

I have been working on a few of your submitted bugs and I just submitted an update for the application. Here's the change log:

Improvements:
- Visual enhancements for the home screen buttons
- Changed slider behavior and added + and - buttons
- Added a trial mode
- Changed the jump lists so non-available letters are grayed out
- Added an option in the settings for audio feedback, haptic feedback, none or both

Bug fixes:
- Wrong album art is resolved
- Alphabetically sorting is done on items in the different views
- Some crash fixes


I'm still looking into some other items you mentioned but they're quite hard to fix so it'll take me some more time.

The update should be available in a few days, hope you enjoy it!

 

[dirtbikr]

Did you run into any problems with submitting the update or was it rejected? I only ask because I still don't have the update, and the info page still says v1.0. I'm looking forward to the new version, but it's been 5 days, and I thought that the process worked quicker than that...

Looks like you've been busy and this version should be a pretty good improvement already, I'll be sure to let you know when I get my hands on it. Thanks for putting the effort into it!

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello,

Well certification usually takes about a week.
I got it back on Thursday, but because I made a mistake it failed certification. It was a stupid mistake which I fixed in 2 minutes, but it sets me back another 5 days.

I resubmitted it and I hope it will come through soon, probably after the weekend though since they don't do certifications in the weekend.
I guess there are a lt of new apps coming out and they just can't keep up. Sorry for the delay.

On the plus side, I have made some big advances in version 2.0 where you can pin items and I'm maybe thinking of also including a folder view. This will still take a while though, but it's on its way.

 

[dirtbikr]

Hey Kenneth,
Still haven't seen the update on my phone, did you push it and I just didn't get it or are you stopped for now?

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello,

I'm really sorry it hasn't come through yet. I pushed it about two weeks ago, but they are still validating it. I guess it's taking a very long time because they are prepping for Mango and possibly a lot of developers are pushing updates now for Mango.

On the plus side I already started working on the next version and I can tell you that there are some really cool new features coming in that release:
- Start page like windows phone, with movable tiles, pinnable mediaitems, extra commands, live updating tiles (such as now playing)
- Recently added-view
- Folder view for media
- Indication of items that have been played or not
- bug fixes

I hope this current version comes through as soon as possible, but unfrotunately I can't give any guarantees about it.

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hi Dirtbikr,

Good news, the app has been published and should be available in the next hours now.
Hope you have fun with it, and soon there will be a new update with A LOT (A LOT!!) of new features.

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Just a small update: The application is now available in all the added marketplaces.

Regards,

Kenneth Truyers

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello,

I have just finished working on the mango version of my app. At the moment it's still in beta-phase and I'd like some testers to look at it. If you are willing to test it you need to have a developer account. Contact me if you want to BETA-test the app before I release it to the marketplace.

Thanks in advance

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hi,

Just a short notice to inform you that the new version is available for download.

Hope you enjoy it.

 

[Kennethtruyers]

Hello all,

I recently submitted version 3.0. New features:

- Support for the latest nightly build of Eden
- Ability to manually refresh lists
- Ability to show and hide watched items

I hope you have fun with it.
If there are any problems, questions, feature requests, feel free to contact me.

 

[Kennethtruyers]

New hone for this project

Hello all,

This project now has a new home:

XBMC Remote control for Windows Phone 7

You can leave support & feature requests over there.

Grtz,

Kenneth