Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Tried it several times now. Also with the older 0.90-1 and 0.90 versions. All have the same behavior. Can it be something in my device being wrong?

Ton.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

N800 + 2008beta

Hello,

My related experience and problems (i speak only about video).

BEFORE installing Mediabox and Python-runtime :

= Mplayer (also beta) work fine with sound, reading AVI files

= Mplayer with http://linkmp4 = Video Ok (sometime with "scramble") but no sound.


AFTER installing Mediabox and Python-runtime :

= Mplayer work always fine with sound, reading AVI files (no change)
= Mediabox also, nice with AVI (but very limited : Impossible to give it a link like http://... , no play list)

= Mplayer with http://linkmp4 = Video NO MORE OK (display nothing or a fixed picture) and sometimes a "craked" sound.


For me (using http links) this is a very bad news : I dont understand why Mediabox install has broken some Mplayers fonctionalities.

(Sorry for my so bad English)

Jean Louis

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

MediaBox doesn't touch the mplayer installation. Maybe you still had mplayer running in the background for some reasons?

Do other users experience the same problems?

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

When I can get it to work(continuously hangs on searching for files unless I manually remove my removable mem card) it seems a very descent program.

Any ideas on how to get past this, does it seem to hang on a particular file type or name ?

Is there or will there be a place to download pod/videocasts ?

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

It could be that building the thumbnails takes a long time if you have many media files. How long have you waited?
It's unlikely but cannot be ruled out that mplayer hangs while trying to thumbnail a certain video file.

Eventually yes.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I've started using media box to play back podcasts that have been downloaded by iTunes on my MacBook Pro. I just push them to the N800 using an sshfs mount onto my external card. This works nicely, but also copies the hidden metadata files, which show up in the mediabox media browser.

Could you modify mediabox to not show these hidden files, please. They begin with the usual "." character.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Sweet Py (eventually yes) and since the other day, it loads abit better now, as I just removed my external card and it scanned quite quickly, then I undid some of the folders to check for media, then re-inserted my MMC and slowly added the diff files to search for and that seemed to work. So now on startup, sometimes it'll take about 30secs or less to search for the media and other times it still takes a few mins.

Oh and I've asked on some of the other media apps currently available, and most devs have said either no or they'll look into it, but will you at some point add in visualiztions,

I guess some of us have been spoiled by PC media apps where they show album art and file descriptions or some sort of a phsycadelic Viz.. (looks really cool on the Xbox 360, where you can use your controller to somewhat control the visualizations, it'd be really cool if we could have this feature on the N800 and be able to use the touch screen, much like the Nintendo DS game Electroplankton)

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I'm wonderiing about using shared media over a network. The dialog box allows me to select a network folder but then it freezes the program. Is there any way to do this?

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Well, I can't promise you psychedelic viz. but at least there is album art and file descriptions. Press the fullscreen button when playing a music file. :)

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

This is not supported yet. But it's on my TODO list.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I have the same problem and waited over an hour and it was still hanging.
Also, I don't have many media files, probably less than 20.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I installed mediabox yesterday and i have to give big congrats on the good work done to keep it stable and usable. Its not as pretty as Canola 2 but damn, it just works.

One major bug i found was that when playing music and i switch to another app, it stutters and skips tracks. This quite annoying and defeats the whole point of multitasking.

There are tweaks to the interface that should be done, some glaring and some less obvious, but i'm sure the next version will have this covered.

Canola is drop dead beautiful and has everything going for it inj terms of hype, but its a shame its so much hassle and just doesnt work well enough. All the more annoying cos' it was part of the reasons i bought the N800 as a media player alternative to the Touch.

Mediabox works, it just works and i'm happy. Its just so reasuring to see "looking for media files..." when i start it up and there you are, all my files right there new and old. I hope the new version will keep the functionality but improve the UI.

btw... thanks for including kinetic scrolling.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I installed Mediabox recently as well, and I can only back up what Bazanime says. Mediabox is very good looking (love the kinetic scrolling, it's just perfect), and just works as intended.

I've a couple of requests. One concerns the support of UPnP. Is it planned in anyway ? That would be just awesome.

Another one is linked to the clock side of the app. I'm craving to use my N800 as a bedside alarm clock. I want to be woken up by my music, or a radio, so I feel it should be really integrated into a Mediacenter-like application.
Here's what I see as being a state-of-the-art alarm clock:
- black (or choosable) background. The one in Mediabox is great... but the Antartic is just too white and generates too much light ;)
- pale font, as you did
- full screen (without the bar on the bottom)
- "alarm clock" mode : brightness to minimum (and even below if possible), screen on
- alarms management. A "calendar" like would be great, but a "working days" would already be a treat. But I could leave with a "every day" alarm as well :)
- alarm sound: specify file or folder (random song picked up from the library), both local or over network (UPnP). Or radio

Here are my wishes ;)
Keep on the good work, man ! and cheers for the hard work !
Gurney

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Too bad it's summer in the southern hemisphere. The Antarctic is now completely lit the whole day! ;)
Eventually, the clock background will be in control of the theme.
And yes, uPnP support and alarm clock features are planned.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

It's a very nice app, the kinetic scrolling is the nicest of any app I've tried on Maemo.

When I start it from the app menu it almost certainly dies after a couple of minutes - and there's no "MediaCenter loading..." infobox. This suggests the correct OSSO initilisation DBUS calls aren't being sent, and the app's being killed.

It rarely dies on its own when run directly from the terminal.

Finally, a request: full-screen option for watching videos.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Did you try pressing the full screen key when playing video? :rolleyes:

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Duh. Yes, I did: it didn't work.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Strange... I could swear it works for me... (But again, I did not start the app from xterm... I do not have tablet with me to verify.) How about picture viewer? Can't you enter into full screen mode with that either?

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Same problem with me: Mediabox does not load from the App menu. A box showing Mediabox loading (or similar) is there, but it dies after ten seconds or so. Temporary Maemo repositories on or off does not help, I did load mplayer and the 'testing' repository. Apps list is renewed today. Never reflashed OS2008 however after 071222 (and will not do so reading all the 'missing stuff'). Installed Mediabox several times form several sources. Everything else works well, including Canola (uninstalled right now).

Any ideas?

Regards, Abel.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

OK, apologies. Just tried full screen key again - and it did work. I may be going mad.

One thing which definitely is a bug: there's only a small icon provided so the application menu doesn't show a big version in OS2008; making MediaBox not fit in.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Can't say I'm too impressed at first try:

1. Slow to load
2. Interface not very intuitive, e.g. no player controls apparent (play/stop/pause etc)
3. Doesn't respond to any of the N800 buttons
4. Video playback performance seems much worse than mplayer standalone
5. Can't add a new folder under Settings - program just exits without error message

Ok, it's a 0.9 release, but this seems like pretty basic stuff for a media player.

Oh, and last but not least, on first reboot after installing Mediabox my N800 is now trashed and goes into a permanent loop on power-up. Removing the battery doesn't help. Any other suggestions before I re-install firmware? :mad:

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Has anyone figured out how to keep the program from hanging when it looks for media files? I still have to use the built in media player because MediaBox hangs. Am I the only one having this problem a this point?

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Hopefully the next release 0.93 won't hang. I didn't experience any hanging with it so far and am going to release soon.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I'll be honest and say that i quite like it.
-Video plays smoothly, scrolls smoothly through them
-Music plays back fine,scrollls smoothly. One cpomplaint could be that you can only browse by artist-album-song...but thats the only way i do it.
-Photos...smooth,simple,fast. i like the kinetic scrolling while zoomed in.
-Overall simple to use,easy to install for me, and a nice program

only thing is,its a hog. slows everything down (browsing+this=pain). but then i just use the built in media player.

I like this more then kagu or canola. good stuff. excited to see where it goes

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Ok, I loaded every single media player available and Media Box is the one that stays on my machine. It lets me pick my music how I want, works with cover art and ID3 tags.

All the other players have problems I can't live with. Canola can't find oggs. UKMP simply can't play them except in short bursts, gmplayer's interface only plays one song at a time, the built in player is nice for video, but Media Box is way better. Kagu refused to run. I have to add mplayer back in to get some more of my video to run, but that should be no problem.

I have suggestions already.
-For one, a play list would be nice. Maybe check boxes on songs to play.

-The radio needs headphones to tune a radio station, but the standard radio desktop applet lets you pick speakers even while the headphones are plugged in. It would be nice to have this functionality in Media Box.

- The play button on the album covers should be visually distinct from the actual play button that plays the song. Maybe a black dot and when you open an album, it changes to a black circle of the same size? Like a radio button in HTML? Or........ Make it autostart the first song in the folder, then it would actually be a "play album" button.

Anyways, Media Box is far and away the best player on the tablet today.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I concur. I really wanted canola to be 'it' but for the very reasons you outline here, MediaBox gets my vote. Keep up the good work.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

According to the release notes, the newest version (.94 I think) does this.

I'm still waiting for playlists tho. :)

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

My thoughts/observations:
- The UI is attractive. Very slick.
- Scrolling folders on the left and music on the right makes it quick to switch songs, but I'd really like a way to create a playlist. (None of the other programs let me do it, either, so I guess I can't really knock this.)
- A lot of my songs show up as complete blanks with a play icon. They have ID3 info, so I'm not sure what that's about.
- I'm annoyed that you can't select anything (albums, photos, anything) unless you hit the tiny 'play' button in the corner of the icon. I guess maybe that was done to increase the accuracy of the kinetic scrolling (which does work well.)
- Video performance seems worse with this than with Gmplayer or even Canola.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I like the checkbox idea. Thanks a lot for this suggestion! :D

MediaBox 0.94 can do this now. The button icon for this is still butt-ugly, but functional. ;)

Radio button? Your idea is not bad... thanks!
But autostarting might cause problems when you want to create a playlist, once this is implemented.


I love reading such quotes. :D

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Can you please give more details about the songs where the ID3 tags don't show up? Do they contain special characters or some special encoding?

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Just updated to the latest MediaBox version and I see big improvements being done...

Most notably everything works a lot smoother now than before. With the earlier version if I browsed pictures while playing music the music would play choppy, but no more with the new version!

Thanks pycage for this great app! :)

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

nice, very nice...
one flaw i found:
if you start the radio there is no way to turn it off (if you select a mp3 it mixes both)

Some random idea's:
* change default startup mode to music, not video
* add a exit button other then in the settings field (maybe next to the setting icon?)
* volume control with stylus would be cool (in playing now field?)
* the fact that you can't select anything (albums, photos, anything) unless you hit the tiny 'play' button in the corner of the icon is for me a bonus (no worries when scrolling) but if you add a "add to playlist" icon, then please also add it to the album list itself
* not sure if feasable, but a setting to choose between "ID tag" grouping/display and pure folder/file name play would be nice for me (lot's of old mp3's), most people with big collections use (also) a folder approach anyway for storing.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Found a bug.

As each song starts, the volume is reset to the system volume setting, not to what you currently have media box set to.

Example:

You start to play a song and notice it's to quiet. You turn up the volume with the + button.

When the next song starts, it's back to being to quiet again and you have to turn up the volume all over again.
Repeat for each song that plays.


Minor bug.
Workaround is of course; go out and turn up the system volume with the taskbar applet.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I'm having a problem with Mediabox 0.94 version... it hangs on startup. I have it on N810 using the latest 51-3 OS2008 firmware.

I installed it earlier and it started up fine without removable card installed. (I didn't have any media in my internal 2G memory "card".) Now when I got my 8GB Sandisk microSDHC card in removable slot and filled it with some media, Mediabox no longer starts. It doesn't help if I remove the removable card.

It hangs right after the "loading components". I can see in the screen video tape icon in the middle on bottom, and black box (about 3/4 size of the whole screen) on top right. I have waited at least 15 minutes and the situation does not change, after which I closed the app.

I tried to uninstall and reinstall Mediabox, didn't help. Reboot didn't help either.

How can I troubleshoot this? Are there some config files that I can try remove/modify?

Just for reference... I also have Canola and it works fine. (Proving the Mplayer and Python installs should be OK.)


EDIT: Seem like the problem is in config.py file, line 30.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

The easy way to fix: wait for 0.94.1 which will be released soon.

It's a bug in handling values from gconf. 0.94.1 will fix this among other things.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

You know, I'm not so sure this is an accurate description of my sound problem. I think maybe it's replaygain changing the volume relative to the last songs volume instead of the system volume or something. I'm having all sorts of trouble getting a consistantly loud playback. Some of my music I ground through replaygain and some I have not. Could there be a replaygain problem? I don't know if replaygain is supported or not.

Oh, another problem is: I got two songs playing at once by using the Prev/Next buttons to skip songs. It got all confused.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Hi, just tried MediaBox and am very impressed. However I noticed 2 things:
1. As noted before on this thread the FM Radio remains on. This leaves the chipset powered up and drains the battery. I didn't notice initially as I had not plugged the headphones in, so I guess it boosts the power to try and get a signal. My fully-charged battery ran flat in just 10 hours with the device in off-line/locked mode.
2. I started some videos from my camera - these played fine, but the mplayer instance remained and responded to the play/next/prev buttons, playing over the songs I was actually trying to listen to (both video and audio!).

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

I installed the latest mediabox on my N810 and when I start it up it goes to full screen and shows one icon (music symbol) and then nothing happens. If I press the full screen button, it remains full screen but changes its display. Still nothing happens. Is there some kind of configuration needed for mediabox? The version is 0.94.2. I press the +- buttons and I see some additional icons, but nothing shows up in what appears to be photos, movies, audio, etc. The time can be made to show up. Also, now I am able to play some internet radio stations, but nothing else shows up. I have lots of audio/video and photos on the system.

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

You have to specify where MediaBox looks for media. Users usually don't want media players to automatically scan their devices, their memory cards, their network shares, etc. for media. So MediaBox only scans the MyDocuments folder by default. You can add new places in the preferences section (it's the rightmost icon with the wrench).

Re: MediaBox Media Center V 0.90
 

Maybe you encountered some bug. Can you give more details, please?