Confused now what to do and need advice

[Chazotta]

Guys, I am in a confused state and in a bit of a quandary in relation to my use of xlobby and I need your advice please !!!

Before I go on, I wish to preface this post by saying that I think this front-end is fantastic and that Steve is doing such a great job developing it. Of course, you guys providing assistance in the way you do is great too, skin development, plugin support, forum contribution etc etc. Its all good as far as I am concerned. Please don't take this email as being critical.

Here is my situation:

Zone 1 - Living/Lounge Room : HTPC feeds projector (AE500 native 1280x720), audio REVO via S/PDIF to Meridian processor, to Monoblocks and power amps, to speakers (I will probably ditch the Meridian and use the HTPC for direct analog out to the amps with REVO or improved sound card (experimenting)

Zone 2 - Main Bedroom : PC - Basic 2.4Ghz Celeron etc (for zone audio only), Yamaha receiver available, Bose cube speakers

Zone 3 - Bedroom 1 : PC - Basic 2.4Ghz Celeron etc (for zone audio only), Pioneer receiver available, Bose cube speakers

Zone 4 - Office/Bedroom 2 : PC - P4 2.8Ghz (for zone audio only), Kenwood receiver available, Bose cube speakers

TabletPC - 10" native 1024x768
PDA #1 - WiFi 802.11b
PDA #2 - WiFi 802.11g

The 4 zone PC's are connected to a Gigabit network, and I have a 4 port wireless router connected to that to account for the 3 wireless devices. I also have a seperate PC dedicated as an Internet server with a firewall etc. Oh, and I have a separate 2TB Raid 5 Media Server (and a host of other drives in various of the other PC's).

The acquisition of the tabletPC was done fairly recently, with the view that it would be the control piece of xlobby for the living room (ie for movies and HDTV mainly). I was previously trying to use one of the PDA's for everything, which is now/or will be relegated to music control around the house. The other PDA is used for work but is always home with me - when I am home.

The 2 problems I have with xlobby are:

1. Using the tabletPC to control xlobby on the HTPC, is that it has a different native resolution to my HTPC. Thus when I use either the thin client or the web server client on the tablet, the resolution is screwed. This is a major issue.

2. Using the thin client or the web server client on the tablet (or any PC for that matter) does not give you the full features of the skin (ie: highlighting/selecting of buttons, pop-up graphics etc).

What/how can this be sorted ? Am I overlooking something obvious ? What would you do if you were in my shoes ?

I was trying to think latterally, that perhaps I could use the tabletPC as the xlobby server. The tablet would then tell the HTPC to play music using winamp on the HTPC and to play movies using Zoom Player on the HTPC. It seems (again I might be wrong) that Xlobby does not permit the server to send commands for Winamp and Zoom Player on another PC (operating system). Hence it might only work by using say Girder at both ends Xlobby tells girder on the tablet to send Internet Event eventstrings to Girder on the HTPC, which in turn send the relevant commands to Zoom and Winamp. I suspect in Girder you could use the Internet Event Client/Server plugin. I dont know how hard this would be to do, to make xlobby talk to girder on the tablet. This would be the hard bit. Sending the IEvents from Girder to Girder should be okay ??

Is anybody else doing this, tried this or has thought about doing this ? I have thought about a Netremote solution, but the GUI sucks and I really like Xlobby and want to be a long time user and to see it developed into the ultimate front-end (if its not that already).

I'm also confused about how to proceed with the mutlizone audio and how to acheive stable synch in the zones, but I will try and cover this in a different post.

Sorry for the length of the post.

[jimmyb]

You failed to mention what OS you are running on the zone computers. If by chance they are XP, then try connecting with the Tablet using Remote Desktop. I do the same using a Viewsonic Airpanel. Still have all the graphics, button highlights and movements and such.

Also, do not run client on your computers / tablets, but run xlobby and setup to log onto server. This will maintain the full function versus losing some with thin client.

Hope this helps.

[Chazotta]

XP is on every PC and I use Remote Administrator or VNC to control the various PC's.

Using something like RA or VNC, the problem is that the XGA resolution of the tablet does not match the PJ resolution of 1280x720 so you have to muck about using the side bars etc to gain access to other parts of the unseen desktop. What I would like is full screen operation. You do this and the resolution is streched/cropped etc and looks weird.

I have a full version of xlobby running on the tablet but when I connect to the xlobby server on the HTPC, I cannot see the movie covers ? I have DVDprofiler on the tablet and I have imported the same XML file that the HTPC uses. Thus when I run xlobby on the tablet without connecting to a server I can see the movie covers. Can this be rectified ? This would then solve all problems (apart from the fact that you would need to versions of the skin you use, one with 4:3 aspect the other with 16:9).

[GFORCE]

maybe map the drive with the covers on the tablet?
that way it reads them locally thru the network?

DVD Drive = F: (Example)

Mapped Drive on Tablet to \\mediaX64\DVD is mapped to the Letter F: on the Tablet?

[Chazotta]

I have got it to work, so that it now picks up the movie covers. I just deleted the local database on the tablet.

So now the tablet connects to the server (HTPC) through XNET, I can see the movie covers, but when I play a movie, it plays the movie locally (launches Zoom Player on the tablet) rather than play it on the HTPC.

Am I wrong in assuming that at this point in time the XNET client/server only allows music to be controlled in this way an does not extend to movie control ?

[jimmyb]

Don't use Zoomplayer myself, but with Winamp zones, press F2 on the client (fat client) and make sure your are logged into server. Then double click the server name and then doduble click on Winamp Zone (I guess Zoom in your case). It will then say you are controlling that zone (server). In winamp I then control the servers (zone) and music plays from that zone (server).

Hope that helps with Zoom.

[Chazotta]

Jimmy are you saying that:

1. You use Winamp for playing movies; and
2. You can play movies on your xlobby server, through using a fat client by using XNET?

I have already tried this in XNET on the fat client. I can play music - via Winamp, but not movies - via Zoom Player.

I really think that XNET or FAT client control hasn't been opened up for movies yet. But perhaps it is the case that you can play movies with XNET control using winamp, but that it has not been opened up for a Zoom Player... yet.

[rhinoman]

I'm pretty sure that xnet movies is still to be completed.

Why not use the tablet with the webserver mode to run at a different res to the main screen? It works much faster than a thin client.

[Chazotta]

For the reasons I mentioned in my opening post.

1) Even though the web client enables you to change the resolution, it doesn't solve the problem that a skin which is setup to display on a 16:9 resolution on the server will look funny on a 4:3 resolution on the client (or vice versa). I can appreciate that you can overcome this problem by not running the client in full screen mode, but this is a bit of a let down. (this is what I am presently doing. Xlobby on the server is at 1280x720. So my XGA tablet is running the web client at 992x558. even in full screen mode there is a large bottom area of the tablet which is unused - white).

2) The web client (or the normal thin client) does not display all the features of the skin, ie: button features like highlighting, pop-up graphics etc. Again, this isn't critical but a let-down.

Having stated the above, I think the web server is an awesome feature (much better than the standard thin client) and I am using it until there is XNET or fat client movie support. The other way I could do it, would be to use girder.... which I don't really want to.

As an aside, do you know whether it would be possible for the web server/client to be able to do button highlights and other skin effects, say using java or flash or some other browser plugin ?

[rhinoman]

What about if you use the heavy metal skin which has both noraml and widescreen versions included in the download....

I have no idea on the answer to your other query but some flash stuff on the web client sounds a cool idea.

[Chazotta]

I don't think you can get around the resolution matching problem, because the xlobby web server determines what skin and what resolution will be output. The web server is only going to use the one skin and unless I am mistaken when you run the setup, the server is only always going to set your resolution based upon "its" default skin (be it heavy metal 16:9, 4:3 or whatever) You can't select 2 skins to use (ie: one for the xlobby server when used in full mode and one for the web server/client).

Another area for development might be that the web server can use a different skin other than the default skin it uses when in full xlobby mode. Not sure if possible, but would be great and would get around the resolution matching problem between server and client displays.

And I agree that something like a Java plugin or Macromedia flash plugin would be great - but I wonder about the licensing cost/rights etc ?

[Bill Lott]

I second the two skin idea. Is this possible???

[jimmyb]

My apologies. I was only referring to playing music. I do not use it fo rmovies. Sorry.

[hjackson]

"I don't think you can get around the resolution matching problem, because the xlobby web server determines what skin and what resolution will be output. The web server is only going to use the one skin and unless I am mistaken when you run the setup, the server is only always going to set your resolution based upon "its" default skin (be it heavy metal 16:9, 4:3 or whatever) You can't select 2 skins to use (ie: one for the xlobby server when used in full mode and one for the web server/client). "

No, you CAN use 2 skins. Don't forget that you can control the server with a different looking ppc client screen than the server screen. Actually this issue has already been brought up. It is solved by creating a second client skin with the resolution for your client. All the skins should have a prefix unique to the client (ie. ppcmenu or clientmenu) and event groups to allow proper navigation within the client skins. When you go to the webserver setup, you select the client skin startup screen (ie. clientmenu instead of menu), just as you would for the regular client/server system. This is how I use both my PDA and 1068x768 tablet PC clients to each control my 16x9 server HTPC screen. You can have multiple different resolution client PCs controlling the same server, as long as you have all the unique client skins and eventgroups in the same Skins folder. You could have a HeavyMetal based server controlled by a Jowaldo based client if you wanted. Just make sure that in the webclient setup, you also fill in the height and width or it will bring you back to the default menu.

hjackson

[Chazotta]

hj - this is just what I wanted to hear. Excellent news !!

My only question now relates to the navigation within the web client. Are you saying that that the web client can provide full feeddback and features, button highlights, graphic hide and show etc ?

So, can you point me in the right direction with creating a separate PPC and a tablet skin, within the server skin ? What exactly is the directory structure and how do you setup/assign the events ? Is there a post or document which covers this ?

I still think it would be great if the XNET / FAT client functionality could extend to movies (or the control of any media within xlobby), so that you could for instance run full Xlobby on your tablet with it controlling everything on another PC (HTPC).


cheers