[Powerhouse]

Hopefully a quick question.

I'm on XBMC 12.3, Windows 7 x64, and using the ACE skin, I'm using an MCE Remote, that has buttons for Guide, Recorded TV, and Live TV. Just and FYI should anyone want to know.

So the issue is, when watching TV, then I bring up the Guide window, there isn't a button on the remote that will exit the Guide, and bring the TV image to the fore ground. I have to select a TV show from the Guide, and click switch to go back to the TV show we are currently watching.

This happens with Recorded TV as well, and clicking the Live TV doesn't exit out of either of these screens and take you back to Live TV.

Is this the desired result from XBMC, the Skin ACE, or from WMC software? Just wondering who I should go to about this next, should no answer be given here.

[scarecrow420]

Hi Powerhouse,

It is XBMC and/or skin related, nothing to do with the pvr.wmc addon

On my system, I can press Guide a 2nd time to cancel the dialog. I am just using the default Confluence skin, and I have a harmony remote with "Guide" button mapped to "C" keyboard input (ie context menu). If you try using Confluence skin you will be able to see whether it is skin or XBMC related. Do you have any custom key mappings setup in keyboard.xml for XBMC?

[Powerhouse]

No custom settings, or at least none I've ever used. The MS Remote just works in XBMC.

I will check with the ACE team to see if there is a setting I can change. Thanks for the heads up.

[scarecrow420]

You tried hitting Guide a 2nd time? What about Menu or Exit (if they exist)?

Try confluence skin just to see?

Otherwise it is possible to customise any button press to run any XBMC command/screen, so hit up google if you need to, there is info out there

[Powerhouse]

Yep, hit all the buttons several times, I figured it would be, Press the Guide button, check out the Guide, then press it again to Exit the Guide, and was surprised it didn't work. Same with Recorded TV.

I just posted this in the ACE forum, to see if there is a setting I need to change to make this work correctly.

Thanks for the Info, I do appreciate it.

[krustyreturns]

I use the mce remote for development with default settings. I can use the 'back' button or 'clear' button to close the guide.

[JazJon]

I have a harmony 900 remote so I plan to tweak things to my liking slowly over time.

Hopefully a quick question.

I'm on XBMC 12.3, Windows 7 x64, and using the ACE skin, I'm using an MCE Remote, that has buttons for Guide, Recorded TV, and Live TV. Just and FYI should anyone want to know.

So the issue is, when watching TV, then I bring up the Guide window, there isn't a button on the remote that will exit the Guide, and bring the TV image to the fore ground. I have to select a TV show from the Guide, and click switch to go back to the TV show we are currently watching.

This happens with Recorded TV as well, and clicking the Live TV doesn't exit out of either of these screens and take you back to Live TV.

I'm finding this to be a bit annoying. There has to be a better way.

When I'm watching TV and press the MCE guide button, a blank "Now Play -Videos opens up.
If I press Guide a 2nd time I see a new box with
Play Using... / Add to favourites / Move item / Remove

Is there a shortcut to go directly to the recorded tv list? For regular Media Center, I had the "Recorded TV" button jump directly to my recorded tv shows no matter where I was at the time. (instant jump) Are these kind of direct shortcuts available? If not any creative work around?

I'm hoping to eventually make my new XBMC PVR system as quick to navigate around as Media Center used to be. (for Live TV /DVR shows that is)

---

I forgot to add, Pressing Recorded TV button on my MCE remote results in the following popup (nothing happens)

[scarecrow420]

JazJon I think you just need to spend some time on the forum/google search to understand a bit more about how key maps etc work in XBMC

Personally I just use the keyboard commands and bind my harmony remote to sending those. So for example "K" is the default keyboard key to go straight to recordings, so instead of sending the RecordedTV IR signal (identified as MyTV in your above screenshot) just change the harmony mapping to send the letter "K" (you can obvsiouly still label it as Recorded TV on the harmony screen)

Or if you dont want to change the harmony software then add a custom XBMC mapping using remote.xml keyboard.xml etc. I dont know too much about the custom mappings since I havent had to use them too much. In those files you also need to put things in the correct section (eg there is a global section but then the ability to customise buttons in other windows too, such as FullScreenVideo FullScreenTV etc etc). That MCERemote plugin you have has a utility that helps you press a key and then pick what action you want it to do, or what keypress it should be. That basically creates the XBMC mappings for you.

So yeah you can either customise the harmony to send the keyboard presses that XBMC already honours (my preference) or muck around with plugins and custom mappings to try and do the same thing! Those who dont have a harmony have to use the custom mappings (which is why the MCERemote plugin exists, to make that easier) but those with harmony remotes I truly believe are better off to use the keyboard shortcuts where possible.

A quick google found this info regarding the default keyboard key press and also the equivalent XBMC "action" (for custom mappings) for soe of the PVR screens

e = activate EPG = XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 31,0, 10,0)
h = activate TV = XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 32,0, 11,0)
j = activate Radio = XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 33,0, 12,0)
k = activate Recordings = XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 34,0, 13,0)
b = activate Search = XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 35,0, 14,0)

[JazJon]

Perfect! Thanks for the tips. I'll be able to run with this for now, and will dig up more cool options.

Harmony is the way to go especially when it's just one letter. I have the Media Center SE profile which has the while keyboard IR commands ready to go.

Not only is this easier, but don't have to worry about deviating away from the default settings.

Thanks again, let the fun begin.

---

Here are the rest
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Keyboard_controls

[scarecrow420]

wow reading through that list again (now that im more interested in PVR stuff) i noticed that "zero" key, switches between the last 2 played channels. I didn't kow that! Ill definitealy be adding a key mapping for that

In terms of your "annoying" problem above with the Guide button while watching recordings the reason for it is that Guide is normally mapped to context menu (key press "C") which in a video player brings up the "play list" which in the case of recorded TV is empty. Pressing it again (now that you are in a list) is enacting the context menu of the selected item. I agree this is a bit strange.

If you compare that to LiveTV watching for example, pressing "C" brings up the small channel list and pressing C again dismisses it (I assume they deliberately do not allow context menu click on these channels in this display to avoid precisely the issue that is annoying you on recorded TV viewing, ie a context popup). It's a bit weird actually because using a mouse, right clicking on one of these brings up the info panel (on the remote you would press Info or "i" key). It seems that the LiveTV screen has been tweaked for better remote interactivity than the recordings playback for sure. Im not sure if there is a different custom keybind section for "recordings" or if it's just "fullscreenvideo". If it was the former, you could set a mapping so that "C" in "recordings" doesnt do the playlist and does something else (or perhaps nothing). But if that also affected normal fuillscreenvideo (because there isnt any differentiation for custom key mappings between recordings and normal video watching) then you probably wouldnt want to do that, since it would be more common to have a playlist when watching regular videos. If i get some time I may look into whether custom mappings can be set from "recording full screen" and "full screen video"

[JazJon]

I'm discovering all kinds of fun things. I'll revisit my idea of perfection after I dial it in over the next week. Here's what I pieced together quickly for now.

I agree having "C" is very important, I assigned that to my Blue button for now. (Harmony is a must have device)

Info = I
Guide = E
Red = K (goes to my recorded tv list)
Blue = C (context so I can delete a show or other options)
Green = Media Center Green Button (which already launches XBMC if it's closed)
Return = Back Space
Exit = Esc
E (lower right button) = Backslash (to min/max XBMC)
Skip Forward = . (period)
Skip Back = , (comma)
+ = Shutdown Menu

I need to use it awhile and work out what "feels" right so many cool options!!! :-D

[scarecrow420]

Cool. I am too used to using Guide button as context menu in the normal video/audio areas so I will have to map the "E=EPG Timeline" button to a soft button on my harmony screen probably. Another useful one is O which shows you codec, CPU, dropped frame etc info, i have that called "File Info" on one of the pages of softbuttons on the LCD screen. Also "T" for subtitles (not supported in PVR but works in videos/movies), "W" for "Toggle Watched Status" and the Q/U/D for queueing/moving items in playlists

The one funny thing about XBMC is that even after PVR is there for Dharama Frodo and Gotham, there is no default mapping for the "Record" command to bind to the record button on the remote. You can add the following to keyboard.xml to declare it. There aren't many free keys left. I believe the MCE command "Record" in the harmony software sends keypress "Ctrl-R" in which case adding this to the global keymap will enable the record button

<r mod="ctrl>XBMC.PlayerControl(Record)</r>

Also FYI while on the subject of Harmony setups, I have an activity "Watch XBMC" that uses all these mappings, and another activity "Watch WMC" with the standard/default MCE key mappings since obviously those XBMC mappings dont work so well for WMC (for the odd time that I do go into WMC (increasingly less often, mainly when develping/testing the plugin, to look at recordings/timers etc). These activities are programmed to launch XBMC or WMC on entering the activity (using Win+1 and Win+2, the shortcuts are pinned to the windows taskbar in position 1 and 2) and on leaving the XBMC activity I send command "X" to stop anything that is playing back, and when exiting the WMC activity i send an Alt-F4 to kill it since I generally dont want WMC running. Only issue with this is if XBMC is already running and in the foreground, the extra Win+1 causes the taskbar to sit in front of it, so i have to alt-tab or press Win+1 again (i have buttons for both of these on my soft buttons). Ideally I will figure out some way of Win+1 actually running some script which launches XBMC if it isnt running already or otherwise just ensures it is maximised and focused.

[JazJon]

Cool. I am too used to using Guide button as context menu in the normal video/audio areas so I will have to map the "E=EPG Timeline" button to a soft button on my harmony screen probably. Another useful one is O which shows you codec, CPU, dropped frame etc info, i have that called "File Info" on one of the pages of softbuttons on the LCD screen. Also "T" for subtitles (not supported in PVR but works in videos/movies), "W" for "Toggle Watched Status" and the Q/U/D for queueing/moving items in playlists

The one funny thing about XBMC is that even after PVR is there for Dharama Frodo and Gotham, there is no default mapping for the "Record" command to bind to the record button on the remote. You can add the following to keyboard.xml to declare it. There aren't many free keys left. I believe the MCE command "Record" in the harmony software sends keypress "Ctrl-R" in which case adding this to the global keymap will enable the record button

<r mod="ctrl>XBMC.PlayerControl(Record)</r>

Also FYI while on the subject of Harmony setups, I have an activity "Watch XBMC" that uses all these mappings, and another activity "Watch WMC" with the standard/default MCE key mappings since obviously those XBMC mappings dont work so well for WMC (for the odd time that I do go into WMC (increasingly less often, mainly when develping/testing the plugin, to look at recordings/timers etc). These activities are programmed to launch XBMC or WMC on entering the activity (using Win+1 and Win+2, the shortcuts are pinned to the windows taskbar in position 1 and 2) and on leaving the XBMC activity I send command "X" to stop anything that is playing back, and when exiting the WMC activity i send an Alt-F4 to kill it since I generally dont want WMC running. Only issue with this is if XBMC is already running and in the foreground, the extra Win+1 causes the taskbar to sit in front of it, so i have to alt-tab or press Win+1 again (i have buttons for both of these on my soft buttons). Ideally I will figure out some way of Win+1 actually running some script which launches XBMC if it isnt running already or otherwise just ensures it is maximised and focused.

Nice, yeah I'm going to add ALL those to the soft buttons on page 2, 3, 4 etc I'll put the ones I end up using the most on the front page of course. It's hard to say until I use XBMC for a few more days.

Yeah the Record button needs to be fixed for sure.

I guess I might as well add another Activity to keep all the Media Center buttons back to default (if needed)

I've been using Ceton My Media Center app a lot of the times though via iPhone/iPad. http://cetoncorp.com/products/companion/

I've always had Alt F4 on the soft menu (comes in handy sometimes) I'm sure I'll need it as the pre-Beta Gotham will probably freeze on occasion but so far it's surprisingly stable.

[denz]

They have fixed the record button in latest builds you now need to have this in

<key>record</key>

There is more about it in this thread

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=183433

[JazJon]

I've been using Ceton My Media Center app a lot of the times though via iPhone/iPad. http://cetoncorp.com/products/companion/

Speaking of Ceton My Media Center App, I just asked if they could add XBMC PVR support, so I can tell shows to play to XBMC instead of Media Center.
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/view...=63&t=7042

They have fixed the record button in latest builds you now need to have this in

<key>record</key>

There is more about it in this thread

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=183433

Excellent I'll keep playing around and get it working right