Big Screen Blog: Big Screen Products

Launched : Big Screen Headlines v2

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:46:18 GMT

(April 2 - not April fools day anymore down here)

Big Screen Headlines v2 has now been officially launched on the bigscreenglobal.com website - and is available for 30 day trial and online purchase (and retails for just USD$24.95).

Headlines v2 (which for those new to this product - is a RSS + Rich Media viewer for Vista Media Center) - is pretty much a complete rewrite of v1 - and contains a truckload of new features and enhancements from the original release (many of which have been detailed on this blog in the past).

You can check out the full product details online (which includes detailed feature list and loads of screenshots) - with some pictures below to wet your appetite.

What's New :-

Apart from the core functionality provided by v1 (such as RSS Browsing and Content viewing, IE7 Subscriber Feed System support, Parsing of RSS HTML content to Media Center friendly text) - some of the major enhancements in v2 include :

- new main menu system - with direct access to all your content via the left/right sliding panels (which reveal several menu items when selected) - and direct viewing of 'latest' updated items and feeds without further menus. The main menu system is similar to that found on Big Screen Weather v2 - however has been enhanced to better support and accommodate mouse/touch control.

- loads of new presets with substantially updated video and audio section of new Web Media designed for Media Center (WMV Video etc).

- Enhanced Parsing of RSS based blogs / HTML Content (with Inline Image support - allowing you to view images contained with the content)

- Enhanced support for latest variants of RSS 2 Media (and other new formats such as OPML 2) with ability to drill down on multiple content attachments (where made available) - and comments feeds. When browsing items - additional content such as item and feed thumbnails are also displayed.

- Supports and recognizes and watch a whole range of new content types (where 3rd party codec support is available) - and even caters for the additional codecs on the new PIKA 2.0 Extenders (by allowing you to watch MPEG4, H264, DivX based content). For media center PC's - you can install additional Directshow compliant video filters and add support for numerous popular codecs (such as Apple Quicktime, Flash FLV Video, DivX/XVid, MPEG4 etc).

- Highly customizable viewing/browsing experience for RSS Feeds, presets and Articles with sorting, filtering, text size control and view styles. Your settings are also automatically saved (per user).

- Full Media Center Extender Support - with auto device detection/configuration for PIKA 2 (Linksys, DLink etc) extenders + XBox 360's - with customizable display/usage options (such as filtering out codecs etc). Display options can also be adjusted - such as disabling background animations for slower/lower powered machines) manually.

- Includes the Feed Synchronization Tool (which runs as a scheduled task) - which preprocesses and summarizes your Subscribed feeds (incorporating any recent updates made) - so they are ready for instant viewing when you load Headlines 2. The synchronized feeds (and any auto downloaded enclosures) are also then made available to extender users via the synchronization tool. The synchronization tool also creates 'best of' style feeds internally so you can quickly view lists of 'latest' items from the main menu - without substantial processing time (by media type or online/offline status).

- User Interface is available in 5 languages : English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Headlines v2 also features the new Activation/Trial/Unlock system found on the other v2 products (Weather v2 and Photos v2) - and allows you to upsize your existing trial to a full version if you decide to buy it.

Take it for a spin :-

If you want to try Big Screen Headlines v2 out for yourself - download a free 30 day trial version or purchase the full version - at these links below. Please note that you will need to sign up for a free account on bigscreenglobal.com if you don't already have one.

Trial + Download page : http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproductdownload.aspx?PID=BSHV2
Product Purchase page : http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproductpurchase.aspx?PID=BSHV2

More screenshots : http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproductscreens.aspx?PID=BSHV2

Big Screen Support Forum on www.xpmediacentre.com.au

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:36:57 GMT

Mike from www.xpmediacentre.com.au has generously setup a subforum for the "Big Screen" product range - on his popular Vista Media Center focused community forum.

The direct URL for this subforum is at : http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/big-screen-software/

The main idea of setting this subforum up - is to allow a discussion area for end users (and new users) to come in and provide feedback, ask questions and interact with me (and other community users) on the product range in general. (and I may even do some special promotions/offers/competitions for xpmediacentre.com.au users sometime in the future via this forum).

I'm really grateful for what Mike has provided - and hope this can also give users a more direct channel of communication/reply with myself (and other users) - and help continue shape the Big Screen Products to be better than ever - via their passion and great ideas (and the direct emails users have sent me - and previous discussions on this site on v1 products has played a huge part in driving the v2 products released over past couple of weeks - so here's proof already that it's been and continue to be worthwhile participating! And my thanks to everyone who did contribute).

Mike imported some of the previous threads/discussions to get things rolling (from the existing Vista Plugins & Addons section) - some of which became a little heated/passionate - myself a prime offender (and to be expected - since after all - we all love+hate our Media Centers - and the addins we either make or use - so some of these threads may not be for the feint hearted).

I'm going to also fix up the bigscreenglobal.com website (in some of the support/faq sections) + this blog over the weekend - to point at this new subforum - so please patient on that.

Also - a couple of quick items of interest (if you are a Big Screen User) - while I'm still in the middle of this 'support' migration :

Be sure to also check out some late breaking Big Screen Weather v2 support notes - if you were affected by the missing forecast data over past few days - if you were from one of Seattle, Salem, Olympia or Portland (which has now been fixed) - /or/ you are a European user that uses commas ',' instead of periods '.' for your Decimal Symbols (which I believe is the case for Finland and Belgium) - and results in most of the onscreen values being multiplied by x10. Support notes like this will most likely be migrated (or noted in one spot) on this new subforum as well (I'm still deciding on best placement of this sort of dynamic information).

Also note - the Discount Code offered in this post is also due to be removed (and disabled online) in about 24 hours (as mentioned - this was only being made available for 3-4 days to help test the new payment system - and things have run ultra smoothly so far without issues/errors) - so if you want to take up this extra special offer - there's not much time left. (although some other great MediaCenter sites such as thedigitallifestyle.com (+ MediaCenter Show Podcast) may be offering something along these lines soon (or even now.. 8)... keep an eye out there as well).

Big Screen v2 products now available for online/instant purchase.

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 01:35:26 GMT

After a few hiccups this week (which I'm assured won't happen again) - I'm happy to announce that the http://bigscreenglobal.com online payment system (and activation services) - are now live - and accessible to the general public!.

This means that you can purchase the "Big Screen v2" products right now (if you so desire) - otherwise as per past few days/weeks - and you're also welcome (and very much encouraged) to give them a test run for 30 days first (just to make sure you're 100% happy/comfortable with it)!

The currently available titles (more to come over next few weeks/months) - include :

Big Screen Photos v2 (USD$24.95 for full/unlimited version)
- instant access to hundreds of millions of online photos from Yahoo!® flickr™ - via your remote control.

Big Screen Weather v2 (USD$19.95 for full unlocked version with 2 yr data subscription).
- latest global weather observations, forecasts (3-7 day), imagery and loads more - with fast/efficient startup/download.

Please also note these products are 32 + 64 bit Vista Media Center compatible (no one is excluded!) - and is tested/working and optimized for not only XBox360 extenders - but also compliant with the new PIKA 2.0 extenders (and auto detects models from Linksys, D-Link etc)..

Please note that - in order to purchase a product - you will need to first sign up for a free account on bigscreenglobal.com (this is mainly to ensure we can contact you - if any problems occur in payments - or if we need to inform you about any product updates etc). Note that the signup process requires that we have a valid email address - (that can be confirmed via us issuing your initial password there) - a first name / country (you can make something up if you feel paranoid about us knowing how to 'address you' in the emails... ie. your welcome to call yourself 'fffdsfkjhdf' and say you're from Antarctica if you so desire).

Please note - that for your safety/security (and our 'legal peace of mind') - the bigscreenglobal.com system does not receive or record your credit card or paypal account details - (and is handled solely by Paypal). We do however receive a notification (while you're still on the paypal site - and funds have been confirmed) - where your serial number will be issued/upsized - and appropriate emails sent out to your registered address. As per above - Invoicing details etc - are sent via Paypal (and if you do have a Paypal account - which is not actually required - you can view the purchase details at a later date via the Paypal account management features on their site).

Once you have registered - you can start the 'Purchase Wizard' by clicking the icon - and going to the appropriate purchase page (here for Big Screen Weather v2 or here for Big Screen Photos v2). After you receive the confirmation page (which shows you the final price / allows for discount codes / and displays additional/important information) - you will then be taken accross to Paypal to complete the payment

/or/

For those of you who have already download/installed a trial version (or do so in future) - you can actually upsize/pay for the 'existing serial number' to be unlocked - and then using the inbuilt 'reverify/reactive function' (built into Big Screen v2 Media Center addins - inside the actual 10 foot UI) - you can unlock your existing installed version. (nice and easy!).. This also works if you're trial version has expired (so you can decide at a much later date to upsize / unlock the existing installed version if you haven't removed it yet - or still have your existing download/serial number saved locally).

Please also note (as highlighted on purchase page/site) - there's still some crossing of t's and and dotting of i's to do with some of the content/support literature on the site (and of course the products + site will always be a 'work in progress'). Given the Web 2.0/3.0? nature of these products (and reliance on numerous 'moving targets' such as 3rd party webservices / feeds etc) - the products offer a huge amount of functionality to offset any issues (so it's never intended they will be 100% working at all times - but rather 80%-99% operational - with features being improved with free/incremental updates as time progresses).

Anyhow - please enjoy - and again - I highly recommend you take the products for a 30 day spin to ensure you like them. (and appreciate the amount of work/effort that's gone into them - and the very low prices they are offered at!).

Ouch my website (worst outages in 6 years).. please be patient...

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:04:59 GMT

*** UPDATE ************************************************************************************
Services seem to have been resumed to bigscreenglobal.com (and has been stable for at last past 1.5 hrs) - so hopefully everything is fixed (am yet to receive confirmation that It's not on a backup link). Please also note that the US National Weather Service also appears to be suffering from some issues today - potentially from same root cause (and few of the US forecasts - such as 'Seattle' - don't currently have forecast data) - so please be patient there - or select a nearby city until the data is returned to normal (as it appears only a small % of the US locations have been affected by this).
**********************************************************************************************

For anyone trying to access the bigscreenglobal.com and/or mobilewares.net websites today (or trying to use the Big Screen Weather v2 product) - there's been an almost a continuous outage for past 12 hours (with small patches of uptime) - and I'm 'told' may continue for a few more hours yet. I do apologize for this - however unfortunately it's completely beyond my control from all the way 'down under' ..

This is without doubt the longest downtime I've seen in 6 years with hosting at this company (Brinkster.com - a very large/well known webhost providor) - so I imagine it's currently affecting 100,000's of sites at the moment. (so at least I'm not alone). I'm told that the cause is that their Phoenix hosting facility (where these sites live) is serviced by a backbone providor 'Level 3' - which is where the problem lies - and is trying to fix this issue (and are switching traffic on/off backup links in the meantime - hence the sparodic bursts of the site working). In the past - the odd website outages I've experienced have generally lasted at most 5-10 minutes or so (and worst case scenarios I've had to contact Brinkster tech support and get them to reboot a server/router etc to fix the issues).

So please be patient if you are trying to signup for accounts/access the site or are trying to use Big Screen Weather 2 - or 'activate' any of the v2 products. (and is just rotten timing for me and users with the new brand/domain/product launch over the past few days). Luckily I didn't yet flick the 'on' switch for payments / and the various online ad/banner campaigns were not yet active (and due to start over next few days).

The good news however is that the live payment system is ready (which uses Paypal Merchant Services - to ensure security + safety of payments) - and some last minute testing was finalized yesterday (just a few hours shy of the outages). As soon as I can confirm that the Backbone problems are fixed (and temporary routes are no longer in place) - I will be enabling payments - and will offer a temporary 'Discount' code on this blog for Weather v2 and Photos v2 for those of you who are 'ready to make a purchase' - and brave enough to 'crash test' the payment system. (and provide any feedback on the payment process in general). So keep your eye out here for the code (which will be active for a 2-3 day window).

Also .. luckily - it appears that email services for these sites are 'mostly' in tact (albeit some delays might occur in sending) - and am not sure if this is due to them running from a different facility / or priority being given to emails over web services (with the limited backup links being used)... Also - luckily I still have this blog here (on Live! Spaces - not connected to my actual websites) - to notify/inform everyone what is going on... <phew>..

Over the next few weeks - one thing I'm going to be looking at - is ways to make some of these online services redundant (such as the Weather2 backend and activation services) - so the products are able to switch over to alternative servers/domains if problems like this ever exist in the future.

Launched: bigscreenglobal.com + v2 products..

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:46:34 GMT

As of a few minutes ago - I flicked the 'proverbial off switch' on mobilewares.net - and started redirecting traffic to the new brand + website - http://bigscreenglobal.com .

Along with this new site - comes the official "final" / public releases of Big Screen Photos v2 and Big Screen Weather v2 (previously made available to some brave souls/testers earlier this month) - which everyone can now download and try without requiring any special 'Invitation' codes. (or requiring me to do any 'manual' activations etc from my end... in fact I'll be lying on a beach in Tahiti till further notice... - just kidding...).

In order to download the new products - users are required to first create an account on bigscreenglobal.com (and provide a valid email address so the site can send you a default password) - which only takes a couple of moments. Once you're registered - accessing/downloading the full products is really quick - and serial numbers / download links are issued on the fly. There's also a bunch of 'smarts' on the site - so you can do things like retrieve lost passwords, and have product registration links/downloads sent to your email address. (if you so desire).

In some of the initial testing performed over past month - there's been the odd email server that decided to reject emails from my new domain (hence the initial email verification as part of signup) - so if you're having any problems signing up (and you don't receive your initial welcome/password email within a few moments/minutes) - try to use a different email address and see if that solves the problem.

How do I buy the full versions of Big Screen ......?

Although the online payment/activation system is now functioning/working (using Paypal's Merchant Services) - I'm yet to enable this for the general public - as I'm still making 1000% sure that there isn't any glitches with some of the non-standard payment methods supported by Paypal (that could be complex to undo - depending on how/where payment was made). Note that it's not actually required that you have a Paypal account (and you will be able to do credit card payments without signing up to PayPal) - however having one may allow you to better manage your invoices/transactions with bigscreenglobal and other purchases you may make with other providors.

Note however - due to the funky - 'reverify registration' features built into the v2 products - if you do decide to take the splash and purchase the full products - you won't need to reinstall anything at all (and you can unlock/upsize your 'trial' product from inside the Media Center UI - using your remote control - once payment has been completed/confirmed online...)

Where's Big Screen ......?

- Big Screen Headlines v2 isn't quite ready for public consumption (due to some behind the scenes requirements/deals being finalized - which currently impacts what the final installer will look like) - so please be patient - and I hope to have this available online shortly as well.

- Big Screen Contacts (v2) - Coming Soon! I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot and provide any dates on this - but promise it will be soon..

- Big Screen Movies / TV Series - as before - please don't ask where these are (and are still *not* anywhere near the top of the to-do list). Once you see the new products/website and amount of work gone into these new v2 products - I hope you'll understand and appreciate where the effort has gone over the past few months - and understand that in order to make the Big Screen range fly - the 'specialist/enthusiast' products (which require lots of behind the scenes licensing to be sorted out) - are not the current priority. (and it's the broader/family + legal friendly products which are the focus).

Still a "Work In Progress" . . . .

Please note that there's still some work to be done on the new site - and some of content you see is 'temporary' (ie. full online support/documentation is still being finalized) - and as such - users may experience a few 'server resource is unavailable' messages if I'm right in the middle of uploading a page. (and if you see this - please wait a couple of moments and refresh the page).

The current banner ads are also very temporary (and I think even contain some horrid spelling + grammatical mistakes designed to make any English professor walk off in disgust) - so expect to see these being recycled/changed over the coming weeks.

Similarly - some of the multi-lingual translations offered in the v2 products will be a continuous - "work in progress" (and are definitely not considered 100%) - and the main aim of providing these translations is to enable non English / non Technical members of the family to enjoy/use these products as well (once installed by someone in the family that can cope with some English/Technical information - which would be 'you'...).

Anyhow - I hope you enjoy the new sites and products - and those of you who are seeing/using these for the first time (and were patiently waiting) - appreciate all the hard work that's gone into these... (and maybe even decide to buy one of them..)..

As before - stay tuned for more information + product announcements on here - or on http://bigscreenglobal.com ...

Launched (well nearly) : Big Screen Photos v2 Final Version

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:50:46 GMT

As of this morning - Big Screen Photos v2 'Final Version' (aka R10) was finished from a 'functional' point of view.

The current release has been fully tested with Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit and XBox360 Extenders - and works for both Widescreen (16:9, 16:10 etc) - and Letterbox displays (Widescreen is highly recommend for the optimal experience).

There's still a couple of changes outstanding (before I will make it completely public) - namely :

- Refining the non-english languages for the new MultiLingual UI (the English is perfect - translations are still very incomplete in some areas and being 'looked at' still by some very helpful folk). The language files can easily/quickly inserted into the current version once these are ready (so no code changes to be had).

- testing on new 'PIKA' extender devices (no - I <sob> don't have one yet - other than a XBox360 - and aren't completely sure when one will arrive..). If you've been following some of the news about extenders - you'll know that although they are 'equal' - some are 'more equal' in regards to how they handle things like Animations and 3D (and have a number of other differences from the XBox360). Just how 'unequal' they are remains to be seen - and I've included some new 'device' specific settings in the addins to try to handle this 'in advance' (and at least give XBox360 users the chance to make use of all the glorious 3D/Animation they have to offer - rather than 'disabling it' on all extenders).

How Much... When...

Ok - as you'll see from a screen below - the full version of Big Screen Photos 2 will be a measly USD$24.95. how cheap is that..8). Unless any bugs are spotted in the next few days - those who actually want to purchase a copy (and don't have a new extender - or want perfect multilingual translations) - will be able to do so in the next couple of weeks (and of course will be able to upgrade to any new versions which address these issues).

A 30 Day Trial period will be offered for those not yet wishing to make a purchase (and are at the 'just checking it out - seeing if it fits their needs' phase).

In the very short term - I will simply rig up the paypal system for payments - and in the next few weeks - will have a much better solution in place (with fully automated license activations etc - initially I may need to go in and flick a switch on my website after a purchase is made).

Can I have it now?...

Ok - one other thing of mention is that there is a whole new (sophisticated?) membership/registration system on my website (currently hidden from the public). So this is also being given a workout over next few days (before everything launches).

So if you're willing to be a 'crash test dummy' - and want to help simultaneously test the online registration/signup process (which might be wobbly too!) - and get access to the final release of Photos 2 (and the other new v2 titles very soon) - please do the following - and I'll hopefully send you an email in next couple of days with the info/links -

- Send me a direct email (if you have my email address) - or use the Spaces Messing system here to send me online mail.
- Please ensure you include a 'valid reply email address' (and the same one you want to sign up with) - so I don't have to email you back on Spaces - and can recognize who you are when you've logged in (and maybe even give you some discounts, freebies if you're well behaved).

Whats new for the final Release

I've added a bunch of new things (there was a huge amount of really great - 'can you add feature x' requests - which have fed into this) - and hope to continue to add some of the more complex requests in future (like local content support with full metadata/geotagging capabilities). So a big thanks to everyone who participated/contributed to this. (and hope to reward you with early access, discounts, freebies - well lets see what I can do there..)..

Some New features/fixes/enhancements that made it to the R10 release :

Multi Lingual Support. Currently 5 languages are supported (rather poorly right at this moment ... but will be substantially improved for release). Please keep in mind that I'm only "MonoLingual" - so this is a pretty challenging task - and would appreciate patience from end users (that's if you don't include 'geek' plus the 40 or more programming dialects I've picked up over the years).

Screenshots below show some different screens in different languages. The Keyboard has an alternate charset toggle (like a symbol mode) - which brings up all the latin/euro letters you could possibly need (until I add the Scandinavian languages that is).. Of course a lot of content on flickr is in English (titles, tags, descriptions won't be translated of course) - but there's still lots of multilingual content (apart from your own) that you can look at.

5 x Slideshow Effects. Horizontal/Vertical Slides, Fade, Continuous Zoom and 3d Flip. I need to actually make a video (or you need to try it out) to see what they look like. (pictured below is the options screen).

Enhanced GeoBrowser and Digital Frames with 2D support (Extender Friendly). Via the new device settings menu - you can disable the 3d panning in the geobrowser (and it adjusts the UX to provide 2d zooming/scaling/panning instead).

The screenshots below show some of this in action. The Config page allows you to quickly set these parameters (those no way yet to auto detect this information as yet - but I'm still hunting..). The digital photo frames below is almost identical - except you don't get the rotating carousel (the small thumbnails) without 3D enabled (the rest is actually 2d 'dressed' as 3d so isn't impacted).

When you disable 3d support - the Geo Browser uses 2d mode instead (screenshot on right).

Lots of Usability fixes. Namely anything to do with scrollers/browsing of lists, changing sizes/groups etc has now been sorted. Before - if you were at end of a list and you made it smaller (by changing the tile size) - it would scroll of screen. I've now sorted out proper management - and made work a whole lot better (and not have this issue).
Registration/VersionCheck/Upgrade/More.. Wizards built in. Similar to new UX found in Big Screen Headlines2/Weather2 - instead of the crappy click through boxes in R9 - this provides a much nicer experience for configuration.

The screens below show off a couple of these wizards. The Reverification Wizard also allows you to instantly update the registration details on your current version (without any reinstallation). This is useful for users who are using a trial version and purchase the full release.

There's even a lovely Nag screen that will randomly appear on some loads - to remind you to purchase the full version (while you are a trial user). You might find this amusing the first couple of times - but trust me - it might in fact be an 'annoying nag screen' by the time you've been using the trial for a while (what better encouragement huh).

Unfortunately - I can't yet accept any transactions via the MCE interface (and am not clear whether users would feel comfortable entering sensitive payment information in MediaCenter anyhow - and not using a trusted providor). However if you pay online- you can quickly 'reverify' your current install (nothing to do) - and it will transform into the full release.

Supports up to 5 flicker user accounts (I may even remove the limitation completely).
Fast Loading/Bootup time (no OK dialogs / Clickable splash screens anymore). The first time you boot you will be taken directly to language selection and the activation wizard. Once you're done - loading the addin and getting to the main menu is very fast (a couple of seconds normally if the DLL has been preloaded). If you're a trial user - as mentioned above the nag screen will bug you every few boots.

Nice quite/subtle Splash Screen (no more loud productions or vertigo at the start) and is only visible for a second or two.

Faster/Easier installation. Combined with the simplicity of registration from the new mobilewares online site - things like entering the serial number are done during the MSI Setup phase (rather than the user needing to launch it afterwards in R9). There's also some new smarts which allow you to perform activation and other startup tasks directly from the extender (without needing to first run it on the console due to security issues).
Lots of other minor bug fixes. (Too many to mention)

I will make some more announcements over the coming days - and hopefully open up the online registration/trial system to everyone.

Stay tuned...

Work In Progress : Big Screen Weather 2 (global)

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 05:36:25 GMT

A new product that's been keeping me busy is an update to Big Screen Weather for Vista Media Center ('v2') - and this time around - it's been designed with global users in mind. (The past 2 incarnations of this product : Big Screen Weather v1 + Big Screen Portal were for Australians only).

As with the other 'v2' products from the 'Big Screen' Range - Weather v2 started off as a simple update - and then as it developed - turned into something completely new (with most of the original v1 code being 'shown the door')..

A quick summary of what 'Big Screen Weather v2' provides :

Latest Detailed Global Weather Observations (for over 5000 locations worldwide - including Europe, Asia, Africa, N/S America, Australasia)
Forecasts (3-7 day) for over 4000 locations worldwide
Satellite Imagery, Animated Radar Loops (US + Australia only) and Charts - with a preset catalog of over 1400 images.
'TV Weather' style Geo Browsing of worldwide observations - with panning and zooming to locations (Continent, Region, Country and State levels).
MultiLingual UI and Weather data (9 languages) : English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish + Danish. (DBCS + RTL Language support such as Hebrew + Japanese are planned for Q1 next year).

Since a picture tells a thousand words - here's some screenshots (and a thousand words)..

click on these to zoom to large versions >>

The main menu (below x2 screenshots) - features a similar main menu system to Big Screen Headlines 2 - and allows you to scroll left/right to reveal different data (without leaving the main menu) - and then click through to more information. (if desired). As with 'TV Style' weather reports - the animations and various transitions are a highlight (but I really need to do a videocast of this so you can see how this looks) - and in the main menu below the waves/clouds appear to be rolling towards you (and looks like a video is being played).

Clicking through to the Observation (below left) or Forecast (below right) reveals much more detailed information. The actual data/sections and # days displayed in these screens is determined by the source/type of the data (some locations may only provide 3+1 days forecast).

Big Screen weather displays both Imperial (US) and Metric (SI) measurements (your choice) - and this includes not only temperatures (Celcius <> Fahrenheit) - but all other types of measurements that get displayed (ie. HectoPascals <> Inches/Mercury, MPH<>KPH<>KNTS etc ).

There's lots of new imagery available for global users (in form of charts/satellites etc). However - US + Australian users also get a bunch more to look at - such as animated radar loops (rainfall and more).

The 'Geo Browsing' features allow you fly/zoom/pan around the world to view latest observations - to create a 'TV Style' experience. This is similar to the one found in Big Screen Photos 2 - except that its Content/Region/Country/Zone/State based selection/zooming rather than being a grid system).

As you zoom in and out more/less locations are revealed (so that you don't get a screen full of clutter). This part took quite a significant amount of effort to get going (ie. in some counties like US there was 2000+ locations - so some various algorithms, and a manual editor was used to refine the lists down to know at what point to reveal what location - and to know how to position/rotate the label so it didn't overlap with other locations).

One of the big new features was support for 9 different languages. Initially - just a basic translation of the UX was intended (ie. Buttons/Headings) - but as things progressed - it was clear more was needed. In case of Weather v2 - the actual descriptions of Conditions (for Observations + Forecasts) needed to be translated - as did the names of continents, countries, states and Cities (which all have different variations depending on where you are). There's still a little bit of work to be done on the translations - but most of it is now sorted (Thanks to some help from some friends/associates around the globe - plus some really great resources/databases on the internet).

The pictures below show off the Translations in action (UX, PlaceNames, Descriptions) :

Weather Data

In terms of data/backends etc - one signficant change to Big Screen Weather 2 (in comparison to other Big Screen Products) - is that I am generating/processing/hosting the raw weather data on the mobilewares server. This allows end users to quickly download huge amounts of data in a fraction of the time/effort/data normally required (and the addin does this on each load or preset schedule - rather than continuously needing to load data).

For example - the entire dataset for 'latest' global forecasts/observations is less than 40k (after being compressed/encrypted - its about the size of a small jpg) - and is derived from over 100mb's of raw data (which would be quite a headache for an end user to download/process). The backend processing from the raw numerical data (rather than getting some weather.com xml feed etc) - also gives me the opportunity to easily translate / isolate all sorts of data (which wouldn't be possible if I just had entire descriptions of conditions).

The other benefit of this is that it serves as a buffer to any backend data sources changing (as happened with some of the image sources in Big Screen Weather v1) - as the backend site in the middle will know about/monitor and adapt quickly to these sort of issues (without any updates for the end user). This mobilewares backend will also be made redundant (so that any outages can be handled by another website hosted in a different location - again without the user noticing/caring).

This part of the project was pretty interesting (and complex) - but I now know how weather forecasts/observations that I see on the telly are made (and now know all sorts of terms/structures such as METARS, TAFS, GRIB etc etc and how to turn raw data into human readable weather information).

Availability

So you're probably wondering - when can I play with/have this (and the other v2 products)? As with the previous v2 product beta's - I'll just be keeping it to a very small handful of testers until it's ready for the public.

There's a lot of hard work going on down here at the moment - and part of the grand plan is that these v2 products (weather2, photos2 and headlines2) will be launched at same time (early Jan 2008) - and be available for purchase from the mobilewares site. (and trial versions will also be offered to the general public at that point).

There's some good (commercial) reasons behind these dates (and why multilingual translations are being done) - and hopefully will be able to reveal all this in the coming weeks too.

Yours Truely on the 'The Media Center Show #126'

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:04:22 GMT

Ian Dixon interviewed me a little while ago for the Media Center show podcast - and if you want to check it out - have a listen to the latest edition of the show (The Media Center Show #126 - Niall Ginsbourg). It's my 3rd appearance - and (as before) had an enjoyable chat with Ian about what I'm up to.

It was pretty weird (once again) to hear my voice recorded - and you might need an umm-skipper (just like a recorded tv "ad-skipper" - but for everytime I say ummmm - which is quite a bit unfortunately ..). But in amongst the umming and ahh'ing - I rattle on a little about media center development, where I'm at with the Big Screen Products and the crappy UK weather.

Show Index (and download) quoted below (taken from Ian's Digital Lifestyle blog)...

Quote

The Media Center Show #126 - Niall Ginsbourg

By Ian Dixon (26mb 1 hour 15mins 53sec)
Vote for the show on Podcast Alley

Direct Download Link - Subscribe via iTunes - Subscribe via RSS
This week Niall Ginsbourg Media Center developer returns to the show to talk about his Vista Media Center applications, the process he follows when developing Media Center applications and how he is getting businesses looking at Media Center development . I also have email, news items and the final chance to win a copy of One Voices' Media Center Communicator and LTB's L-Beam Wireless Microphone System.
Welcome to the new show sponsor Tech.co.uk
Show Times:
00:50 Welcome to the show
01:38 Email - Voice control video
02:48 Email - Do Extenders need the host PC turned on?
05:10 V2 Zunes with Media Center Support
06:23 I got a Zune!, Zune forums
07:32 Niveus Media Center Companion Software - My review
09:42 PowerPlay List on Codeplex
10:50 Get nominating for The Media Center Show Awards - see this forum thread
11:47 Last chance to Win Media Center Communicator and the L-Beam Wireless Microphone System (link to video)
12:39 A message from One Voice
13:20 Welcome to Niall
14:30 Balancing Media Center work
15:34 Getting business to look at Media Center as a platform
21:00 The design process
24:54 Development tools
27:00 Reusing code
30:00 User feedback
32:00 Tools
34:00 Wix installer
36:30 64bit
37:35 Big Screen Photos 2
45:20 Big Screen Headlines
53:44 Big Screen Contacts
54:10 Big Screen Weather
56:17 Big Screen TV
59:30 Touch screen application
01:08:00 http://mobilewares.net/ and http://mobilewares.spaces.live.com/
01:12:00 Thanks to Niall
Music by Ian Dixon

Technorati tags: Windows Media Center, podcasts

Launched: Big Screen Headlines 2 (Private Beta)

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:38:40 GMT

Big Screen Headlines v2 "private beta" has been made available to a small number of people yesterday/today I'm keeping this group very small (fingers on one hand small) - and hopefully if no showstoppers - I will release a public trial version shortly.

I've added a few new features since I announced this product on the blog a little while ago. In particular - a lot (more) work refining the parsing of different feed formats was required - but the end result is that the program does some new tricks.

There's also a lot of new video feeds added to the presets (with a strong focus towards feeds offering WMV format) - such as a whole bunch of news/entertainment/sports/etc feeds from BBC (guys in the UK will be happy), a lot of Video on Demand content from ABC.com.au (Australia), plus a whole lot more (there's even some US Video News etc in there ).

Being Australian - I love the content on the abc.com.au feeds - they have entire episodes (14 different shows), latest news and more. (very cool stuff - and all in MediaCenter friendly WMV's).

Below is one the comedy shows you can watch - "Chasers War on Everything" - and the latest episode available has the prank they pulled at the APEC summit - which I think made news worldwide (where they faked a canadian motorcade to get through all the security - and then stopped outside Bush's hotel and one of them dressed as Bin Laden got out). There's also a bunch of shows from Andrew Denton's "Enough Rope" series - from (I believe to be) one of the best interviewers on TV.

One area where I spent a bit of time was correctly interpreting (and identifying) the different "content types" found in RSS enclosures and RSS 2.0 Media feeds. In addition to this - I added support for feeds which had multiple content attachments - ie. where the same video (or audio) would be offered at different bitrates and in different formats.

In the screenshot below - is an example of what you see when you are viewing video feed item from the BBC (which I added to the default presets) - where they offer ASX and RA format at high and low bitrates. When you click on the play media button - it will now popup a list of available media items. (with as best a description it can get) - and you choose one of them from the list.

I've also added support for a lot of other video, audio and image formats (via their content-types) - and "in theory" - if you have the right codecs installed (sorry not on extenders) - there's a pretty good chance you can play a lot of other formats + content. (ie. divx, xvid, m4v's, flv's, quicktime, realaudio/video, matroska etc etc).

So far - I've not had a chance to do a lot of testing with what codec packs are working etc (and my 64bit dev environment means I can't get a lot of these codecs to work) - but I'm pretty sure it means that some of the other video sharing + news sites (with decent RSS Feeds) may now be accessible with Big Screen Headlines 2 (ie. Google, Youtube, Break.com etc the usual suspects).

One other bit that was sorely needed was a nice generic Wizard UI (for doing those longer running operations like exporting feeds for extenders, activation, checking for updates etc). The screenshot below shows doing a check for updates.

I've also made the whole signup/registration process easier/simpler (it was a little cumbersome to get your serial number entered in the first revision used for Big Screen Photos 2). When you do an online signup - you can now download a Registration file (with your serial number included) - and when you run the installer - you can supply it with the reg file (so nothing to type - and no desktop programs to run after installation is complete).

There's some other goodies that I don't think were mentioned - so stay tuned for the product site, public trial version (and 'full licensed' version).

Work In Progress : Big Screen Headlines 2

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:21:30 GMT

Some of you may have noticed that Big Screen Headlines v1 trial has expired on the mobilewares site (and hasn't been updated) - and the reason for this has been the imminent release of new update - Big Screen Headline v2.

If you haven't seen Big Screen Headlines before - it's a RSS Browser for Vista Media Center - and was released back in Oct last year (before Vista was RTM'd).

For the v2 release - this update started off as a minor UI facelift - and in the course of things - the entire MCML UI and underlying .NET code layer was pretty much rewritten - so it's in fact an almost entirely new product (which has similarities in structure/navigation to the original).

The beta for this will be released very very soon (I'm hoping in the next week - however a few other things need to coincide with it's release - such as online registration system, which is nearly done too!). As intended for the Big Screen Products - Big Screen Headlines v2 will soon be a commercial/for-sale product (potentially around US$15-25 - the price of a couple of beers at a good nightspot) - sooner rather than later (depending on outcome of public beta). As with other releases - there will be plenty of opportunity to download it and try it out to see if it's up to scratch for you - with most likely a 30 day trial period.

There's a bunch of new features in this release - namely 'better support' for a lot of different RSS extensions and the way these parsed and presented - but a lot of focus was also on the actual UI and pageflow (and how that could be improved from the initial v1 release). It's also planned that the look/feel of UI itself will be reused for future Big Screen Products. (to enable some consistency for the brand/product range).

A quick summary of (some) of the major enhancements include (see screenshots below for more examples) :

Brand new UI system. Most notably - the new 4 way main menu (XBox360 dashboard style) allowing quicker access to content.
Enhanced article display /parsing of HTML content - allowing for viewing articles as they were originally intended with new support for embedded images (where various images are contained within the article text.).
Enhanced parsing of RSS Feeds and new extensions (ie RSS Media, Atom, iTunes, iPhotos etc etc) - with display/extraction of things like thumbnails, comments, ratings etc.
Enhanced viewing/filtering/sorting/grouping when viewing of Feeds/Lists of feeds - including several sort types, forward/reverse ordering - plus ability to alter text sizes (for low/high res screens) and change the view style (ie change how big items are and whether you just see headlines or they expand to reveal more information when highlighted).
Support for dynamic OPML 2.0 includes - which means you can point to OPML files from inside the presets rather than hardcoded RSS URL's. This feature works a treat for places like TheDigitalLifestyle.com who publish an OPML file (containing all the podcasts, blogs and video feeds they have) and regularly add (and remove) their available feeds. (so you don't need to worry about managing each individual feed). You can also point to a local OPML file (which might be regularly updated from your rss reader on another machine).
Direct access to latest Subscribed feed items (as a whole) from main menu (so you can see latest news items from main menu without viewing any feeds)
View Comments feeds from News Items
Lots of new preset feeds / opml links for better updating of available content.
Quick and Easy Export Subscribed Feeds into an OPML file (so it can be used when in Extender mode).

There's also a few more new tricks it can do as well which I won't go into here in detail - but since pictures tell a thousand words here's some to keep you happy (click on each image to get the Full size screenshot) -:

Main Menu Screens - (showing Subscribed feeds, Latest Items and More menu)

Viewing Articles - (Article with embedded Images, Video playback with enhanced buffering, Comments view)

View Feeds - (Enhanced Grouping/Display, Video RSS Feed with thumbnails, iPhoto Stream with thumbnails)

Viewing/Sorting Options via popup and flyout buttons - (Change View Size, and View Style)

Browse Feeds - (View Favorites, View Dynamic OPML feed)

Anyhow - look forward to this one very very soon..

Please note that OEM customers who's vendors officially purchased Big Screen Headlines v1 OEM licenses for them (you will have been given a certificate and Serial Number) - will automatically be upgraded to v2 (full license) for free.

Big Screen Photos 2 Private Beta has been (auto) extended..

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:11:33 GMT

If you are one of the people running the Big Screen Photos 2 Beta - and wondering if your trial has/will expire - please note that all expiry dates have been automatically extended to August 1st, 2007. (as the public beta is not yet ready).

The good news is that you won't need to download/reinstall anything nor enter your serial key again - instead, you can just simply click through the 'revalidate' function that will appear on the addin's splash page (and the addin will automatically retrieve the new expiry details from my server - and lock them in to your settings). These expiry dates were actually updated at end of June (so nobodies trial should have expired) - but I previously forgot to mention it!.

I initially received some pretty negative feedback from some folk about the inclusion of a 'phone home' registration system in Big Screen Photos 2 - however for legitimate users (ie. those who have been supplied an 'official' key) - one of the benefits of this mechanism will be realized immediately. That is - auto trial extension without any reinstall/reregistration - all done with a single click of the 'OK' button from inside Media Center- pretty nifty huh?.

In future this mechanism will also enable users to upgrade a trial version to a full registered version without any further installs (unless of course a completely new release is made available).

For those waiting for the public trial / or the new version with the 'Digital Frames' functionality as demonstrated at WebJam@Remix (and other assorted fixes/changes) - this is still a work in progress (stay tuned) .

Work In Progress: Big Screen Movies - CodeName "Fatlady" Pt. 2 (Under the hood)

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:22:59 GMT

This is the promised follow up post (to the previous one on Big Screen Movies aka codename 'Fatlady') - and I thought I'd use it to talk about how some of the movie + metadata management works in this product.

What Metadata/Imagery Big Screen Movies will work with (and look for).

Similarly to DVD Library - Big Screen Movies scans for metadata information and images for a movie in the folder that the movie title resides.

In the case of DVD Library - a file '<moviename>.dvdid.xml' is searched for (which in turn provides a reference to another XML metadata file in your common directory with data downloaded from AMG) - or alternatively it will locate a cover image if a file 'folder.jpg' exists. In the case of DVR-MS files - metadata is extracted directly from the dvr-ms file (which comes from the EPG).

Big Screen Movies follows a similar path - but allows a whole lot more data to be used - and a lot more images to be provided (ie you can provide back covers, gallery items, different resolution pictures etc).

The main XML metadata file (prefixed with .bsdvd.xml and .bsvideo.xml is a new schema that I came up with (well actually it's a XML Serialization of a .NET class structure - but it can be read back fine) - and it's a really comprehensive spec which allows for lots of different information (ie more than just Chapters, Synopsis etc - things like detailed cast/crew lists, dvd specific information like features, subtitles, tracks, easter eggs etc).

If you want to check out what a Big Screen Movies bsdvd.xml file looks like - see this link Example .bsdvd.xml file. Note this is not finalized (Element names are not all 100% and many should be moved to attributes).

Similarly with images - Big Screen Movies looks for image files based on the same filename - and rather than just looking for folder.jpg (or dvrmsfilename.jpg) - it uses the double-dot notation to find different bits : ie. if you provide a file with the extension .back.jpg - then it will pick this up and use it for the back cover. You can also provide different cover sizes and all sorts of other miscelaneous imagery (for the gallery when viewing a movie title) - ie. <folder/moviename>.<anything>.jpg.

Offline + Online Title support (and a lot of cool opportunities for 3rd party developers).

Since Big Screen Movies supports offline 'movies' too (that could mean a HD-DVD title on your Shelf, something showing at the Movies or Coming Soon, or even a movie available from a Video On Demand service - or a movie you leant your mate)- you can also drop these files into special directories (located in the program data folders) - and they will be picked up by the scan and made available.

Via this feature (and the fact that even online content uses this open/parsable XML file format) - it opens up opportunities for other developers to write supporting tools (ie. Image cover grabbers, metadata importers etc) in the same way people have done for DVD Library functionality. Developers may also write tools that add titles/metadata from other places - such as an app that extracts lists of movies/metadata from Blockbuster or a coming soon at the movies list from Amazon (or elsewhere).

I whipped up the following diagram to better explain what sort of metadata and content can be referenced with Big Screen Movies.

The top of the diagram being what DVD Library does today and the bottom half being what Big Screen Movies adds to the pot - /and/ the yellow boxes in the middle indicate the "new" types of media/content that can be catalogued/browsed.

Please click on the diagram to see the large version (as you probably can't read whats below)...

The Big Screen Movies Manager/Editor

The Big Screen Manager allows you to edit and manager your Movie Titles (which then appear inside the Big Screen Movies) - and provides the ability to add/remove/import/edit your metadata and imagery.

The basic pretext behind how Big Screen Movies works - is that an end user would ultimately add titles to their movie collection a lot less frequently than they would actually load up the addin/watch a movie - hence there's no need to rescan everything each time you load up the addin as Vista Media Center DVD Library does. (Vista Media Center DVD Library's focus is on locally available content only so this makes sense).

Instead - the manager program builds (and manages) a lean/mean database/indexing file (using .net binary serialization) which is loaded into memory when the addin is launched. (hence the UI already knows where everything is - and whats available.). When you go in and actually view a movie title - some (re)scanning is performed at that point if deemed necessary (as it doesn't need to know about all the metadata and online availability up until that point).

There will be some auto scanning / index building features actually inside the Media Center UI - however this won't do everything and will be triggered manually.

Double clicking on a movie will allow you to edit all the included metadata (this is still a little unfinished as you will see in the UI below) :

A few wizards are provided to simply importing/scanning of metadata. The screen below is part of the import 'DVD Profiler' XML Data wizard - and has quite a few smarts to enable it to find and match up with your existing titles. (ie. if straight title or UPCID matching doesn't find the right title - it will also try to extract the DISCID's from the DVD Profiler data and match it with the saved dvdid.xml information). Other wizards are also provided to do things like scanning your drives for new/updated/removed content (ie DVD's on hd, avi, wmv, dvr-ms files etc).

Summary

Ok thats all I'm going to say/show for the time being about this product (well there's a plethora of reading material in this post and the previous one so this wont be an issue!)...

When I have some more updates/progress to share (or the Fatlady is singing) I will post them here ....

Please also see the 'faq' in the previous post for some of the common questions.