Best Front End?

Maybe you can expand on what Kaleidescape has that you want since I doubt most people here have ever used

Agreed, what is it that you liked about Kaleidascape? The disc storage vault?

I was highly tempted to install my movies, purchase anydvdhd, and start backing up all my discs to my WHS without any intervention on my part.

I didn't because there seemed to be no way for any server client to transcode Video_TS or iso. I went the MakeMKV route, and now I'm over 150 discs in. I've only got 20 left, so I'll stick with this route. I don't miss the menus a lot, and when I want to watch the extras I'll probably go grab the physical disc and play it.

I've been keeping plans for an upcoming tablet on the horizon, so I didn't want to put in a lot of work and alienate the possibility of watching any of my content on a tablet later.

Mediabrowser, Plex, XBMC all look good to me. I never can make up my mind

Both XMBC and Media Browser have front end options that look very similar to Kaleidascape. I use the chocolate theme in Media Browser, and in some ways I think it actually may look even better than Kaleidascape.

Both XMBC and Media Browser can be set to pull meta data automatically. The only negative for MB is that it didn't run smoothly for me until I put in a SSD for all of the cover art. I'm sure you can check out both, just do a quick search on You Tube.

Just looked up Kaleidescape. As far as the GUI goes, I don't see how it is anywhere near as good as XBMC, which can look similar but also quite a bit better, and has endless other options.

XBMC is very nice as well. You should try it as I am sure it has come a looooong way since when you last used it.

XBMC offers a wide variety of skins that provide so much customizability in the way your media is presented to you. The intuitive part might be different for each user as the skins don't usually come with instructions but based on my own personal experience, I've been able to get the jist of most of them from just fiddling with settings in the skin options menu or on different screens in XBMC. There has been a few times where I had to check the skin section of the XBMC forum but for the most part, I was able to figure it out myself. This will vary from person to person. However, once I got it set up it's pretty damn slick to say the least. I'm using the Aen Nox skin with a few additional add-ons for added functionality such as logos for my movies and TV shows, the Cinema Experience that plays cartoons and the DTS/Dolby Digital intros before a movie, and TV Tunes that plays the theme song for a show when I enter it. There are also a lot of other widgets I use that provide things like movies or TV series I'm currently in the process of watching, suggestions for random episodes or movies to watch, in addition to a smart playlist I set up for movies I have never watched before. I haven't used the other front-ends much but from what I've seen of Kalaidescope, my experience in XBMC trumps it several times over for a whole lot cheaper.

I also hate that type of view and am surprised frontend/theme developers even bother creating that type of view. I find it funny whenever most people here have posted pictures of their setups over the years, showing off their frontends, and when front-end websites show off their skins that this is the type of view they often show. All I think is 'wow, what a horrible UI'. Sure it looks kind of cool but it's one of the most impractical and useless views for anybody that has more than maybe 30 movies. It's gotta be either a simple list or a wall of movie posters showing at least 3 rows at a time (and nothing else wasting screen space).

I still think even today Kaleidescape wins. Heck, I even think my old xlobby setup that I used like 5 years ago, with my own ghetto skin that just showed a wall of movie posters and nothing else, is better than most frontends these days. Of course, all I care about is playing movies. I don't need any other features.

These days, Windows Explorer tends to be my frontend. It's the quickest way to get what I want playing. The only time I use my frontend is when relatives are in town and want to browse our selection.
Edited by mslide - 10/2/12 at 7:41am

I was just looking at pics of the Kaleidescape GUI and dont see anything about it that a competent front end such as XBMC or
mediabrowser or even plex cant do as well or in most cases better.
The wall view in Kaleiescape? Many XBMC skins offer this.
The list view? Again, many offer the same.

I dont see anything especially slick or intuitive that cant be replicated or bettered with most of the popular front ends
talked about on this forum.

If your point of reference is really XBMC from when it was Xboxmedia center I think you owe it to yourself to see
what is offered now and try out some of the different skins offered.

Agreed.

If all you care about is playing movies then why not just use a list type view. It's like just using explorer but you can use a mce remote.

With xbmc you can press down and scroll through entire screens rather than flip through each individual movie.

I use aeon nox and for movies I use the info wall view. I think it's a good mix of usability with large collections, info, and eye candy though the auto scroll for the movie summary is sooooo slow. I agree that all the slide, showcase, or other views that have 1 row are annoying when you have more than about 50 movies.

Yea, it seems like Aeon (and Aeon Nox) are probably the most popular XBMC skins but I prefer the stock Confluence skin.

That said, there are many to choose from...find one that suits your needs.

(now I'm off to try Aeon.....)

Another vote here for Aeon Nox skin in XBMC, super slick and highly customisable. I also like Aeon MQ4.

David

I'm always a bit surprised by the Aeon enthusiasm. IMO, it's unnecessarily flashy and all the animations literally give me a headache. I know you can customize it a great deal, but if you want something very clean and attractive OOTB, I recommend Quartz. It also goes beyond simply reskinning the interface by simplifying the menus and adding a very useful recently added bar at the top (I think more recent versions of confluence have added this too).

Yeah, I'm sort of a busybody so throw all the widgest, gadgets, animations, and other assorted whizzbangery at me as long as it doesn't affect performance and functionality, which on my HTPC it doesn't. I use the Showcase view for my main list of movies which is over 600 and clicking the down button allows me to scroll through screens pretty quickly. I rarely go in that section though since I'm either going to genre which I use another view type for or my unseen or recently added sections which use different views as well but I never have problems scrolling through my collection using any of the views except for Big fanart which shows one movie at a time. There are a lot of skins that I like but Aeon Nox provides me with pretty much all the options and the widgets really help streamline what I watch next since it provides me with recommendations of episodes or movies and also keeps track of what I'm currently in the process of watching.

You can turn off the animations, actually, I think the default is off for that stuff. It's very annoying and gives me a vertigo feeling. I think aeon is popular because of all the options to customize. If you want to simplify it, you can, just get rid of all the categories you don't want and keep the ones you want. That said, I might move back to mediabrowser when redshirt releases gamebrowser 2...yay for multi disc support and an exit button option.