AVS Forum banner

MoviePoster - Virtual movie poster display software.

523K views 4K replies 471 participants last post by  meyer64 
#1 · (Edited)
In the process of building my home theater, I decided that I wanted to have a secondary display acting as a virtual movie poster to display information about the currently playing media as well as posters for movies coming soon. I was unable to find any software to do what I wanted so i set out to make my own. MoviePoster is intended to be run on a display in portrait mode and supports its own rotation mechanism for PCs that don't have native screen rotation support.
The application connects to to xbmc using the JSONRPC interface to get information about the currently playing media. When no media is playing it will display movie posters for upcoming films either downloaded from themoviedb.org or loaded from a local cache.
Trailers can be streamed from youtube using links provided in themoviedb metadata. There is also a web based remote control interface for changing posters, activating trailers and creating custom poster lists.

Version 2.2.0.1 is available now...

Notable changes include:
-fixes to the Kodi plugin to better support Kodi 16.
-Improvements to the webview displays.
-addition of a Landscape layout webview display
-ability to change the fonts and colors used for taglines and playback time text.
-adjustments to the WebRemote settings layout.
-option to render posters internally at 4k resolution (This MIGHT improve image quality on 4k TVs, but uses about twice the RAM)
-uses a shortcut in the startup folder instead of the registry to start with Windows. - this fixes the webserver not starting bug.
-fixed a couple bugs in the source settings.

MoviePoster 2.2.0.1 7-zip Archive - Just extract and run MoviePoster.exe

MoviePoster 2.2.0.1 msi installer - Uninstall older versions that used an installer first.

The MoviePoster Definitive Guide is a continual work in progress set up guide and answers to the most common questions.

Dev Builds include the newest features and bug fixes, but have had more limited testing. These are usually pretty stable and are the versions I run myself. However, some bugs might sneak through and are best for people who want to be on the bleeding edge and don't mind reporting issues.


MoviePoster Dev version 2.3.0.6 (9/4/2022) is now available for download. Please note that while this build includes new features and fixes there may still be unknown issues. This build does not include an installer. To run, simply extract the .7z archive using 7-zip to your preferred folder and run MoviePoster.exe. Please send details of any issues or feedback to movieposterapp@gmail.com

Notable Improvements include:
*Improved error handling to reduce crashes and memory leaks.
*Updated Plex plugin to allow IP address and machineidentifier values for clients.
*Resolved errors when adding additional display configurations.
*Preliminary support for full screen poster images in portrait mode including zooming and stretch options for smaller artwork. - WIP
*Resolved issues with extra artwork not being downloaded from Fanart.TV
*Includes updated youtube-dl.exe by default
*Ability to have multiple active custom lists

Download Links:
Google Drive: MoviePoster_2.3.0.6_Dev_9_4_2022.7z
or
MoviePoster Website: https://movieposterapp.com/Downloads/Beta/MoviePoster_2.3.0.6_Dev_9_4_2022.7z


MoviePoster supports animated 'MotionPosters', but its a manual process to add them to your poster library. I have started to upload my collection to my Google Drive.
Google Drive: Sign-in

Please see the included ReadMe.txt file for installation and general usage instructions. Please feel free to comment and report any bugs, or request features.

I have developed a small device to automatically turn your poster screen on and off based on your presence in the room. With this your screen will turn on when you are around and off after a set amount of time without you needing to do anything. You can learn more or purchase one for yourself here:
MoviePoster - Digital Poster Display Software

ScreenShots:







My custom 32" LCD Poster Display:


(Slightly Outdated) Video of operation.
http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb442/burgermeyer/VID_20121104_144958_087.mp4

A newer, but brief video of operation.


Bug reports, feature requests, suggestions and general comments are always welcome. I will do my best to fix any bugs that are reported and will consider all feature requests. That said, the program comes with no warranty of any kind and although I do my best, I can make no guarantees.
I do accept donations to support continued development of the program. Any and all donations are greatly appreciated and help to motivate continued development and support of the program. However, donations no not guarantee that any particular feature can or will be implemented.
 
See less See more
1 8
#3 ·
It's probably cheaper than buying a bunch of printed posters too. I used a 32" LCD ripped out of an older tv i got off craigslist. Including wood I'm in about $100 and running it off pc hardware I already had laying around. Plus if you want a new poster, it can be added almost instantly.
 
#5 ·
It would be easiest to use a dedicated pc for it yes. But it doesn't need to be anything high end. I did much of my testing using a thinkpad from 2003. The only real requirement is .Net 4.5 which restricts you to Windows Vista and above. I plan on using a cheap, low power intel Atom integrated motherboard to run it once its permanently installed. However, There really isn't any reason that it couldn't run on a 2nd monitor output of an existing HTPC. During development, I had my laptop hooked up to my tv as a second monitor and it worked fine. But i did have trouble getting it to startup in full screen on the secondary display. So if you set the poster screen as the primary display output in windows it should work just fine. The other issue is audio from the trailer playback. I dont have any systems with multiple sound cards, so i havent tested getting it to output over anything other than the primary sound output device, but i don't think it would impossible to add an option to change the audio output.
 
#6 ·
Just stumbled upon this thread and thought this would make a much better "Marquee" poster than the one I had planned. Does the software scale to any size? Has anyone done the math - what size HDTV would be equivalent or close to a real poster? With BF coming up, it might be time to pick up something cheap. What about heat and such, any concerns?
 
#7 ·
Yes it will scale to any size but the layout and aspect ratio are locked for a 16:9 display in a portrait orientation. The posters downloaded from themoviedb are all right around 1500x1000 resolution. So they should look pretty good on even a larger sized monitor. I'm using a 32" display and it works well for the space I have. I couldn't really imagine using something much bigger than a 42" screen though. As far as heat goes. I haven't had any problems yet. I've left it running for a few days but I probably won't run it 24x7.
 
#9 ·
I Used themoviedb as a source because they have an open API for getting posters and metadata from their site. I don't know if impawards has anything like that, but they do have high quality posters. I'm not sure I have time to figure out how to scrape their site though.
 
#11 ·
If you're going to store your movie library on a storage device you definitely want a RAID (at least RAID 1) system so even if you lose a drive you don't lose everything. I have a small NAS with 4 drives giving me 4.5tb of space and it was fairly affordable. Combined with XBMC it makes playback a breeze and the WAF is high.
 
#13 ·
I run tiny Intel Atom boxes (an Acer Revo and a Zotac Zbox), they both have the ION chipset so will decode h.264 MKVs in hardware and were both around $200. They are too small to handle Netflix HD or HBO Go (although later versions of Flash do have hardware acceleration) but they handle my personal library just fine.
 
#14 ·
I also use the Zotac Atom/Ion boxes all around the house. I don't do any netflix streaming, but they do work excellent for an XBMC box to play HD video off a NAS. Anything with a GPU capable of hardware decode will work though. I even have an ancient 1.3Ghz Pentium 4 that i pit a Geforce 8400 PCI card in for about $40, it plays 1080p h.264 files just fine.
 
#15 ·
A new version is uploading to sourceforge as I type this. You should now be able to run it on a secondary display and alternate sound card, so you don't necessarily need a dedicated pc for the poster display. In theory, It could run on your main xbmc box if you use the windows version of xbmc. I haven't fully tested this set up, but I think it will work ok. I've also added features for refreshing cached data and selecting alternate posters for a particular movie. see changelog.txt in the application folder for more details.


Download Link: http://www.movieposterapp.com
 
#18 ·
It looks like registration is currently broken on that site so i cant post there, but I am glad that others are able to use the software in their own projects. Be sure to post pictures of your poster displays too, I'd love to see them! Thank you to everyone for your compliments and encouragement! Remember, I'm happy to hear any feedback regarding bugs or feature requests as well.
 
#23 ·
I added my original post to your thread on the xbmc forums.


roar,

regarding the raspberry pi.. I actually thought about that as well, unfortunately the display I am using for my poster board has a defective hdmi port, so i had to use something that had VGA capability, plus i had old harware laying around to test with (free is even cheaper than the Pi) And I'm primarily a .Net developer so it was fairly easy to rough up a prototype in c#. I'm sure that I could rewrite it to target a linux environment that could run on the Pi, but i don't have one so the motivation isnt really there right now. Maybe if there is a market for a fully assembled product or something.
 
#24 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by meyer64  /t/1439406/movieposter-virtual-movie-poster-display-software#post_22631780


I added my original post to your thread on the xbmc forums.

roar,

regarding the raspberry pi.. I actually thought about that as well, unfortunately the display I am using for my poster board has a defective hdmi port, so i had to use something that had VGA capability, plus i had old harware laying around to test with (free is even cheaper than the Pi) And I'm primarily a .Net developer so it was fairly easy to rough up a prototype in c#. I'm sure that I could rewrite it to target a linux environment that could run on the Pi, but i don't have one so the motivation isnt really there right now. Maybe if there is a market for a fully assembled product or something.

Free will always be better
A bumb HDMI port would certainly rule out the Rasberry Pi. There are a couple of threads on their forums with people running slideshow scripts to use the Rasberry Pi in a kiosk like setting to randomly display images which in turn would make for a slick movie poster display, but your application is so much more. I've got a fullsized back lit movie poster box in my theatre area so I haven't quite found the right spot for this application but it seems too cool not to find a place for it in my room somewhere.
 
#25 ·
Can't remember if I posted earlier, but I subscribed to this thread to keeps tabs on the development and I just have to say - this whole project is AWESOME!!
 
#26 ·
This is great, thank you. Will it select posters from your movie directory that you are playing or does it always go to themoviedb.org? If there is a problem with the internet, seem like you would want to show the local copy.


This would also make a great trivia slideshow as well.


I feel like I need to donate something for this. Awesome.
 
Top