[tj21]

Hi


I have serial LCD display (two line) and for some time was using it together with Girder, DVD Spy plugin (by McMM) and WinDVD to show the chapter and time of the playing DVD.


It looks like WinDVD is no longer the best DVD player because of new version of PowerDVD and Theatertek player.


My question is will it be possible to use some girder plugin to get the time and chapter info from these players as well?


Tomas

 

[Yvonus]

No idea for PowerDVD.


For the new Theater Tek player. It will for sure not be available with the first version but as it is done by an htpc enthusiast, we might expect that he take into account those lcd panels in a way or another. Obviously, it would not require Dvd spy or any other trick but an open interface to an application/plugin/whatever that knows about lcd panels. Many tools are supporting various devices with great effort. I don't think this is Andrew's intention to rewrite those, but more to interface with those.

 

[Phat Phreddy]

I actually mentioned this at an early stage of the Beta testing but as I only had a ball park idea of what was needed and was supposed to be keeping quiet it was decided that it would not make v1.0...


Andrew is great at working with this app to get it right (he has recently redesigned some stuff for Girder compatibility) and I think we will be able to lean on him for future releases... If you could communicate (in words of 3 syllables or less ) to me or this thread exactly what is needed for a minimum functionality and what would make it the absolute best so that we have an idea of what work / features it may present then at least it can get the ball rolling...


What would it take from the TT player to make something like the winamp plugin a possibility (selection of what field etc you want to display really appeals) ??

 

[tj21]

I am just asking for Time and Chapter. However for maximum flexibility it should give access to all information: name of the disk, audio playing (format, language), subtitles showed, angle, mode (fastforward, reverse, pause, ...), percentage of played from the total, layer, bitrate, ...


Tomas

 

[Mark Hunter]

Line 1: DVD Title + Chapter

Line 2: The TheaterTek "Progress Bar" that shows elapsed time against total time.


Man, I would find that handy after 90 minutes of a movie when I need to use the bathroom. Do I have 5 minutes to wait? Or another hour?

 

[MMcM]

Of course, the player could itself open the LCD and have a fancy template for specifying how you want the display formatted. But I think that it's better to assume that there is centralized event-response handling for the HTPC and route it there. Girder will be doing IR to keyboard shortcuts (pace mouse menu fans). So, let it do this too. Formatting is not all that user friendly, but it is possible and furthermore can multiplex other things that might be going on.


Any time that anything that is part of an onscreen display changes, the plug-in should be informed. Now, the player could go to all the trouble of telling it what had changed. But I see that as overkill. Almost all the expense is in a context switch. Moving a big block of memory takes no longer, really, than a small one. So, I suggest that the extension mechanism define a single structure that contains all the information and call out any time anything has changed. Let the recipient optimize display updating.


Now, as for what mechanism to use. This depends on the preferences of the author(s) and what technology the program might already be using.

• The simplest thing would be to have a DLL that is loaded by the program (put the filename in the registry) and in which a named entry is called with a pointer to a struct. Put a version number at the front and it can be backward compatible when you add more info. This DLL could just call the Girder API to pass the state along.
• If the program is already supporting COM automation, then add an outgoing event interface. This does keep from crashing the player with plug-in bugs. It's a bit more trouble to get going, though, since something has to know that the player has started and initially rendezvous with the connection point. For instance, you'd need a special shortcut to launch the program and do this.
• There are lots of other possibilities, such as broadcasting a registered windows message, which has the advantage of being asynchronous. You cannot put the display data in the message itself (different address space), but you could put it into a shared memory segment.

In the end, all that really matters is that it is minimally supported and maintained from release to release.

 

[Yvonus]

Milori ; you're already getting too dependent on the lcd display.


The TT player should provide an easy way for a third party application to get a bunch of infos from it

• chapter, title..
• language of audio/subtitles track, type of audio track
• dvd title if the info is available
• time elapsed, time remaining, total time
• etc..

Then any application can pick whatever it feels interesting and, for the case we're talking about, display it on a lcd panel.


I'm not used to those lcd panels and applications. Does someone know about those app coders ? They probably have an idea about how a dvd player should interface with their display app

Update The historical (long) disucssion about lcd panels can be found here