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A Clone

Hey everyone. I just moved into a new house and have been busy unpacking and getting situated and haven't had any time to continue working on this project. That is all going to change soon though. I hope to have some new videos out shortly.

Hi.

Any progress on this?

I'm just building myself a new passively cooled HTPC as I picked up some parts for a great price, unsure about xbmc or windows & your setup ...

So anything you can offer would be appreciated ;)

My setup is a windows based HTPC that stays on all the time with my program running on it. It connects with a home server that I built that contains all of my movies. This allows me to have multiple instances run the same movie.

Hi there, I just watched all 5 of your video's on u-tube, your doing a fine job keep it going, it's looking very interesting.

Thanks for the input. Stay tuned for more updates as I get back to working on the project.

It would be good to look at the control of this too. To be able to use touch panel and get full 2way control.

...I am still interested in participating in your project.

I am hoping to do a video soon showing the simple iPhone control. Right now I am just using buttons to do it with no two way but it will be added soon. I just need to finish things on the project first and then I can add 2 way on the app.
 
Hi Aphanson17, ive seen all 5 of your video's on u-tube, it's looking good, keep the videos going, im interested what improvements u r going to make, but for now, i like the way it looks, great job,Oz
 
Hi Aphanson17, ive seen all 5 of your video's on u-tube, it's looking good, keep the videos going, im interested what improvements u r going to make, but for now, i like the way it looks, great job,Oz

There are still quite a few features to add. A few of the things I want to tackle are 2 way remote control for iPad, child remote (when a child uses a specific remote the program will only show movies that are approved for them), collections where you can add movies to certain collections and Trailers. There will be more added but those are some of them.
 
All i can cay Andrew, is your doing a really good job, just keep it going and u will get there, just keep in touch when u bring out new video's
regards oz
 
hey mate, any progress? ;)

Sorry I haven't made a post in a while. The clone is starting to get a lot more reliable. I use it as my media server now, recording crashes and such so I can fix them. It's currently on the back-burner as I have started to build a very simple, diy smart home. All of my free time focus has been on that as opposed to the kscape clone, although I do plan on getting back to it shortly after my current project goes to beta. I will inform you when I start back up with it.
 
Update

Hey everyone,

Back at work on the project after quite a bit of time off. It took 3 hours or so just to look through all the souce code and get familiar with everything I was doing :). I have listed out a few things I would like to tackle.

1. New scrolling. I don't like the way the scrolling works (I just kind of hacked it together) because I can't scroll forever while holding up, down, right or left. Being able to scroll infinitely up, down, left and right has been the trickiest part of building this project. I have developed a new algorithm on my whiteboard that I think will be much smoother. Now I just need to build a new animations library for it.

2. Because the new animations library will be much more efficient, I am going to have to change the way covers reorder because it will be broken afterwards. So that will be step 2. If I can get those things down I will be very happy with the product and use it a lot more on a daily bases.

3. 2-way remote control. Right now it is really basic arrow keys that control the app, but nothing passed back to the app. I don't have a lot of iOS development skills so I take it this will be the hardest part. Hopefully I can have a new update soon for everyone.

-Andrew
 
I have a question for all you Kaleidescape owners. Let's say I had approximately 500 movies on the Kaleidescape system. If I only scrolled to the left or right and not up or down and I didn't stop to let the movies shuffle, would I eventually see all the movies? Or would I only see some until I scrolled up or down as well?

Thanks,
Andrew
 
Going right or left you still see all the movies.

John
 
Going right or left you still see all the movies.

John

I knew you were going to say that haha. That makes the algorithm a bit harder but I believe I have it figured out. I'll be updating soon when I finish it. Thanks for you help John!

-Andrew
 
Still no plans to release this?


--Donnie

I don't think there will be a complete release of the project anytime soon. But I have debated building a tutorial series to create your own. Then everyone can have the knowledge to adapt it to whatever they want and add their own features.

-Andrew
 
I have finished with my new animations library and I'm much happier with this one than my last one. It allows me to hold the button to keep scrolling instead of having to click each time for movie. It also allows me to change directions in the middle of scrolling one way. If I turned the app on and only scrolled right I would eventually see all the titles as well. Just this animation library fix alone will make me want to use it more on a daily basis. However with the animation library being new I broke just about everything else :). So next up will be writing a new animation to shuffle movie covers. I'll get a video update of the new animation library as soon as I can. Stay tuned.
 
Hey another question for you guys. If you put a DVD into the drive that is not yet imported into your library, what happens if I'm in the covers view? I have seen a video where Kaleidescape recognizes the disk and pops up all the metadata with options to play the movie. Is there also an import option? Does the movie show up in the covers view as well or is it just the pop-up? Also what happens if you are in the listview?

Thanks,
Andrew
 
Yes, though from my recollection DVDs are import or play (not both at the same time, and probably the same for blus.) The reaction is the same for either view, covers or list, nothing will appear as in the collection until it is in your collection.
 
Another question for you guys. How does importing a TV Show work. Let's say I have the first season of the TV show 24. Let's say it's 6 disks. If I were to take the first disk and put it into the Kaleidescape player and import the disk what happens on the UI? When I go to select an episode, does it only show the episodes that I have imported? Do you have to import all of the disks to get the metadata? I'm having some troubles automating TV Shows and finding a way to identify which episodes belong to that disc. I'm assuming Kaleidescape's database includes all of the disks and discId's for them, allowing for them to easily tell which episodes belong to each disk. For movies this is easy for me. It's much harder for TV shows though.

Thanks!
 
The meta data for the series shows up, but you can only play the episodes present in the system, I believe. It has been a long time since I have loaded a TV series by hand now though so maybe I am remembering incorrectly.
 
When you load the first disc you get the meta data for the season and shows the the episodes that have been loaded, I.e. for the first disc you get episodes 1-4 and ha e the option to play all episodes or pick nepisode to watch. As more discs are loaded more of the episodes show up under the same title. Also it does not matter the order that the discs are loaded.

John
 
Fixed Scroll

Hello guys,

I finally got around to recording a new video. It's kind of like 1 step forward and 4 steps back right now so bare with me. I completely re-wrote the animation library allowing for ultra smooth and fast scrolling. I can now just hold an arrow key and scroll quickly through my 1000 movies.

I also started on a new DVD ripping program implemented inside my clone. It's fully working for Movies but unfortunately TV shows does not work (and I'm not sure it will ever fully work). But anyways let me know what you think.


Andrew
 
Last edited by a moderator:
OK, Wow. I'm pretty blown away by this, aphanson17! It's astoundingly close to the real thing, so much so that it's truly hard to tell the difference without looking very very closely. You've done an amazing job and clearly are talented.

Setting aside the copyright issues that would plague this ever becoming anything more than a fun little personal project, it would now be fun to see you begin to try some things that IMPROVE on the K interface, just as ideas or concepts on where things could go. (you can all guess which one I'd love to see). :)

Anyway, this is mighty impressive.

--josh

p.s. I hope you don't mind, I edited your link above into the format that lets the video play inline here on the forum. It's a youtube "embed" so your play count on youtube will still reflect any plays that happen here inline.
 
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