TITAN LIVE *1.5.XX Now Available for 2.01.86*

Ah, I see, I was under the impression that deleting the third line would stop wdtv from creating .backdrop folder, anyways, i will do what you say, instead of deleting the line, I would just add the line you mentioned, thanks joeysmyth.

Thanks for this info. 

I was able to remove the items I don’t use, but I only wish I could have the Videos menu show between Photos and Music. It seems that the order of the menu items can’t be changed. I even tried to change the labels and not the pictures to try and fool it, but that didn’t work either. No matter how the menus are labeled, the Videos is always the one you start on and the Services are always to the right and Music to the left. Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.

On another note, I have some movies with long plots and I would like to show “…” at the end of the plot text if it could’t display the whole thing. I noticed the “trailing dots” setting in the view info xml file, but when setting this to 0 or 1 - it made no difference.

Do you know if this is even possible?

I really like your theme. It allows me enough graphical changes where I don’t think I need to use moviesheets too.

Thanks.

Hello Dribbler,  do you have a release date for the new version ?

Thank’s for your work.

First of all, thanks for this great theme. I enjoyed it every day.

I have one question. I don’ t see metadata on the first screen of the 17 version when I select a movie.

I only see text n/a.

Do I need a special type of file?

can anyone teach me how to install this theme ?

To install the theme, download the zip file to your PC, open your web browser (I don’t recommend using IE9, there have been issues), then type your SMP’s IP address to open the Web UI.   Type in your password (the default is “admin”), click on the box next to “I accept” and then click on LOGIN, then click on “Appearance”, then click on “Browse” and navigate to where you saved the “Titan Live1.2.zip” file, then click on “Open”.

Click on “Submit”, then once the Web UI finishes uploading the theme, on you SMP press “Setup” on your remote, select “Appearance”, then select “User Interface Themes”, select “Titan Live1.2” then when prompted select “Apply theme”.

I really like this theme, because it really makes the whole WDTV experience pop with color and style.

My comments below are in reference to the 1x7 TITAN LIVE theme in gallery view.

As I wanted a little more added to the gallery view, I was able to create moviesheets as backdrops that didn’t replace anything I had already, but just added to it. I wanted to show off those cool looking visuals of a movie’s sound and video media info, so I created a new template in thumbgen design that had a minimalistic approach by leaving open areas for what I already have and I just added media info icons and text on the top part on my screen. I also wanted to incorporate that swoop/curved graphic that resembes what I had on my WDTV Gen 1. So that swoop semi-transparent backdrop is behind my media info stuff. I also shrunk the media info stuff down in the design so it could fit into everything that was displaying already too. The overview and other info is generated from WDTV and put into an xml file while the backdrop was created by thumbgen.

When the backdrop loads, you see the nice movie backdrop with the movie media info and in the end, as a whole, it all fits together and looks nice. Because I used the semi-transparent swoop graphic, thumbgen merged the movie backdrop very nicely behind it. So in the end I have the TITAN LIVE semi-transparent background and the one I added for the movie media info, which allows you to view the movie backdrop still. The two semi-transparent do not overlap.

The whole movie backdrop is darker becuase of these two graphics, but I prefer the movie backdrop darker when you have everything showing as a whole. While little pieces of the movie backdrop are not covered by the semi-transparent graphics, it is darker, but having this effect allows my viewing to not be overpowered by the movie graphic. It just adds a subtle graphic touch for the movie, while displaying the media info, director, actors, ect, and overview.

As for the movie overview, I didn’t want to create the movie overview in thumbgen because I modified the TITAN LIVE theme to only have 3 lines of the movie overview and I made the font much bigger so you could actually ready it on a 46in TV from 12 feet away. A large amount of movies only use about that much up to describe it, but the movies that need more overview can easily be read if needed through the options/view info page.

A few other things I modified were the font colors for the movie name, director, actors, ect. I also made sure I used these same color for the same text items on the expanded movie info page. For the movie name I used the same light blue that is displayed on the bottom of the pages and I used red, yellow and another shade of blue for the other stuff. All in all, it pops even better. The overview text is in white, which fills most of the text on the pages. The large white text is differentiated from other the text items in different colors. I’m really happy with this end result. I also had to move the overview text a bit further away from the movie info text above it so the text didn’t look like it ran into the other text. It just gave it a more compartmentalized feel. It gave the sections of the movie better order, where you could easily read one part from another part.

One last thing that bothered me was I could not see my movie backdrop enough to fully appreciate it. I could see enough of the top part fine, but the bottom part was covered up by the tumbnails for the movie I was focused on and other movies. The only time when I could appreciate the backdrop is when I only have 1 or 2 thumbnails showing.

So, I tried various things and my end solution was to change the 1x7 into 1x5. I took the xml file for the gallery and carefully removed 2 thumbnails while making the spacing of the other five fit the width of the page that the 7 thumbnails used. So now I can see the whole movie backdrop to the point where I’m happy with it and navigation is of coarse faster because only 5 thumbnails are on the screen at one time.

The downside is if I am navigating through a lot of movies, less movies are on the screen. I haven’t tried the next page button, but I think it will allow me to view the next five movies quickly.

On a side note, I’ve learned our brain plays good and bad tricks with us when we see things, but one good trick it does is when viewing partial graphic images our brain can fill in the missing peices. When I changed from 1x7 to 1x5 I was actually able to envision the whole backdrop easier because of the good brain trick, whereas the 1x7 hide too much of the graphic for me to figure the image out. 

As I said before, I know the downside to 1x5 viewing is that I need to scrolling more to see the rest of my movies, but if I have a lot of movies to go through, then even the 1x7 view wouldn’t offer that much more than 1x5, so you might as well change your view to list view mode or someother view mode to find the movie you want.

For me, it’s more about the presentation of the movie information than it is about finding a movie to watch. Also, isn’t that one of the biggest reasons we get a WDTV anyway. My blu-ray player can play all of my movies too, but it just shows a boring list view with no graphics, so I prefer WDTV because it gives me that graphic presentation I’m looking for.

I’ve studied all other theme designs and as beautiful as they are, they left me with problems. One of the biggest was the text was just too small to view from 12 feet away. I might as well use XBMC on my computer and choose a theme from there. I can’t afford a quality HTPC and the power needed for a HTPC vs WDTV is a ridiculus difference. So watching a movie, using a low powered device with a graphical interface and text that is readable from 12 feet away is a no-brainer decision for me.

I will show some screenshots as soon as I can. But I wanted to thank you and others who have made great themes for the WDTV. If these themes were not possible, our media experiences would be very boring. 

I would also appeciate it if it said either media or video on the home screen because of television show being under the same icon. Thanks for all the great work you have done on this theme.

I removed the TV icon. Maybe that is an option for you too. I will never use the TV or GAMES section. I think I also removed the RSS too. If I could, I would remove the apps too because I don’t care for apps. I can’t remove any more icons, because it messes up the menu navigation.

As as apps are concerned, I didn’t get WDTV for apps. I got it to watch my movies. Western Digitial have bought off more than they can chew when they decided to make this more than a media device. If they are serious, then they should have the same amount of apps as Roku 3 and there apps have to be just as good if not better. - - Sure, they made the WDTV Play, but for movies its no better than my blu-ray player. They removed the whole GUI from WDTV Play. That device doesn’t even have nearly as much apps as Roku, so they failed on that and they are failing on these other devices too by creating more bugs while solving others. They need to focus on what made this device popular. 

I have hope in them still, but until then it’s the wild wild west in terms of getting this thing working 100%. My old WDTV Gen 1 is working 100%, but I bought the WDTV Live SMP because my media library grew too big and I wanted a better presentation for my movie collection, which it does deliver on that, but there are a few bugs I noticed still, so I hope they work them out or I will need to go to a lower firmware where its less buggy. 

Watching movies, it has given me a black screen for a coule of seconds with audio still playing, after that my video came back. This was from using a shared network drive. On my USB drive, the audio and video were sometimes off sync then back on sync - then off again. It was not repeatable, so I don’t know what happened there. Then we have the movie backdrops problem where they appear fine when viewing the movie page, but the option to view the backdrops separately doesn’t work with the latest firmware release. - - At this point I don’t think I will even use that feature, but the feature is suppose to work and it doesn’t.

I found why my facbook images / screensaver wasn’t working and that’s because the security setting in facebook was restricting it, but if I remove that security feature, I’m more at risk in facebook, so at this point even that option on WDTV is useless. And I have no idea why we can’t have an option to use images on a shared network folder, but a usb connected drive works fine. 

If they can just fix what they have promised when they designed these devices and add some easy logical features, I think people will be much happier. My guess is they are slowing development work on a 2 year old device and may phase it out, but the problem with that is - is their is no competition. They own the market on these unique devices. Nobody else has a graphical and theme-able type device that plays most movies, let alone plays them as good as they do at the price range they sell these things for. XBMC still has issues, even on the Ouya. If you build a HTPC for XBMC it will at least cost you over $200.

– Sorry for the long message. But I just felt I had to let someone know how I felt about things with this device.

Businesses make decisions based on money. If they decide the want to use WDTV Play to compete with Roku, then they lost that battle. They are probabably better off building a cloud with those apps running on the cloud and changing our devices to use the cloud. This way, the can concentrate on the hardware for WDTV for playing only media and update the apps in the cloud when needed. The apps in the cloud can use the cloud server to run them. If those apps were very good and useful, I would pay $8 a month for them. They could have a Netflix Lite app that allows you to watch movies for a month for 20 hours or something.

There is a lot of options for Western Digital to take. I hope WDTV Play isn’t their last device to the market.

If they did the cloud thing all of their network devices could use it and bring new life back into these things.

Thanks for this theme.  Love the color!  I can appreciate the hours something like this takes.

*edit*  Moved to Titan Live Mods

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-SMP-Discussions/Titan-Live-Mods/td-p/619243

Any news for the latest WIP version ?

Dribbler, please come back !

I’m not a XML magician like you :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Hi guys,

Sorry for not being around… apart from being extremely busy I also had to clean install windows, so I haven’t done anymore on the theme from the last time I posted.

I can’t say when I will get it done as I am still very busy with other things.

Oh and I wish I was an XML magician… I only edit the stuff which anyone can do with a bit of learning.

Cheers guys.

Glad you’re still around, and it’s good to be busy, really. 

I’m perfectly willing to edit/personailize it for myself, or at least begin to try.  We all have to start somewhere.  Just wanted to know if what I was after was possible within the restrictions of the firmware.

I’ve spent some time poking around with XML notepad ← good/bad?  better one out there? , but don’t know where to start, frankly.  It’s still mostly mystery to me, but I’m beginning to make sense of it.

Could you point me at the .xml which controls the “Now Playing” screen? or if that doesn’t make any sense, just a good place to start?

Edit - Not having a Hub, I didn’t bother searching there.  Now pointing myself to the hub themes pages for the next learning curve to climb-- > http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Themes/bd-p/hub_themes

Would love to see a link sheet version of this for the hub, any plans on that?

This theme is so nice should be the default theme right out of the box :wink:

@bloodshot

I use notepad++ it’s free and the best for what you want IMO.
http://notepad-plus-plus.org

Hi I have just got a WDTV Live stream and have installed the Titan theme and it loooks great.  Thanks for all the hard work putting it together.

This is my first post in the forums so please be kind!

My problem is I dont see the the movies displayed in the way they are shown on page one of this thread. I realize that moviesheets are required to show the metadata in the gallery view and presume all this is built into the theme?

When I press the yellow button after adding a folder to the “My Library” I see a list of the movies and the yellow button will cycle me through various views but there is no data there. I see one of the view son page one of the thread provides a view with an option to scrape metadata. I don’t see that view and can’t find out how to scrape , nothing is scaping even though I have set it in options to do so automatically!

So if someone can suggest what Im doing wrong and how I can get it to look like the views in this thread I willl be a very happy guy!

BTW can someone confirm I can only add a Windows share to the Library ,? I dont appear to be able to add a DLNA source?

Thanks in advance…

Success! or close enough for now. 

This is an edit I wanted personally, and probably of little interst to most users.  Due to my system setup I run “media server” share for my music, and “media library” share for my relatively small video collection, so please understand this is not a criticism of this wonderful theme. It only changes the now playing home screen. 

I’m only offering this out there to anyone who might find it usefull to them. 

Now Playing screenshot →   http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/biffboffo/TheLounge_20131106_041520.jpg

Edit:

  inc_generic_now_playing_home.xml

c\p from wordpad

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<image image=“image/file_icon_008.png” x=“200” y=“50” w=“196"h=“196” scale=“100” bg=“1”/>
<image image=”@@info_album_artist" x=“200” y=“50” w="196"h=“196” scale=“100” bg=“1”/>

I haven’t found which .xml controls the song title under the now playinig window yet.  Happy with this at this point.  I can now read it from accross the room and if I don’t like what’s currently playing, it is just two buttons away to the next song. 

I haven’t found which .xml controls the song title under the now playinig window yet

<text text=“@@info_rolling_message” x=“470” y=“120” w=“500” h=“50”   fontsize=“42” speed=“1” delay=“1” align=“left” textcolor=“0xFFFF00” />

littleg68 wrote:
Would love to see a link sheet version of this for the hub, any plans on that?

This theme is so nice should be the default theme right out of the box :wink:

you can easily add those edits

it’s like 1 line

That line sets the rolling message in the edited file only.  There is still a song title underneath the “Now Playing” image of the main menu which is generated by a different .xml.  <— or at least I think that is the case. 

Then → http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/biffboffo/Dungeon_20131031_150232-1.jpg

Now → http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo322/biffboffo/TheLounge_20131106_041520.jpg

I don’t know which one, tho.  There must be a “master” xml controlling all aspects of the “now playing home” screen, but with a thousand to choose from:stuck_out_tongue:, picking through them is slow for me.   There’s lots I can simply disregard, I know.  I would probably just delete a line from the appropriate .xml

I’m still noob at this.  This is my first attempt to alter a theme to my liking, but coming up to speed…