Accessing DVDpedia's via FrontRow!

July 16, 2008   134 Comments
DVDPedia now has a FrontRow Plug-In that allows you to take full advantage of your movie collection stored in the cataloging application. You can browse your collection by Title, Director, Actor, Year, Genre, Country, and even get a list of recently added movies.

DVDPedia is a Library tool for your Mac HTPC. It catalogs your DVD and VHS (yikes) collection, and utilizes Amazon, IMDb and other sites to gather movie information such as Actors, Genre, Directors, Art Work , Ratting, etc. If your movies are linked (video_ts, file, etc), FrontRow can also launch these flicks for you to watch. One of the nicest parts is the information is displayed the same way as Movies stored in iTunes, making a seamless addition to FrontRow.



The DVDpedia PlugIn does duplicate the function of iTunes Movies without the rental abilities. However, iTunes won't provide you with all the fantastic meta data, without spending a good amount of time organizing it and manually adding it yourself. Using DVDpedia would also prevent futher bloating of your iTunes Library. We could almost say take it a step further and replace your remove the Movies plug-in, since your really won't be needing it!

The only negatives that we can see is the movie description is way to long for the space provided in FrontRow. Take 'Gladiator' for example, the long description, present information about Ridley Scott and the movie itself, while the plot summary is hidden. A short and long summary would be nice. If found IMDB's Plot summary to generally be the perfect length for information such as this.

The DVDpedia FrontRow Plug-On (1.1) is a free download, and DVDpedia has a 25 movie free demo. The full version is $18.

Labels: FrontRow, Plug-Ins, Software

PyeTv, EyeTV FrontRow Plug-In

June 9, 2008   1 Comments

So... we've been looking for someone to develop a Plug-In to bring EyeTV into FrontRow, and PyeTV does just that. We were hoping just to see a simple launcher, but Jon Christopher took it a step further with access to EyeTV's recordings, previews, metadata and even channel jumping. The project is a GoogleCode project, and was recently updated to version 1.1

The installation of the plug-in is straight forward with the convenient installer and requires the admin password. In the background it moves over the plugin into FrontRow's Application Plug-in folder, and turns on Universal Access for assistive devices. We had a little problem with the download, but resolved it by adding the .dmg extension.



The plug-in is great, and we recommend it for all you EyeTV users out there. The translation between FrontRow and EyeTV is still a bit clumbsy, but really thats EyeTV's fault. We hope to see this plug-in continue to be supported and improved, after all thats why Apple gave us the plugin directory, right?

PyeTV is a free download from Google Code. While your at it, also check out ETVComskip. Also developed by Jon Christopher, it integrates with PyeTV and allows for you to quickly skip commercials from EyeTV.

Labels: EyeTV, FrontRow, Plug-Ins

Hello World & MythFront Plugins

January 7, 2008   0 Comments EntertainMac has been waiting for some developers to start developing some FrontRow 2 Plug-Ins. Sapphire was the first one, and with it recently being released as an OpenSource project, another developer, Garion911, has created a basic "Hello World" plug in and a MythTV Launcher. Both of the Plugin's are written completely in Python

Hello World
Start off by downloading the Hello World Application from garion.tzo.com.


MythFrontEnd
This application will launch your MythFrontend Application, assuming it lives in your Applications Directory. When launched, MythFrontend is launched, and when you exit, it returns back to FrontRow. This application has already been updated and version 0.2 can be downloaded here.

This latest application can really be modified to launch whatever app you would like, including EyeTV. For developers out there looking to learn more, a Google Code Project has been established for the project.

Labels: FrontRow, Plug-Ins

Sapphire goes Open-Source

January 1, 2008   0 Comments
Sapphire, our favorite and only plug in for the new FrontRow 2 / AppleTV has opted to open up their project finally and allow for others to start tinkering with it. When the Sapphire project was first started Graham and Parick had decided that they would open the project up under GNU Public License, once the foundation was estabilished and solid. This occurred last month with the latest release.

Opening the code on a project such as this will hopefully inspire additional tweaks and changes to Sapphire, improving its interface, adding more options, or debugging. The code could also inspire the release of additional media browser like plug-ins for AppleTV or FrontRow. Or perhaps an EyeTV based Plug-In?

With the latest release of Sapphire, it was open-sourced. You can now browse the code on the Sapphire Trac or use the Subversion Repository to checkout a copy. Distribution and use is restricted to the terms of the GNU Public License (v3).

Labels: AppleTV, FrontRow, Plug-Ins

Sapphire: Media Browser for FrontRow

December 4, 2007   1 Comments
I'm proud to point out that Sapphire is the first FrontRow 2.0 plug-in that we have successfully installed. For those unfamiliar with Sapphire, its a media browser plug in for FrontRow. Sapphire will identify TV Shows and Movies based on the files names, and assign metadata and cover art based on TV Rage, IMDB, and IMPAwards. But like most applications, we tested it out to get a personal look into the plug-in.

We installed Sapphire on our Mini HTPC to give it a good test run. The installation was straight forward and identical to installing AppleTV plug-ins. It instantly appears in your FrontRow menu, and will list the common media storage locations, such as external drives, ~movies directory, etc. We had it scan our iTunes Library and movies where we have several different types of movie formats. The scanning process is extensive and takes a considerable amount of time, but this should be anticipated. Our first run resulted in a crash, but the next scan ran flawlessly. Through its easy to navigate menu's we were able to assign the proper album art and meta data to our TV shows and movies. The Artwork pulled from these sources is good, but no the highest of resolutions. We also noticed if you want to add new media, you have to scan the directory again, as it does not automatically find new files. The IMDB Top-250 and Academy Award movie listings were some our favorite features.

Overall we have had a very positive experience with Sapphire. It does however duplicate the Movies and TV Show functionality of FrontRow, so we figure Sapphire is for more diehard media collectors.

Sapphire is a free download, and is still in a beta version, so don't expect a finished product, although we found it to be very polished.

Labels: FrontRow, Plug-Ins