TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

glorp wrote: OK, thanks. I think I'll wait and see what garyan2 has to say about it. If EPG123 put 'em in it should be able to take 'em out If that's not possible I'll look at MCL as the route. I tend to just keep a very vanilla guide so that something I mess with doesn't break it.

You and me, both. I try to add as little as possible to my setup in fear of it breaking something.

As for the channel logos, many people may not know that WMC natively supports them. All the "My Channel Logos" program does is tell WMC where to find them. MCL has other features which required them to modify the WMC binaries to implement, but adding logos is not one of them.

I am not sure how to remove the logos once they are added (I strangely can not find any information about adding/removing them other than by using MCL), but I am sure garyan2 will know how to do it.

Space wrote:As for the channel logos, many people may not know that WMC natively supports them. All the "My Channel Logos" program does is tell WMC where to find them. MCL has other features which required them to modify the WMC binaries to implement, but adding logos is not one of them.

That's exactly what I'm always concerned about with these WMC customization apps, and ^this is good to know. Thanks!

Space wrote:

glorp wrote: I tend to just keep a very vanilla guide so that something I mess with doesn't break it.

You and me, both. I try to add as little as possible to my setup in fear of it breaking something.

I agree, but I do love me some big colorful logos... I actually find myself looking at those logos most of the time now... I have the channel numbers and the logos visible in the guide and I shut off the call signs.

I actually found the DLL that MCL is modifying and saved off the original DLL. Whenever I have a doubt about it screwing something up, I replace it with the original DLL to see if that impacts whatever issue I"m having. But I seem to have misplaced my notes regarding this filename...

glorp wrote:

Space wrote:As for the channel logos, many people may not know that WMC natively supports them. All the "My Channel Logos" program does is tell WMC where to find them. MCL has other features which required them to modify the WMC binaries to implement, but adding logos is not one of them.

That's exactly what I'm always concerned about with these WMC customization apps, and ^this is good to know. Thanks!

Okay, I'll try to get all the answers ... or plans ... laid out here for the logos.

First: I think it can probably be agreed by everyone that the SD logos are just not appropriate for WMC and should be left out. Result is I will remove the checkbox to use them in the first place and ignore them in the code.

Second: I haven't tried removing the logos, but it should be pretty simple. The thing about importing mxf is I can't overwrite a field with nothing. An empty string really translates to no change so the logo isn't touched. What I'll probably have to do is to direct it to a zero length file or something and hopefully it will default to unassigned. I'll have to play around with it to figure the best method. Obviously there is a way that works or MCL wouldn't be able to do it. Once I find out a good method, I'll give everyone the cure.

garyan2 wrote: Okay, I'll try to get all the answers ... or plans ... laid out here for the logos.

What's the issue with the logos? Is it the size? Because I'm pretty sure that I can get them in different sizes if that's a requirement. That, or I provide a high-res logo and then you scale it as required. Does MCE do dynamic downscaling?

rkulagow wrote:

garyan2 wrote: Okay, I'll try to get all the answers ... or plans ... laid out here for the logos.

What's the issue with the logos? Is it the size? Because I'm pretty sure that I can get them in different sizes if that's a requirement. That, or I provide a high-res logo and then you scale it as required. Does MCE do dynamic downscaling?

I believe it does do some downscaling and that is part of the issue. There is a lot of unused space above/below the logo that when scaled makes it really small. Also, the colors used for some logos are hard to see with the color scheme of WMC ... doesn't contrast enough. I may set up a virtual and show you what we get. Picture is worth a thousand words.

It has to do with the size. After the logo is part of channel guide it looks very small, almost to the point you need a magnifying glass to view.

For example when I look at the Pixel size of some of the logo's from MCL, the regular size is around 42 pixels tall by 96 pixels wide & large logo's are 75 pixels tall & 225 pixels wide.

rkulagow wrote:

garyan2 wrote: Okay, I'll try to get all the answers ... or plans ... laid out here for the logos.

What's the issue with the logos? Is it the size? Because I'm pretty sure that I can get them in different sizes if that's a requirement. That, or I provide a high-res logo and then you scale it as required. Does MCE do dynamic downscaling?

This is an example of one of the logos; they're actually 360x270. So is the logo too large? Or is some sort of scaling on the client not doing the right thing?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/schedulesdirec ... _h3_aa.png

Here is a shot of all SD station logos. I think there are 2 big issues. 1) the ratio of the logo from SD appears to be 4:3 whereas MCL uses 2.28:1 or 3:1, and 2) the colors are just terrible for the guide color scheme.

Note the same logo you reference is the first row you see here.

garyan2 wrote:Here is a shot of all SD station logos. I think there are 2 big issues. 1) the ratio of the logo from SD appears to be 4:3 whereas MCL uses 2.28:1 or 3:1, and 2) the colors are just terrible for the guide color scheme.

Exactly my issue with wanting to revert. I would be happy with bigger icons and ones with text colors that I can read on a 10' interface. These I can't see.

I'm happy to wait out a solution of different logos or removing them via the app. No hurry. And thanks to both of you for addressing it either way.

garyan2 wrote:Here is a shot of all SD station logos. I think there are 2 big issues. 1) the ratio of the logo from SD appears to be 4:3 whereas MCL uses 2.28:1 or 3:1, and 2) the colors are just terrible for the guide color scheme.

OK, I just checked, and the other logos that are available are 180w x 135h. So, they're just smaller versions of the same logos.

STC wrote:I was creating one as you typed your message... is this okay?

Can you split off the last bit of discussion about SD logo icons into a new thread, or would you rather have us start our own new threads about pending/development issues in this one?

glorp wrote:Can you split off the last bit of discussion about SD logo icons into a new thread, or would you rather have us start our own new threads about pending/development issues in this one?

Done!

For those of you who haven't used MCL app, here is an example of WMC guide with all "big" logos from MCL... I've setup MCL to minimize the width of the first column, set it to show only channel numbers and logos, and to show 11 rows (channels) at once. This combination leaves just enough room for the times at the top, and the episode details at the bottom.

New build today that will include the option to remove existing SD logos (as well as all other logos) from your guide.

garyan2 wrote:New build today that will include the option to remove existing SD logos (as well as all other logos) from your guide.

For an MCL XL user like me, how do I set these new options so that EPG123 will leave my MCL logos alone?

Setup MCL last it will override EPG.

HTBruceM wrote:

garyan2 wrote:New build today that will include the option to remove existing SD logos (as well as all other logos) from your guide.

For an MCL XL user like me, how do I set these new options so that EPG123 will leave my MCL logos alone?

Great question. The SD logos are inferior to MCL XL logos.

They are inferior only inside WMC of course. They are actually nice HQ logos.

STC wrote:They are inferior only inside WMC of course. They are actually nice HQ logos.

Agreed. To answer some questions, I think I'm going to go a different route and just make an external utility that will clear all the channel logos ... just like MCL's Remove all button. Those who don't have MCL will have this option and I am removing the SD logos checkbox from the config gui.