Movie Guide Add-in Wanted

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richard1980

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Movie Guide Add-in Wanted

#1

Post by richard1980 » Wed Jun 08, 2011 1:58 pm

Here's my problem:

I go to the Movie Guide, and I get presented with hundreds (thousands?) of movies (yeah, I know...my fault for having so many channels). Unfortunately, most of those movies I've already seen or I'm not interested in seeing. It's such a pain to scroll through hundreds of movies just to find the ones I'd like to watch/record. It would be nice if I could tell WMC to hide movies I'm not interested in seeing. Unfortunately, this functionality is lacking in WMC.

A similar issue I have is the interaction between my Movie Library and Movie guide...or lack thereof. If I have a movie in my Movie Library, I'd like Movie Guide to be able to tell me so...that way I don't accidentally tell WMC to record the same movie again. It's already in the Movie Library, I don't need it in there again. It would be nice if the movies from the Movie Library were hidden in Movie Guide, but at the very least some sort of icon overlay or something that tells me I already have the movie would be nice.

So does anybody have any idea how to make this happen? Or is it even possible?

richard1980

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#2

Post by richard1980 » Sat Jun 11, 2011 4:09 pm

Nobody? Tell me I'm not the only one that has this problem...

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STC

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#3

Post by STC » Sat Jun 11, 2011 5:08 pm

I like your idea, but I have not come across such a tool within MC, sorry.
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StumpyBloke

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#4

Post by StumpyBloke » Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:14 am

As stc says, there is no such beast ootb. I get the impression that movie library was quite rushed and of course its version 1 so lacking many many features. From what I remember on the W7 beta they ran out of time and said that missing features would be added to 8MC's version of movie library. Of course, whether thats still the case remains to be seen.
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richard1980

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#5

Post by richard1980 » Sun Jun 12, 2011 1:09 pm

Yeah, I was hoping somebody had developed an addin that would give this functionality. I don't know about the rest of everybody, but I get tired of spending an hour browsing the Movie Guide looking for new movies to record. I don't want to watch 95% of the movies that appear, but in order to find the 5% I do want to watch, I have to browse all titles. And then I get confused....did I already record that movie? So then I have to go check the movie library to find out...then come back and now I've lost my place.

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#6

Post by StumpyBloke » Sun Jun 12, 2011 1:15 pm

Would browsing by genre not help? Thats what I do, but then again I'm only interested in a couple or three! :)
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#7

Post by richard1980 » Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:34 am

Here's what shows up when I browse the Movie Guide (these are the genres I normally browse):

Action and adventure: 125 movies
Comedy: 272 movies
Horror: 60 movies
Science Fiction: 57 movies
Suspense: 121 movies

And of course, All: 835

The only premium movie channels I get are the Encore channels here in the US. I can only imagine someone that has HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, TMC, and Starz.

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#8

Post by StumpyBloke » Mon Jun 13, 2011 3:08 pm

Mmmmmm so just one or two then?!! ;)
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#9

Post by richard1980 » Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:15 am

Yeah, here in the US our movie packages include about 6-8 channels each. Most of my channels are hidden, so I don't see the movies in Movie Guide. But if I go unhide the rest of the movie channels, it wouldn't surprise me to see a few thousand movies show up. I would hate to be the person trying to navigate all those movies searching for the 10 or 20 movies I'm interested in.

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#10

Post by STC » Tue Jun 14, 2011 6:56 pm

I choose to use the HD filter, and record only HD movies (no 4:3 with bars and zoomed in for me laddyo', uh uh, no sir-ee, not me!). That cuts my selection down a lot.
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#11

Post by richard1980 » Fri Jun 17, 2011 3:37 pm

So I'm thinking about tackling this project myself. From doing some reading, I need the WMC SDK and Visual C# 2008 express. I tried installing Visual C# 2008 Express, but something went wrong because I never could find the executable to open the program. I'll try more when I get home tonight. So is there anything else I need?

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#12

Post by StumpyBloke » Fri Jun 17, 2011 3:55 pm

richard1980 wrote:So I'm thinking about tackling this project myself. From doing some reading, I need the WMC SDK and Visual C# 2008 express. I tried installing Visual C# 2008 Express, but something went wrong because I never could find the executable to open the program. I'll try more when I get home tonight. So is there anything else I need?
I have got less than no idea!!! :d But would love to know how you get on with this project...good luck!! :)
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#13

Post by richard1980 » Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:05 am

OK, so I've managed to get Visual C# 2008 Express installed (the executable link was placed in the start menu itself instead of in the Visual Studio folder on the start menu), got the SDK, and found a set of templates to get me started. I don't know anything about Visual C#, so this should be interesting. I did manage to figure out how to make a background application and an MSI installer. Sadly all my application does at this point is pop up a box when WMC starts that says "The background application did something".

Now if I can just figure out how to get the info I want out of WMC...

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#14

Post by mav7469 » Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:11 am

Have you tried My Movies? They just came out with version 4. You can set the movies you have watched or are no longer interested in watching to "Watched" status. Then, set up Windows Media Center to only show "unwatched" movies and TV shows. Works great on my Win 7 system.

Good luck.

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#15

Post by richard1980 » Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:53 am

That functionality is only available for the movie library, not the movie guide.

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#16

Post by richard1980 » Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:38 pm

Well I've decided to abandon my effort on this. I simply do not understand C# and don't really care to spend the time to learn the language. Trying to make heads or tails of the SDK when you don't know the language isn't very easy. Additionally, there doesn't appear to be any way to interact with the WMC movie guide, so it looks like the application would have to fully replace the default movie guide....not exactly a task for a beginner.

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