Modern8 Metro Media Center Theme

[NeoM]

Hi all!

I've been working on a modernised UI for Media Center as Microsoft seems to be forgetting about us WMC users of late.

I originally posted on the Media Browser Fan Art forum and still intend to primarily post there, but thought that it might be appropriate to post a topic here on the Green Button as well, seeing as this is where most WMC enthusiasts hide (myself included from time to time!)
http://mediabrowser3.com/community/inde ... ter-theme/


Splash Screen


TV Guide (Note MCL is being applied to change the guide layout)

Modern8 uses Patchou's Media Center Themer, so credit goes to him for making the program itself. Because of this, it's quite easy to customise and there's already a bunch of files in Modern8 which you can use to change accents to your taste
http://www.patchou.com/projects/media-center-themer/ (compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1)

Cheers!

[3rob3]

Nice!!

[werds]

I looked at it and am impressed! I am actually now trying to decide if i SHOULD install the theme because I loved the attention to all the minor details. My issues though are a little odd ball..

1. My current theme is a black minimalist theme that required a slight bit of modification to files (no themer was used) so not sure how I would go about saving all that in case I want to go back to it... not sure if I want to go through the several hoops and then also work through MCE Reset Toolbox to get things where they were and how they were... but am tempted enough to think hard about it atm
2. Is it safe to assume your theme also extends to Media Browser? Is it only a MB3 theme or would it work on MB2? If so then this might be a no brainer for me. But currently I am still running 2.6 (the ol if it aint broke why fix it? theory) Again with Media Browser I had to make some manual changes to files in order to get it to match my black minimalist theme... but if the theme you linked is as flexible as it sounds I might forego all of this and jump ship! But if it is an MB3 only theme extension than I have to put more thought into it as I did suffer some issues when testing out MB3 previously and cant risk WAF issues...

*Edit* Nevermind looking at this it looks like it is only a media center theme change and doesn't do any theme changes to Media Browser itself...right?

[milli260876]

@werds if you use the neo theme i can give u a styles file that changes it black white and grey... Kinda like Xbox one.

[3rob3]

I noticed in your Youtube video you had no Netflix icon in the Movies strip. Is that just because you removed it, or did you move that tile?

[RyC]

I think he's not from the US so it wouldn't show up anyway.

[NeoM]

@werds
1. Are you talking about changes to the .dll files? - Because Media Center Themer will override the original images, even if you modify the dlls.
2. Yes, MCT shouldn't affect addon's except it may change text colour in some cases. So Media Browser should be mostly is unaffected

@3rob3
Yep, no Netflix link because we don't have it here in Australia And for a similar reason, do any Sports categories show up in the US? Because there is a bunch of sport links I didn't change because they would never show on my Media Center. (similar case for any other UI which might only be for the US)

Thanks all

[RyC]

Yeah the sports bar was retired. I have one question: when deleting a recording, for example, the System alert sound AND the general selection sound plays at the same time. Is that supposed to happen?

[NeoM]

Yeah, that's normal. It has always done that, but the Xbox sounds make it much more noticeable than before.

EDIT: Oh, did you change the Default Beep using the registry keys? Because retaining the standard Windows Default Beep makes it even more noticeable than if you use the new Xbox Default Beep
(they're .reg files are located inside the Modern8 folder)

[3rob3]

I gave your theme a go tonight and so far am really digging it! I had to figure out how to change the background and animations (wife thought it was too busy) but once I figured it out I like everything else. Thanks for sharing!! Also great job with the documentation!

P.S. For anyone who hasn't tried out Media Center Themer you should give it a shot. Super easy to change Themes and no permanent changes are made to your system.

[Scallica]

Thanks for posting this theme. Is it possible to implement the theme using the Media Center Themer Tools? I was unable to import it.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 767#p13767

[NeoM]

@3rob3

Cool, glad you like it!

Yes, the background can be a bit bright/busy on some monitors. On my TVs 'dynamic' settings you can't read the foreground text but it's normally much more acceptable on any other display setting.
I'll look at toning down the background vibrancy when I get a chance.

I also noticed a slight error in the documentation from the previous release before I changed the folders around, but you figured it out alright so it's probably not too much to worry about.

And yes, the beauty of MCT it is very quick to change things around. The difficulty is starting up from scratch because there it has no GUI, so it's good to have a ready-made template. I had actually used Keef's un8y theme to initially help me out with finding the names of art elements, etc. (check the bottom of OP post on the Fan Art page)

@Scallica
I would suspect not, because I've rearranged all the files to be easy to navigate and customise (normally all the images are in a single folder)

I'll check it out anyway and see if it's possible.

Cheers

[NeoM]

@Scallica

It doesn't look like it will be able to work with MCT tools in it's current setup. But it works just fine with Media Center Themer.

[Cyterio]

I'm loving this theme! Great work! The only thing I changed was the background, made it a solid black with the animations still playing in front of it. The only other thing I may change is the info bar that displays when you initially change channels. I want to extend the black transparent background all the way to the edge of the screen. Right now it goes about 3/4 of the way across the screen.

[Cyterio]

Anyone know what all I need to edit to extend that info box all the way to the edge of the screen?

[NeoM]

Thanks Cyterio!

The file your looking for is "C:\ProgramData\Media Center Themer\Modern8\Images\Accent\NP_HINTING_BACKGROUND.png"
And you can directly modify it because 'backups' of that file are in the \Accent (Alternatives)\ folder

[ricktendo]

The new (straight) Windows logo would look great on this

[NeoM]

You can find the new logo files in C:\ProgramData\Media Center Themer\Modern8\Images\WMCLogo (ALTERNATIVES). Replace the files in C:\ProgramData\Media Center Themer\Modern8\Images\WMCLogo\

The ReadMe text has further details about customising Modern8 with the provided files.

Cheers

[Cyterio]

I'm looking for a few more files. The ones in question are the transparent layer behind the clock in the upper right hand corner. And the transparent layer behind the progressed time that rides above the seek bar. Thanks!

[NeoM]

Sure!

The files you want are in C:\ProgramData\Media Center Themer\Modern8\Images\
Clock background:
NP_CLOCK_BACKGROUND.png
and the progress bar time background:
SEEKBAR.SHUTTLE.CENTER.png, SEEKBAR.SHUTTLE.LEFT.png, SEEKBAR.SHUTTLE.RIGHT.png

If you change the value of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Patchou\Media Center Themer\LogResources to 1, when ever images are loaded by the Media Center program, the original image resources are logged and duplicated into C:\ProgramData\Media Center Themer\Logged Resources\ehres.dll\rcdata
You might find this useful to find compare changes done by Modern8 to the original files and it may be easier to find files which you are looking for (because some of the images I have made completely blank for aesthetics, such as SEEKBAR.POSITION.SHADOW.png)

Another thing, is that if you have a coloured section within a .png file adjacent to a fully transparent section (such as the clock background or seekbar images you want to edit), Media Center will make the fuzzy for some reason, possibly due to some sort of aliasing . To fix this, in any image where you would normally have full transparency, you should add a background layer and fill it with any colour with an alpha/transparency value of 1.

If you were to colour pick any transparent location within these images, you'd notice that they I have already filled them with the near-transparent colour to fix the said problem.

And finally, some files will change apparent size with increases in resolution but quite a few won't and are in relatively fixed positions & sizes (such as the clock file - I made it large 400x928 resolution to try and take up more space, but it didn't have much of an effect on it apparent size; so I just let it be) You would have to mess around with all the xml files to change the positioning of the images, much like I did with the info bar that appears when you first change the channel, but finding the correct value to change was probably partly due to some luck on my side!

Hope that helps