MCE-Theme support

[Dibbes 514]

Just out of curiosity, and I know it's still very early days, but will the themes that were originally created for MCE eventually be supported in this app?

[softworkz 5065]

The only one I know of is that green color variation which was essentially a hack.

I'm not sure whether that's worth the effort. At least as far as I'm concerned: my eyes are bleeding when I look at it 

[Dibbes 514]

There were a whole bunch for the MCE plugin at the time... one of my favourites was an unfinished theme called ROC, the dev upped and left at the time... it's been a few years though.

Have a look: 

 

[ebr 16169]

No.  Those were MediaBrowser themes, not WMC themes.

[Dibbes 514]

7 minutes ago, ebr said:

No.  Those were MediaBrowser themes, not WMC themes.

it's been so long ago that I had forgotten the difference...

[Dibbes 514]

@softworkzAnother side project for you, bring back MediaBrowser too? I mean, who needs sleep, right? lol

[softworkz 5065]

LOL - that was the last side-project for the next few years...

[jachin99 88]

Is there a way to make simple changes like changing the live tv, guide etc. Icons

[softworkz 5065]

6 minutes ago, jachin99 said:

Is there a way to make simple changes like changing the live tv, guide etc. Icons

In the guide settings, you can change whether to show channel name, logo or both - same like with the regular Emby clients.

Same for channel logos: they can be changed in the same way like with the regular Emby clients.

Edited September 9, 2023 by softworkz

[jfarre20 3]

When I ran WMC with a HDHR-3CC long ago, I had tweaks to make the mini guide show 3 channels at a time, and make the main guide show more as well - combined with the mychannellogosxl. I also had the awesome Modern8 theme. It would be nice to be able to recreate that.

[user24 312]

Wasn't there official High Contrast White and High Contrast Black options available? Or were these hacks as well???

I remember never liking the official Windows Blue and finding some sort of "plug-in" theme generator. No idea where it would be online now and my old PCs are long gone!

[softworkz 5065]

7 minutes ago, user24 said:

Wasn't there official High Contrast White and High Contrast Black options available? Or were these hacks as well???

No, those ugly ones were officially included indeed.

I also have the bitmaps for those modes - but: There were quite a number of bitmaps which I needed to modify due to the different presentation layer technology. Sometimes, I also needed to create new ones for artwork that wasn't available (due to Emby features which didn't exist in WMC).
Then there are countless differences in how it's displayed, many of the effects aren't used (but some are). Means changes would be needed everywhere.

The WMC UI includes 570 bitmap images and there are 13,000 lines of CSS code (all hand-written), so go figure...

[user24 312]

3 hours ago, softworkz said:

No, those ugly ones were officially included indeed.

Yes, they were very ugly!. I didn't mind the white and black background options, but whoever came up with the purple and yellow foreground/highlight options must have been color blind!?!?  Definitely not worth your valuable time and effort implementing these!

[softworkz 5065]

What might be realistically achievable (at some time) would some kind of greyscale variation, where all images can be run through some batch processing and only the colors would need some adjustments in the CSS. Maybe..

[user24 312]

On 11/29/2023 at 2:17 PM, softworkz said:

What might be realistically achievable (at some time) would some kind of greyscale variation, where all images can be run through some batch processing and only the colors would need some adjustments in the CSS. Maybe..

Some sort of greyscale variation sounds good! If it was really simple for you to do AND there was interest from enough people. I managed to find an image (below) similar to the theme I was using. It was very basic black & white. No silly highlight colours, just white/grey! Some people may like it? Others possibly prefer more elaborate colourful backgrounds? Dark grey would be quite ok as a background, I think? No worries if it isn't feasible to do...

 

 

[softworkz 5065]

That screenshot looks good. From all suggestions, this is by far the best one IMO.

With regards to feasibility it very much depends on whether this can be achieved by  performing a bulk operation on all bitmaps or whether it would require individual treatment.
Is this just a mock-up or using a patched MCE dll?

 

[SikSlayer 249]

Any chance at a snow effect for the holidays?

[softworkz 5065]

Like this...?

[user24 312]

On 12/11/2023 at 8:08 AM, softworkz said:

Is this just a mock-up or using a patched MCE dll?

I think it is a patched MCE dll. Here is where I found the image:

https://archive.techplayboy.com/index285c.html?option=com_content&task=view&id=377&Itemid=38

I did a bit more research into it and this helped me recall how/where I originally got my black theme all those years ago...

It was a modified ehres.dll file from (most likely) hack7mc.com. The website doesn't exist anymore. There are a few old pages accessible through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but I haven't been able to find the dll file anywhere to download (I don't have my old PCs anymore either).

I expect you already know a lot more about the technical side of the dll files than I ever did. All I had to do to implement the black theme was manually replace the original ehres.dll file with the modified one. You probably know about this already, but I found some info here:

https://www.tech-recipes.com/windows/windows-media-center-change-background/

There was also a Media Center Studio that could be used to create themes but I never used this.

[softworkz 5065]

16 hours ago, SikSlayer said:

Any chance at a snow effect for the holidays?

 

Delivered: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/123913-latest-version-with-new-snow-screensaver/

 

[softworkz 5065]

18 minutes ago, user24 said:

I think it is a patched MCE dll. Here is where I found the image:

https://archive.techplayboy.com/index285c.html?option=com_content&task=view&id=377&Itemid=38

I did a bit more research into it and this helped me recall how/where I originally got my black theme all those years ago...

It was a modified ehres.dll file from (most likely) hack7mc.com. The website doesn't exist anymore. There are a few old pages accessible through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but I haven't been able to find the dll file anywhere to download (I don't have my old PCs anymore either).

I expect you already know a lot more about the technical side of the dll files than I ever did. All I had to do to implement the black theme was manually replace the original ehres.dll 

Yes, there are two dlls, but most images are in this one.

Thanks for checking, the dll wouldn't help me much anyway. I've done so many edits to the bitmaps that I can say for sure that I will not do it once again. Any variation can only originate from the set I have now. My question was rather aiming for whether there are some more screenshots of this...?

[user24 312]

@softworkzThanks for explaining. All I have found is a couple of the main screen/menu like the one I have posted already.  

If I happen to come across any more detailed images of other underlying pages/menus I will let you know, but I haven't had much success so far...  

[arrbee99 1814]

I know its a bit crude -

[softworkz 5065]

27 minutes ago, arrbee99 said:

I know its a bit crude -

Getting "something somewhat" is always easy. The remaining 99% is hard work..

[SikSlayer 249]

2 hours ago, softworkz said:

 

Delivered: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/123913-latest-version-with-new-snow-screensaver/

 

Thank you sir! Looks nice!