If we supported this, there’d be nothing that makes it unique to OSMC. As is the nature of open source, so we wouldn’t be releasing any exclusive hardware.
No exclusive hardware, but it would position OSMC as the only Kodi-based distribution that includes the ability to run trivia / pre-selected trailers / custom home theater intros / Philips Hue lighting control out of the box. No other “KODI box” provides this functionality. I understand not wanting to step in, but it would be great if this (or an OSMC-developed feature that offers similar functionality) were part of the Vero product line.
Many over on the CinemaVision forum, including myself, have attempted to reach out to the site administrator (Ragnarok), but to no avail. There was supposed to be a second round of development the year before last to include additional features and funds were being raised for the sole developer he was using, but Ragnarok suddenly went MIA. I fear the worse when someone seemingly drops off the face of the earth all of a sudden. My first concerned is for him, of course, but this also leaves CinemaVision in complete and total limbo.
OSMC’s suggestion would be to keep discussion alive on that forum and pray someone interested enough in the project can bring it back to life. OSMC will not be that party.
Huh? I said that most people don’t want to see trailers, trivia, or anything else before the movie starts, and then you say you “can use CinemaVision for pre-show movie trivia questions and answers, for short films, video bumpers, pre-selected movie trailers, and customised home theater intros”. What, exactly don’t I understand?
And, as I said before, with the add-on being completely open-source, if it is truly popular, somebody will pick up development of it. I understand that you like what it does, and feel it’s important, but I think you are vastly overestimating the actual popularity of CinemaVision. Based on a quick look at the forums, there seem to be less than 10K users of the add-on (6K registered on the forum). Kodi forum has 360K members, so even by that fairly bogus standard, it’s less than 2% of Kodi users who care enough to post on fora. Also, according to Kodi forum stats, they get about 10x anonymous viewers compared to posting, registered users.
Because CinemaVision is part of the standard Kodi repository, installing it is just a few clicks away. There is no benefit to including it as part of a standard install by any “Kodi distribution”, and a great deal of support cost.
Your comment stating that “If they wanted those things, they could just play back the original BluRay.” It demonstrated that you had no real understanding of what CinemaVision does. Playing “the original BluRay” does none of what CinemaVision does. But I digress.
OSMC’s suggestion would be to keep discussion alive on that forum and pray someone interested enough in the project can bring it back to life.
I did some digging, found out who the developer is, found him on Facebook and sent him an IM. Now just waiting to (hopefully) get a reply as to whether or not we can expect any further development from him.
Other than controlling your lights, playing a BluRay often does everything you list…playing pre-selected trailers (selected by the studio), video bumpers warning you about piracy (maybe not what you want to see, but hey, it’s a bumper), and trivia questions and answers (yes, with BD-Live, some BluRays do this). Sure, the viewer doesn’t get to select what gets shown, but neither do your guests, so to them, it’s really the same thing.
And, people universally hate it. That’s why every product that can remove protection from BluRay discs can also remove “annoying trailers and adverts”.
If there is some reason that the start of the movie has to be delayed (like your “making the popcorn” example), my friends have learned how to talk to each other, instead of having to always have something on a screen to watch to keep them occupied.
I don’t want to be mean but as much as you seem to like all that pre-show and trailer stuff I’d argue that even more people hate it. My main complain the few times a year I decide to go to the cinema is that the movie trailers spoil upcoming movies for me and personally I absolutely hate that and want to go into a movie absolutely blind without knowing anything about it. That way It will either blow me away or I will be disappointed. And without holding down my ears and closing my eyes that is just not possible in the cinema.
So at least for me watching movies in the privacy of my own home allows me to hit play and watch the movie as it was intended by the movie director and not some marketing guy at the cinema that wants to advertise all their upcoming movies as well.
I understand that if you have little kids they may be stunned by the fact that daddy has a real cinema at home but they will grow out of it when they realize those trailers show all the key moments of a movie before they even watch it.
The only thing appealing about the cinemavision for me would be the light control but A remote control does the job for me too.
CinemaVision is optional for those who want to create the experience of the theater at home. The big draw is that you can simply auto dim the lights, play your personal home theater intro (like the one above in a previous post I had created), and then play the film as the lights then fade to black. It’s completely customizable. Don’t like movie trailers? No problem, just don’t include them in the sequence.
If the OSMC team doesn’t want to take something like this on, hey, that’s okay and that’s their prerogative. They have bigger fish to fry, but in order to say no someone needed to first ask.
But 100 hours? I think you overestimated the nature of the problem. Or maybe I’ve underestimated it.
#learntocode
No thanks. I already have two full time jobs. All I need to learn at this point is how to survive.
You did your best to interest people for this project, here. I’m sure a lot of people read this topic. Just give it in an update once you get into contact with the developer how he/she plans to continue, so the folks who might have bookmarked this thread get informed. Keep my fingers crossed for you.
I’d love to see this work as well. It is a great add-on. It’s very disappointing to see a developer take money and then disappear. Things happen but at least give some kind of update to let people know what is going on. Fortunately that happens here with the great support. Hopefully someone fixes it. In the meantime if someone wanted to use it by staying on kodi 17.6 is it possible to get the latest and greatest video improvements without upgrading Kodi on the vero 4k/4k+ or is it always a package deal?
Until a working version is made available, you can manually create a playlist to mimic a CinemaVision trailer and video bumper sequence. I’ve been downloading movie trailers from http://www.hd-trailers.net and place them in a folder. I queue the folder, then add a short THX Eclipse bumper from https://www.demo-world.eu followed by a personalised home theater intro to the queue, then the movie.
Notes:
If you have “Adjust Display Refresh Rate” enabled (On start / stop) then all videos in the queued playlist should be 23.976 fps so that there are no delays between videos of different frame rates (especially for projectors). All movie trailers are at 23.976 fps but I had to use Handbrake to re-encode the THX bumper and my HT intro bumper (they were both 24.0 fps instead of 23.976). It’s also a good idea to enable the “Delay After Change Of Refresh Rate” in the System > Display settings to match the time you’ll need for your display device to catch up with the beginning of the first movie trailer.
I use the Rapier skin, which can hide the on screen seek bar in between videos (System > Skin > Configure Skin > Media > Hide Seek Bar OSD During Fullscreen Playback).
To hide the Busy dialog during fullscreen video playback, manually replace line 12 in DialogBusy.xml with:
Note – If the skin receives an update, this could get overwritten so I’ve disabled automatic updates for the skin and will manually update when needed, and then just update the DialogBusy.xml again.
I have Philips Hue lighting and relied on action files to control the lights. This now has to be done manually. You can create scenes in any hue app (I have one for Normal Lighting and one for Trailers, then of course one to turn off the lights as the movie begins). The official Philips Hue app doesn’t allow me to adjust the transition time (I like a 5-second transition between each scene) so I had to find another app.
I miss the movie trivia and I’d like to have a one or two second gap in between the videos on the playlist, but until we have CinemaVision working again, it’s the next best thing.
I hope this a figure of speech, because the addon developer didn’t ask for money to develop the addon and the OSMC team didn’t suggest they would support any addon, never mind this one.
Cinemavision developer did take money. The website cinemavision.tv is subscription based with yearly and lifetime memberships and now he seems to have disappeared. Has nothing to do with OSMC team.
If you’re talking about the red carpet membership I don’t think it’s necessary to use the addon. If it is, then why should the team spend their free time to fix it? Anyway you’re right about none of this being related to osmc.
I don’t think the previous developer will be working on CinemaVision again. In the meantime, I’m manually creating a playlist to mimic some of the CV sequences. See above.
Keep my fingers crossed for you.