Lion and Front Row

[Ted]

The news is that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion removes Front Row (at least from the current developer preview).

This is devastating news to us as heavy Front Row/DVDPedia users. I'm hoping that Conor and the good people at Bruji have some thoughts on how to fill in the gap.

Obviously DVDPedia has its own fullscreen mode, but doesn't offer the power and utility of the DVDPedia/Front Row combination where one can browse by playlist/title/director/cast etc and play the chosen VIDEO_TS.

Also, there are numerous iPhone remote control apps that support Front Row -- not sure about DVDPedia in full screen mode.

[Conor]

DVDpedia is supported by the good remote control apps that allow key binding to the DVDpedia commands. Also DVDpedia's own fullscreen mode does also include menus for navigating your collections and filtering by some of movies attributes, but are not as visible as they are in the front row interface. Will be working with integrating nicely with Lion but I think it's a bit early to say what will be happening to Front Row. Like most users we also hope it will continue to exist, although will likely be more integrated with the new full screen system in Lion.

[geeji]

Unfortunately, the disappearance of Front Row in Lion seems confirmed.
I don't like Plex as an alternative, it is much more cumbersome and not as stable.
But if we are stuck with Plex as the only choice, a Plex-DVDpedia plugin by Bruji would be great...
...unless DVDpedia evolves into a Plex alternative

[Ted]

But I'm guessing that Plex whatever its other faults also doesn't play DRMed iTunes TV shows/movies etc. which Front Row does? And now our only alternative will be to play them directly through iTunes in full screen mode?

At least I hope Apple didn't kill the Apple DVD Player. Can anyone confirm it is still there?

Back to Plex, I hear it does do one useful thing -- play MakeMKV-ed rips of Blu-Ray disks, so I doubt DVDPedia can be a full Plex replacement.

Very frustrating. I can see myself sticking to Snow Leopard on my Home Theater Mac for a while longer. Normally I am a super early OS X adopter (heck I switched to OS X with the public beta), but not this time, as amazingly appealing as some of the new features are...

[Conor]

Nothing is final with Lion quite yet. On our end we will be adding new features to the full screen browsing, making DVDpedia full screen mode even more appealing as a Front Row alternative. What we are not sure yet is if we will be building two fullscreen interfaces or adapting the existing one to also work as a fullscreen window view in Lion, that can be used when sitting at the computer, as opposed as to using DVDpedia on a larger screen as a media center.

[PauHana658]

Someone has posted a way to reinstall Front Row under Lion. I tried it this morning, and it works.

http://www.mac-hatter.com/blog/frontrowenablerforlion

Unfortunately, the Front Row plug-in for DVDpedia doesn't seem to work.

http://www.bruji.com/extras/dvdpediafrontrow.html

I've written Para 9, the developers, but haven't yet heard back from them. Might help if more people wrote and expressed an interest in the plug-in.

Para 9 web page...

http://www.para9.com/en/front_row_plugin.html

[PauHana658]

Nothing is final with Lion quite yet. On our end we will be adding new features to the full screen browsing, making DVDpedia full screen mode even more appealing as a Front Row alternative. What we are not sure yet is if we will be building two fullscreen interfaces or adapting the existing one to also work as a fullscreen window view in Lion, that can be used when sitting at the computer, as opposed as to using DVDpedia on a larger screen as a media center.

I vote for display on the larger screen, as the TV/couch is a family entertainment mode and the computer/office chair is a personal entertainment mode. I prefer the couch and watching TV with the family. Of course, others will have different needs, so it looks as though you will be building two interfaces! (Sorry!)

I am about to (finally!) order a Mac mini and will be hooking it up to the big HDTV in the living room. Would love to be able to browse DVDpedia and play movies directly from DVDpedia much as Front Row and the Front Row plug-in allowed under pre-Lion systems.

[Nora]

I just heard back from the developers at para9 and unfortunately they will no longer be developing the Front Row plug-in. But they are considering putting the source code up on github; we'll be sure to add a link to that on our blog when it happens.

[Ted]

So now that Lion is out, and Front Row is dead (even in Snow Leopard, where iTunes 10.4 broke Front Row compatibility, you can no longer see the iTunes library in FR) we should be considering the alternatives rather than trying to keep a dead program on life support.

It seems that Plex is the most popular FR substitute out there -- it is supposed to be the best way to play Blu-ray rips (.mkv files). I haven't yet tried it myself -- but having DVDPedia integration would be a strong incentive to go in that direction. Unless there are plans to turn DVDPedias+CDPedia into a unified Front Row substitute I would suggest going with Plex integration.

Any other ideas?

[Alex]

Plex looks interesting. I'd never used it since I always used AirVideo to watch all my movies and shows on my iPad, yet Plex seems to go beyond just a remote media server. I'll investigate their SDK and API to see how feasible it would be to build a plugin for DVDpedia.

[Ted]

I just tried XBMC for EyeTV playback last night and it looks extremely promising, and setup was very quick and painless.

And actually there is hope for Front Row in Lion, as well -this seems to work fine with Lion/iTunes 10.4:
(have not tested it beyond iTunes content -- don't know how it interacts with DVDPedia/DVDs)

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?s ... y=Frontrow

Ted

[Conor]

Thank you for the link, I think the trick is keeping the old iTunes around for compatibility.

[bitzcool]

Guys, sounds like all the other plug ins around the world are working on this hacked version of front row for Lion... can we get DVDPedia plug in updated? This guy has figured it out: http://www.holeintheceiling.com/blog/front-row-plugins/

My only other option here is to take my brand new mac mini I just bought this week and re-load snow leopard on it over lion... which does not sound easy but people have figured it out. I need my DVDpedia & front row solution... and will have it, I just wish the front row plug in worked in lion... how can we make this happen? Just bought another DVDpedia license that I don't need if I cannot make it work.

Here's 2 links on how to install snow leopard on a new mac mini with lion for those who are curious...
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/ho ... -container
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/ho ... -container

[bitzcool]

Did Para9 make the code public after all? I would be willing to take a look at updating it to work in this hacked lion version of FR....

[Nora]

Para9 did share their code with us and we updated it to work with version 5 of the Pedias, you can download it from our Extras page. If you hack your computer to run Front Row on Lion then this version of the plug-in will work. (We know of a couple of users who did this and it seems to run smoothly for both.)