About MIplayTV: MIplayTV is the culmination of many years of work with various incarnations of media playing software. In years past I created many programs to manage and display my very large collection of MP3's and movies but now I have combined the features of past programs into a single piece of software. Many years ago I told people that in the future the computer and the television would be merged into a single device and now I can say for sure this has become reality. If you do not have a computer attached to your HDTV and HIFI system you are living in the past. MIplayTV is optimized for use on a HDTV with over sized controls, text boxes, and fonts but it can also be used on a regular computer monitor as there are both "Full Screen" and "Windowed" modes of operation. The main GUI:  The list box is your main navigation method. To read the drives attached to your system click on "My Computer" on line two of the list. Upon selecting a "Drive" a list of folders at the root of the drive will be displayed. Clicking on a folder will enter the folder and display its content. The main GUI has a few of the most used controls such as "Play Next", "Search" and "Show Graphic" all the other controls are in the drop down menus. "Play Next" plays the next selection which is controlled by the "Play Mode" option either "Consecutive" or "Random" . If there is a graphic associated to a audio file a thumbnail of the graphic is displayed and the "Show Graphic" button is made visible. Upon selecting the "Show Graphic" button the associate .tif graphic will be displayed full screen. This simple interface leaves the screen uncluttered and provides for intuitive use by users that have no prior knowledge of the software. There are actually two media players used in MIplayTV the axmediaplayer and "Media Player Classic" . When audio files are played the axmediaplayer is used which allows for program control during playback. Video files, especially Matroska, do not play well with the axmediaplayer so I have handed off the playing of video to "Media Player Classic" which in my opinion is the best video player available. Even if you don't use my software I suggest you download "Media Player Classic" and make it your default player. When a video file is played program control is turned over to MPC and MIplayTV is disabled. Most of the features of MIplayTV are available through the drop down menus: List Type - "Sort By Date", "Sort By Artist", "Sort By Creation", "Include Sub Directories"
 In order for these functions to work properly it is necessary to follow our standard naming convention which you can see in the graphic above. "Sort By Date" sorts the files according to the first character in the file name char[0]. "Sort by Artist" sorts the list by the last name of the artist which is the sixth character in the file name char[5]. "Sort By Creation" reads the creation date from the attribute header of the file and shows the most recently copied files at the top of the list. This is a nice feature when you want to listen to the selections most recently added to your collection. It should be noted that this date changes each time the file is copied to "Now" and for this reason when duplicating the collection we always use drive mirroring which preserves the creation date. "Include Sub Directories" shows all the files in the present directory and sub directories. This feature is handy for creating a list for example of all the media files on a drive.
On my machine if I select "My Computer" and "Drive D:" I get a list of all 29,723 media files. Media Type - "Audio Files", "Video Files", "Picture Files"
This feature allows you to filter your list for the various media types Play Mode - "Consecutive", "Random", "Announce Selection"  This controls the way selections are played "Consecutive" plays the selections in the order that they appear in the list box. "Random" changes the selection in the list box using a random number generator to change listBox1.SelectedIndex=randomNumber. The "Announce Selection" uses the Windows narration device to read the file name prior to playing a selection.
Graphic Options -
 Saved Lists -
 ID3 -
CD copier MP3 FLAC encoding Program Control with RF keyboard: Since this program is primarily used with a living room entertainment system I don't want to be wired to the computer for keyboard and mouse control. I am using this RF keyboard to control the program. Although I would not want to try to use this device to do word processing it works quite well for selecting and playing media.
 Sometimes I find it difficult to do mouse selections with the track ball so I have added key commands to the program for many of the most commonly used functions.  |
