mediate ice - new free DirectX based front end

athomemedia · 03-21-2007, 10:15 PM

This post is to introduce mediate ice - a new in car front end software application from @home media limited.

mediate ice can be downloaded here (~5Mb download): mediateICE setup

mediate ice is a little different from most other front ends currently available:

It's a commercially supported & developed application
It's free for individual (i.e. non-commercial) use
It uses DirectX 9 for all rendering so is fully hardware accelerated
It has support for lots of nice eye candy - e.g. real time rotation, scaling, fading and scrolling animations
It supports alpha blending of all graphic elements - including overlaying interface elments over video and visualisations
It has a sophisticated user interface engine that allows screen designs to be rendered on the fly - no need to pre-render each screen layout as a single fullscreen image
It's fast and lightweight - total download size is just over 5M with no other dependencies except DirectX (i.e. no .Net!). Startup time is sub-second, transitions between screens instantaneous.
It has integral support for playing music and video files - no external software such as WinAmp or WMP required
It's shipped with a professional installer so can be up and running in a couple of minutes
It has an open theme design allowing almost limitless user interface flexibility. Nothing is hardcoded within the application itself - instead XML files are used to define its appearance and behaviour
It has an open plugin API allowing anyone to extend its functionality without restriction
It's emphasis is on simplicity and ease of use

This is the first beta release and includes the following features (many more to come):

Folder based media browsing across multiple media folders
Internal music, dvd and video player using DirectShow (so supports a huge variety of media formats)
Picture & slideshow viewer with support for a wide range of image formats
Weather current and forecast data using data from weather.com
Extensive user interface animation and transition effects
Supports touchscreen, keyboard and remote control use

Some screenshots (click for larger versions):

We've been working on this product for around 6 months (and 18 months prior to that in its former mediate guise) and we're finally happy that its upto beta quality. We're hoping the community here will embrace it warmly...

Why not download it and try it for yourself... And please post with your thoughts - either here or on our forum at http://www.athomemedia.co.uk/support. Updates to mediate ice will be released on a regular basis and listed here.

Many thanks

Andrew & Shaun
@home media limited

Siezmik · 03-21-2007, 10:30 PM

Very, very interesting! I'm downloading now to check it out.

NiSlo · 03-21-2007, 11:09 PM

Looks good. Downloading it now to see how it all works.

Just a couple of things though:
- Lose the control box (Min/max/exit) buttons and the window caption. I know I dont wan't my frontend looking like a windows app.
- The default skin is really dark. I know it can be changed, but still

I've just installed and run it. It seems the menu's aren't visible unless you mouse over them? This is no good for touchscreens let alone a car environment. You want easy access to everything.

Oh and a free licence can be sought to get rid of the licence dialog at startup?

athomemedia · 03-22-2007, 04:22 AM

Thanks for trying this out. To answer your questions:

The min/max/exit buttons are only shown if mediate ice is run in windowed mode. It supports fullscreen exclusive DirectX mode - just set fullscreen to yes in the settings screen, as well as a fake maximised borderless window mode
Yes, the first theme is a little dark - although you can always replace the background graphic (themes/ice/resources/background.png) for something else of your preference. We're also working on a theme designer to make these really easy to create/modify
Licenses are issued automatically - just click the License button in the startup/trial dialog to go to our license page or visit http://www.athomemedia.co.uk/register to receive a free license key via email

Also, it's not immediately apparent but you can right click on the tray icon to bring up an advanced configuration dialog which has a few rarely used or one off settings - including settings to maximise the window & turn off the border.

Secondly, there's also a diagnostics console accessible by pressing the tilda (`) key which is fun to poke around with. Enter "HELP" for a list of supported commands.

Quote: Originally Posted by NiSlo

I've just installed and run it. It seems the menu's aren't visible unless you mouse over them? This is no good for touchscreens let alone a car environment. You want easy access to everything.

By this you mean the large images on the main menu screen? These are animated when the corresponding button is pressed, then remain visible when you return to the main menu. Everything has been tested extensively using just a touchscreen for input and we've been using it in the car environment too.

Or did you mean something else?

peijffertje · 03-22-2007, 05:01 AM

It looks really nice! It is pretty responsive as well.

If functions like GPS, Internet and Phonecontrol are added along with the option to start external programs, it would definately be a candidate to replace my current frontend

Laidback · 03-22-2007, 05:21 AM

Looks good, remind me of Meedio a lot.

Def will have a play see if I can get Dest in there!

Laidback · 03-22-2007, 05:29 AM

Got an error after importing license...

Put the license file on my desktop, started mediate, imported license, then failed to start.
Looked in advanced settings and no theme, the theme settings are now looking on my desktop!!

Reinstalled to solve this.

Laidback · 03-22-2007, 05:42 AM

Hmmm, now it's looking in the plugins folder for the theme!

Beezer · 03-22-2007, 06:15 AM

Comments:-

1) The registration form kept asking me to enter my full name even though I had. I had to repeat it several times. Seems you've got some kind of minimum length restriction on there that's too long.

2) I get the same error as Laidback after installing the license. Uninstall & reinstall cures this.

3) The interface is very fast & slick. Nice. However, I'd rather not have the vis running whilst I'm driving. I would much prefer a static screen showing album art & track details, etc. There seems no way to turn this off. Perhaps this is just a part of the skin & could be cured with a different skin.

4) It doesn't support 640x480 by the looks of it. At least there's not an option for it in the menus. I haven't tried this on my carpc yet though, so it might support it anyhow.

5) GPS? Function of the skin again I would assume?

athomemedia · 03-22-2007, 07:18 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Beezer

1) The registration form kept asking me to enter my full name even though I had. I had to repeat it several times. Seems you've got some kind of minimum length restriction on there that's too long.

2) I get the same error as Laidback after installing the license. Uninstall & reinstall cures this.

3) The interface is very fast & slick. Nice. However, I'd rather not have the vis running whilst I'm driving. I would much prefer a static screen showing album art & track details, etc. There seems no way to turn this off. Perhaps this is just a part of the skin & could be cured with a different skin.

4) It doesn't support 640x480 by the looks of it. At least there's not an option for it in the menus. I haven't tried this on my carpc yet though, so it might support it anyhow.

5) GPS? Function of the skin again I would assume?

Thanks for the comments & praise!

The registration form checks for a minimum of 9 characters for the name - how many characters is the name you tried?

We've managed to replicate the fault reported with importing the license file and will put out a fix for this issue tomorrow (its just a minor problem with the installer that builds an incorrect relative path)

Good point on the fullscreen visualisation - although we haven't added album art support yet we will soon, and will also add an option to turn off the automatic jump to the fullscreen visualisation.

640x480 support has now been added and will be included in the next release.

GPS and navigation features are planned...

Laidback · 03-22-2007, 07:36 PM

So how do you make a plugin?

Beezer · 03-23-2007, 05:32 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by athomemedia

Thanks for the comments & praise!

No problems. Looks like a nice fast engine there. Looking forward to the skins that people will produce for it.

Do you have any specifications for the plugin format?

Quote: Originally Posted by athomemedia

The registration form checks for a minimum of 9 characters for the name - how many characters is the name you tried?

8 chars

Perhaps you should just check for anything with a space in between?

Quote: Originally Posted by athomemedia

640x480 support has now been added and will be included in the next release.

Thanks. I've got a nice 6" 4x3 screen connected via digital DVI. It's pin sharp but its only 640x480. Still, can't complain - I got an EXCELLENT deal when I bought it

Quote: Originally Posted by athomemedia

GPS and navigation features are planned...

Excellent!

lucky8 · 03-23-2007, 11:19 PM

looks interesting, downloading now for testing...

athomemedia · 03-24-2007, 01:26 PM

mediate ice 1.6.1 is now available from the URL in the first post. This fixes the issues people have reported with importing license files plus a couple of other bugs we noted, and also adds support for 640x480 resolution as requested.

If you have already installed mediate ice 1.6.0, just install this over the top (no need to reinstall) - all your previous preferences will remain intact.

Also, to those that have asked we are working on an SDK for plugin developers, or at the very least some documentation for release soon.

Enjoy, and please keep posting your comments.

One more thing: what navigation s/w are people in Europe using? iGuidance seems popular in NA/Canada but is discontinued for Europe. Just trying to decide which would be the best one to integrate into mediate ice first - ideally something which suits both Europe and NA.

peijffertje · 03-24-2007, 06:07 PM

Destinator 6 is usable for Europe and the US

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