First impression

[Hansel]

Another option for those not enjoying the ATV remote is the Kodi/XBMC remote for IOS (it's just called Kodi Remote I think). I've always used this with XBMC and it works great. I have it going with MrMC and with very limited testing it seems to work fine. The only thing I noticed didn't work was swiping left/right to skip forward/backwards in a playing video, but I haven't tried that with the ATV remote either to see if it works at all.

[davilla]

Users coming from existing XBMC/Kodi will find the GUI natural and quite familiar. After all, the skin is modified 'confluence' and that has been the main skin for XBMC/Kodi for years. We decided that it was good enough and to focus on solid and stable playback. Waiting a few seconds like the other players was just not acceptable to us.

As I mentioned elsewhere, we only had real physical devices when they were available to the general public. Even a direct plea to Tim Cook for real atv4's went nowhere. So maybe four weeks and the remote handles much, much different than under the simulator. Netflix and the other players had access to real boxes much, much longer than us. Apple's guidelines are focused on game handling with little for 'other' apps. A simple browse of the Apple Developer Forums will show that we were not along in trying to figure out the missing bits.

However, those things in mind. We do have plans for remote improvements, v1.0.2. Also doing a much better skin. And much more things that will knock your socks off. Getting into the Apple Store was just the 1st step of a bold plan.

[normanfox]

Have to agree with the OP.
First impressions were kinda disappointing.

I think you really need to go back to the drawing board with the interface. Keep it simple! I think people want to browse and enjoy their media library without distraction. As much focus on cover art as possible.

The remote/swiping is indeed horrible. It feels outdated and doesn't seem to make use of the new touchpad at all. I think I saw Davilla somewhere saying he preferred the old remote and it shows.... Personally I love to familiar swiping of the new remote, with intuitive and responsive fast/slow swiping as we expect from smartphone usage. Get rid of the horrible touch & hold scrolling with accompanying 1995 clicking sound.

Not happy with the media library options either. I like to split my files up into adult / kids movies as well as tv shows and documentaries as a separate folder. This interface pushes me into having all of my movies and tv shows in a unified folder.
This would be mitigated by better use of favourites.
Favourites should be accentuated and preferably selectable as a home screen with accompanying folder art.

In general, too many visible options, too many clicks required to navigate and the whole package doesn't mesh well with the tvos. Hate to say it, but infuse is doing it way better at the moment - take a leaf from their design, it's simple and attractive. That look with the additional flourish of MrMC/Kodi would be a thing to behold

Agree. The controls are so outdated. even the full-size Kodi on Google TV requires a lot of tweaks to make it usable (keyboard.xml, Favorite.xml, etc).

a part of the excitement to get this app on day one is to enjoy how smooth and modern the new UI and controls on tvOS feel, along with the new touch remote. Unfortunately, MrMc does not have most of these new experiences. UI and navigational controls look and work like in the 90's.

To get mass casual user base, MrMc needs to go back to the drawing board and redesign the UI and controls to have the polished user experience of the new tvOS platform, that is focused on simplicity. Features could be limited but works and polish.

[normanfox]

Users coming from existing XBMC/Kodi will find the GUI natural and quite familiar. After all, the skin is modified 'confluence' and that has been the main skin for XBMC/Kodi for years. We decided that it was good enough and to focus on solid and stable playback. Waiting a few seconds like the other players was just not acceptable to us.

As I mentioned elsewhere, we only had real physical devices when they were available to the general public. Even a direct plea to Tim Cook for real atv4's went nowhere. So maybe four weeks and the remote handles much, much different than under the simulator. Netflix and the other players had access to real boxes much, much longer than us. Apple's guidelines are focused on game handling with little for 'other' apps. A simple browse of the Apple Developer Forums will show that we were not along in trying to figure out the missing bits.

However, those things in mind. We do have plans for remote improvements, v1.0.2. Also doing a much better skin. And much more things that will knock your socks off. Getting into the Apple Store was just the 1st step of a bold plan.

Great to hear that more cool changes are coming. the wait is agonizing.

I am impressed that the team can pull it off with only one month of development/testing.
the core functionality of video playback is so far stable. this would give your team some breathing room to focus on improving the UI and user experience. if your team's vision is to expand beyond the old Kodi fan base to more casual users on apple ecosystem, simplicity and polish user experiences are the key.

edit: any ETA on when v1.0.2 is out?

[Odok76]

However, those things in mind. We do have plans for remote improvements, v1.0.2. Also doing a much better skin. And much more things that will knock your socks off. Getting into the Apple Store was just the 1st step of a bold plan.

Sounds great, look forward to it.
I hope these posts are taken as intended - constructive feedback.
I very much appreciate the work that has gone in and believe in the concept.
The bones are good, but don't be content with a rework of the skin / interface. Gut it. Start afresh, the app deserves it.

Again, love your work and can't wait to see the improvements you write about. Looking forward to it becoming my first choice media player.

[normanfox]

I have the same issues as you had with not being able to add video. How did you get it too work?
Using NFS, adding video directory will only display the parent directories on the NAS, then I am unable to select anything to add.
I'm a little confused that the app is not asking for username and password to the NAS in the first place?

I have to add a new video source. you can embed username and password in the path, ex smb://username:password@myNAS/movieFolder

[klaasvs31]

Have to agree with the OP.
First impressions were kinda disappointing.

I think you really need to go back to the drawing board with the interface. Keep it simple! I think people want to browse and enjoy their media library without distraction. As much focus on cover art as possible.

I don't agree with you at all! I don't want a user interface full with fan art / cover art. If you want that, it is better to use Infuse or Plex (which I don't like at all).. I've been a xbmc / Kodi users for years, and I wouldn't want it any different. If I could just change the backgroung of the homescreen in MrMC, I'm happy!

[davilla]

ok, normanfox. I think your point is made and understood.

I am sure you are also not aware of the enormous amount of effort that it took to even get this running on tvOS. MrMC is not just some simple iOS app, in fact most seasoned iOS developers run away screaming when they see what is going on under the hood. The codebase is 5M lines of code, c, c++, obj-c, and more. The entire look and feel is driven by an skin xml/images which is rendered by OpenGL. No silly storyboards here. We have complete control over look and feel.

We also handle more than just video content, music and pictures too. internal web server, json API and support via major libs like FFMpeg and samba to name just two of the 20+ libs we use. Some static, some dynamic that are loaded and unloaded as needed. A complete virtual file system that lets us handle smb/nfs/fpt/sftp and more. We are big, very big and 90 percent of the our size is binaries. The same codebase is used for OSX, iOS and tvOS, very multi-platform. We could even do Android and OpenElec/Linux if we wanted.

So we made a judgement call on skin and picked something familiar to existing XBMC/Kodi users to start with. There are 10M existing XBMC/Kodi users. The skin will change over time to be more tvOS friendly and users will have a choice over how they want the GUI to be. There is no other iOS or tvOS app around that can offer that.

[wibawad]

Bought this today. The app download was really slow, but I guess it's because the release coincide with whole bunch of Apple updates today.
I agree the input methods is not great in this 1st version, but I can feel the similarities with Kodi controls.

Most important is the video playback and subtitles seems to work well. I admit I haven't tested much.
I haven't tried using Kodi Remote.

[Ton.VH]

Just discovered that up/down/left/right may be troublesome with the remote. However when using my universal remote (has only arrows) then scrolled works like one would expect it. This eliminates my biggest problem.