Will you be adding live radar?

James, beautiful work!  A couple of suggestions...

- When displayed in the Menu Center start menu, is it possible to display the weather image/icon that relates to the current conditions at that location.

- You might want to add a option to set the interval to go get weather updates and/or allow user to manually get update.  I'm finding that it lags by quite a bit from what Weather.com and others show.

- Minor item, when viewing multiple locations you cannot click on the left-right scroll icon...forced to use left-right on keyboard (I'm testing on a laptop).

- Minor item, change "Imperial Units" to "English Units".

- For future consideration (if even possible)

• Severe Weather Alerts (either to read Weather.com notices and/or see a visible flag while watching a movie).
• Link to current video forecast, if available for location
• Link to radar map image.  Weather.com is using Virtual Earth.
• 10 day forecast

 

Thanks James for rewarding us.

jennyfur:

I'd like to see an example screenshot as well, because I'm using an extender and still have no clue what you're talking about.

Like I said, I'm away from home right now, so I can't post a screenshot of Heatwave, but this is from myTV before they fixed the problem. I see the same border as shown here when I view Heatwave on an extender.

I have seen the same issue from time to time... on one of my 2 TVs seemed to be an overscan issue.

MCExtended:

notyouraccount:

If your taking requests, the only one I would think would be great is a button to link to a weather map (either static or animated) for each location. Like a "page 2" of information, only viewed when desired.

While I'd very much like to do that, I don't know of any free providers for the images. Unless weather.com have broadened their terms of service (see above) I can't use their maps. While I could try and aggregate all the maps from the various Bureaus of Meteorology, I don't think I can really justify the time it would take.

I'd be happy with the option to add our own custom URL's.  MCE Weather has this & I use my local TV stations animated maps.  It's the only thing that would stop me from switching completely from MCE Weather.

jcuesico:

Would it be possible to add Sunrise and Sunset information to the current condition and perhaps the forecast section?

This has been requested by a couple of people, so I'll see if I can accommodate it. I'm hesitant to add more information, though, I have to admit - legibility is already an issue.

Neil__C:

On the start menu. the locations are all in lower case which looks a little naff - any chance of 'Coventry' rather than 'coventry'?

Yes, well, I can't say I'm convinced either way. While they're proper names, and should therefore be correctly capitalised, such a treatment is inconsistent with the Media Center UI as it stands today. That doesn't mean I agree with how the UI presents things, just that I'm very keen on consistency.

Regardless, you're not alone in your request, and it's not something I've ever been entirely comfortable with, so I'll add a setting for this to the next version. It'll be off by default, so you'll need to enable it.

jonpurkis:

Also, the name of the location isn't fully displayed. Could either shorten it to London, UK, or simply take off the country altogether?

Due to the fact that I don't actually have access to all the data that might be displayed, I can't really ensure that whatever algorithm I might come up with to automate this would work in all instances. My intention is allow manual customisation of the location names to address some other issues people are having, and this should allow you to achieve your needs. I haven't fully thought through how to implement this, however, so it may not make it in to the next release.

Bumblebeast:

Will you be adding live radar?

No, and nor will I be adding any other imagery. The data provider places restrictions on such things, and, while they can be overcome, it's not something I want to pursue. While it may not be a popular point of view, this is free software, and, as such, if I make it really, really complete and best-of-breed, all I'm doing is interfering with other people's ability to earn an income.

dannybuoy:

I'll try re-installing / rebooting and returning MC Menu Mender to default settings etc later on to see if it fixes it.

I'm sorry to hear you're having so much trouble. I tried out MC Menu Mender myself to see if I could determine what the problem might be, however it failed before the user interface appeared (on my laptop at least - and I can't download it at the office at the moment due to some, ah, issues with the site it is hosted on).

I'd be interested to hear if you have any luck with the reboot/re-default strategy, however I can't claim that my hopes are high.

About the only hope I can give you is that I will be changing the way this configuration is performed in the next release, and maybe a side effect of that change will be to address the issues you're having.

eldis:

I don't even see the two ("Show on start menu", "Enable automatic updates") settings in Heatwave settings page. Might it be because of my Finnish version of VMC? I can't get the Weather strip to be visible but MyMovies strip is visible.

Well... I can tell you what's wrong, however it's hard to know why it's happened. The short answer is to try rebooting and see if the options appear then. If they don't, then you're probably out of luck, I'm afraid.

If you're curious, here's some insight into what's going on (and beware, it's nerdy - I'll highlight the good bits):

Because of the way User Account Control is implemented in Windows Vista, there are a broad range of restrictions placed upon what programs can and can't do without permission (privilege escalation - experienced by users as the screen going grey and displaying a dialogue box that never gets read prior to the "Allow" option being chosen...).

Two of these restrictions are important to HeatWave:

1. Access to the registry for the local machine for configuring the Start Menu.
2. The ability to silently process MSI installer packages that need elevated privileges, as used by the automatic update functionality.
   
   

HeatWave gets around this by installing a Windows Service that runs in the Local System account which has more than sufficient privileges for what needs to be done. The service publishes the required functionality via OS-secured .NET remoting endpoints (IPC via named pipes with logged on user permissions).

Prior to HeatWave showing the settings page, it makes sure that the required remoting servers are available, and only shows options for the ones it can find. In your case it can't find any, so you don't see the 'Show on Start Menu' or the 'Enable Automatic Updates' options.

Now, it's possible (if not that likely) that the service installed okay, but just didn't start. So the easiest thing to do is cross your fingers and reboot. If the options subsequently appear on the settings page, it's all good.

It's more likely that something went really wrong, however, and likely due to a custom security profile on your computer. If you're using a work computer that your IT staff manage for you, you're almost certainly out of luck.

Things to do at this point:

1. Try starting the service manually. Assuming you're not running a managed installation, you should be able to bring up the Service Control Manager by choosing Services from the Administative Tools option on the Vista (not Media Center) start menu. The name of the service to look for is Media Center Support Service, and I'd be really surprised if it isn't there - the install should have failed in that case. If it's status is already showing as Started, you're out of luck (it's going to be a local security policy issue, and I can't help you with that). If not, then try and start the service by selecting it and then choosing the start option. Now it will probably fail to start (otherwise it would have started when you rebooted your computer), however the error message that is displayed might be helpful to me, so please write it down for me.
   
   
2. Let me know about the errors you're getting in the Application event log. If you open Adminstrative Tools and choose the Event Viewer option this time, you'll be able to see the event logs for your system. If you choose Windows Logs and then Application from the tree on the left, the pane on the right should fill up with a list of events. Hopefully, some of the events listed on the right should appear with Jasmio.MediaCenter.Service as the source. If they do, and some of them have an exclamation mark next to them, please PM me the details. You can see the details by clicking on the appropriate event. If there's no exclamation marks against the events, then it's probably a local security policy issue and you're out of luck.
   
   

Now, if you've actually read all of the above, and especially if you've actually done it, thank you very much for taking the time to do so. When I receive the details I'll immediately see what (if anything) I can do about it.

If not, well, I can't say I don't understand. Sorry it's not easier.

bledsoe:

I see the same border as shown here when I view Heatwave on an extender.

ryan.tollefson:

I've noticed the same border issue on the extender

Thanks for the screen shot.

Last time I responded to this one I was a bit animated-background-fixated (I wanted to keep it if possible). Having read your response I see that by far the easiest and most complete solution is to not display the animated background when I detect an extender session, and I'll do this for the next release. I'll also include an option to re-enable it for users that weren't seeing the border in the first place (i.e. it was hidden by the TV's overscan).

I've only used installed it so here are my first impressions:

* Great looking application
* The location names are missing umlauts, is this the data sources fault?
* The temperature was off by 10 degrees when I tried it (showed 15 when it was infact 25)

For the record: the vista weather sidebars temperature had the correct temperature and had umlauts in the location names

USArcher:

When displayed in the Menu Center start menu, is it possible to display the weather image/icon that relates to the current conditions at that location.

Yes, this is theoretically possible - it might mean that the Media Center interface 'stutters' every 25 minutes or so when the data is updated. Updating the images will make Media Center re-process all of it's entry point information, which means rebuilding a number of internal lists and consequently triggering updates across several elements of the user interface. Fortunately the really expensive bit (updating the UI) should only ocurr when the relevant bits of the UI are displayed (i.e. the start menu or the more programs list), and if they're being displayed it's unlikely such a stutter would interfere with your current viewing experience... but you may lose your place within the lists (I haven't confirmed this) and that could be annoying.

So, basically, yes, it's possible. However it may be intrusive, and so I would need to experiment with it. I'll look at it for the release after next.

USArcher:

You might want to add a option to set the interval to go get weather updates and/or allow user to manually get update.  I'm finding that it lags by quite a bit from what Weather.com and others show.

I'll have a look at it, however there are restrictions upon how often I am allowed by their licensing agreement to do it: no more than once every 25 minutes for the current conditions information, and no more than once every 3.5 hours for the forecast information. I'm not sure I can see the value in allowing users to extend these times (although feel free to convince me). I'm afraid that the new license agreement also obliges me to aggressively cache the relevant information, so exiting and re-entering HeatWave to refresh the data will not work in the next release .

As far as how up-to-date the data is, well, if when you first enter HeatWave you see data that is older than that available on the other websites then it's down to the data provider rather than the program itself.

USArcher:

Minor item, when viewing multiple locations you cannot click on the left-right scroll icon...forced to use left-right on keyboard (I'm testing on a laptop).

I was hoping noone would notice... will fix for next release.

USArcher:

Minor item, change "Imperial Units" to "English Units".

Believe it or not, I actually thought long and hard about that one before I used it. I chose it over Standard (which, let's face it, is a complete misnomer these days, and English, which I believed to be too culturally-specific (and also doesn't account for the fact that the English prefer their temperature in celcius these days (or at least I think they do)).

So... there is going to be an English option in the units, however it's going to be the miles/celcius style, and Imperial will be staying... unless you convince me to change it to 'Standard', which probably makes more sense to most people.

USArcher:

• Severe Weather Alerts (either to read Weather.com notices and/or see a visible flag while watching a movie).
• Link to current video forecast, if available for location
• Link to radar map image.  Weather.com is using Virtual Earth.
• 10 day forecast

While I'm sure everyone's sick of hearing me say this, I'm afraid that none of this is possible due to the licensing restrictions placed upon the data that I use.

sialivi:

* Great looking application

Thanks!

sialivi:

* The location names are missing umlauts, is this the data sources fault?

Hard to know... can you give me a couple of specific location names I can check please?

sialivi:

* The temperature was off by 10 degrees when I tried it (showed 15 when it was infact 25)

For the record: the vista weather sidebars temperature had the correct temperature and had umlauts in the location names

Well, there you go. Almost two years of using Vista and I can now say I've actually used the SideBar since initially disabling it...

It's not clear to me that the SideBar gadget uses the same provider (weather.com) that I do, so I can't be sure that that represents definitive proof of data issues, however the amount I'm now hearing this makes me think I may not be processing the data correctly. I'll look in to it.

Just another quick thanks about how unbelievably responsive you've been about our suggestions. Best app developer ever!

MCExtended:

bledsoe:

I see the same border as shown here when I view Heatwave on an extender.

ryan.tollefson:

I've noticed the same border issue on the extender

Thanks for the screen shot.

Last time I responded to this one I was a bit animated-background-fixated (I wanted to keep it if possible). Having read your response I see that by far the easiest and most complete solution is to not display the animated background when I detect an extender session, and I'll do this for the next release. I'll also include an option to re-enable it for users that weren't seeing the border in the first place (i.e. it was hidden by the TV's overscan).

Sounds great!  Thanks for the patience with my description!

I tried uninstalling, then bringing up MC Menu Mender and returning everything to default, then reinstalling Heatwave and I now have it working on the start menu!

Not the greatest test, as I should have changed one thing at a time, but at least it's working now.