New Sky Skin coming soon...(BLUE HD 2)

[kiddac]

As a graphic designer I thought I would have a go at tidying up the old blue HD skin for openatv. There are so many things that could just be tidied up a little.

So here is my first screen (channel select). All new graphics. New Sky icons at the top. Amended Layout.

Before



After

 

[kiddac]

Getting there slowly. Took me hours working out how the epg colours worked. Graphical EPG 99% finished

 

[kiddac]

Looks tidy, can you try to make it faster?

Well that is the plan. The original skin used a different full screen background for most of the individual pages. I have just 1 main plain background, with all the individual elements backgrounds layered on top. Hopefully this will be quicker.
There also seems to be a hell of a lot of crap in that skin. Random code, random images. Maybe its needed, maybe it isn't... only time will tell. I am not actually writing mine over the top. I am writing afresh, just copying the code required for the section I am working on. Testing on my zgemma the graphics load pretty quick, the only delay on the epg is the data load. Graphic load seems fine.

 

[dbobd]

I liked some of the blueHD skin but stuck with the fraggle121 one, why?

Font size for program now/next was too small - hard to see program names and could not seem to adjust that one
Fraggle121 tells you how many mins left/elapsed
The green colour change to show you how much of the program had elapsed was too close to the yellow background and hard to see
Like the way Fraggle one shows program description for now/next too.
When you hit left/right to bring up the small EPG it didn't fill the screen unlike Fraggle121

Things I really liked about BlueHD...
the weather doesn't appear when you hit OK twice blocking out the top of the screen - don't care about weather, got a phone app for that
Menus are bigger and take up half the full size screen
Looked more professional


Will give this a go when its ready tho.
Thanks for your work kiddac!

 

[kiddac]

As for timescale. Who knows. I half know what i am doing now. The graphics and layout is the easy bit. Its siphoning through all the original blue hd code that is the problem. The main things like tv channels, epgs event window should hopefully be done quite quickly. Maybe this week if i do a panel a night. After that its a minefield as people then would request various Plugins to also be skinned.

 

[gillster11]

Keep it simple no unnecessary plugins that slows it down like Kodi etc all you need is a good twin tuner receiver with a good interface which yours looks good no need to over complicate things Let the Android tv boxes deal with Kodi etc that's what there made for

 

[wivelden]

BlueHD is a great skin and easy to use from the transition from $ky. However its slow as hell. Moving up and down the epg lags like mad. Hoping this nerw one will improve this as I cannot find another decent skin at all. Good luck with it.

 

[dbobd]

My box is quick now, but its basically a barebones install of OPenATV 5.1 with the essential plugins and the fraggle121 skin
No kodi, TS panel or mediaportal

When I was using the BlueHD skin it wasn't any slower either.

 

[raf87]

Looks much better than original, great job
Do you think this skin is going to be compatible with Vu+ Duo 2 when finished? Using open atv image

 

[kiddac]

Just a quick update... I am still faffing with the graphical epg and channel list. (Also doing lots of research.) here are the latest screens.

EPG
changed the spacing between the events from 1px to 2px so more like sky.
added a prev next icon for the bouquets (it isn't highly obvious that you can change bouquets in the epg using prev/next buttons otherwise)
corrected the height of yellow time bar line
created a new information icon (i)

Channel List
Created new bouquet folder/marker icon. (I hated them scraggy folders and paperclip icon)
Added in an info button
Add in a large progress bar (seems to be requested a lot on other forums)
Added in a graphic for the background of the mini progress bars

 

[jamesbargain]

looks good mate, then do a vm one :))

 

[boobishabang]

Kiddac, all looking very good so far! Chapeau! One thing that bugs me with the original skin is when you manually type in a channel number and it appears in big yellow numbers/letters in the middle of the screen, is this something that could be easily changed to be more lik Sly with a small blue box with white numbers in the bottom corner? Cheers keep up the work!

 

[kiddac]

Maybe? Can anyone get me a screenshot/photo of that

 

[boobishabang]

Maybe? Can anyone get me a screenshot/photo of that

In work now but can get it for you later, the best way maybe to try for yourself, when watching BBC2 type the numbers 101 manually to switch to BBC1 and you will see what I mean ;)

 

[kiddac]

I know on the zgemma, I don't have access to sky though, so don't know what a channel zap looks like on there.

 

[boobishabang]

I know on the zgemma, I don't have access to sky though, so don't know what a channel zap looks like on there.

Ah I See! me neither anymore! trying to find a screen shot on google but not much luck so far!

 

[Louis Cypher]

looking forward to the release. looks pretty polished.

 

[boobishabang]

I know on the zgemma, I don't have access to sky though, so don't know what a channel zap looks like on there.

So I couldn't find a picture and made up my own to give you an idea, no channel name just the number in White (normal skin font) on a Blue (normal Skin colour) background -

 

[sucmnsee]

Respect dude. Would love to use a BlueHD that i can read from my seat lol.
Seems to be so much wasted "surround" in original whereas fraggle121 uses the whole screen.
Let me know if u need a tester ;)
Doing a vix 3.2.005 build tonight

 

[TJSports2013]

Looks Great Cant wait for it