Easy-Peazy Play Controls

[fisch050]

DVDFab Media Player (FabMP) suffers from a lack of ease-of-use. That little pop-out controller thingy is 1) Hard to find. 2) Hard to get it to work. 3) Hard to use. 4) I very much doubt that it will work well with a remote control. (I don't yet have one, so I can't verify this.) 5) Hard to describe ("pop-out controller thingy" probably doesn't give good mental visuals and cues.).

I don't use a Mac, so I can't speak for Mac users, but Windows users are used to right-clicking and getting menus. Even my Mom knows how to do that. And she is not very computer literate. Why can't you put the "Top Menu" as a selection on the right-click menu, in the Play section? How about as an option on the bottom play-bar?

I understand the idea of the pop-out controller thingy (it needs to have a name!). But, it doesn't seem to work so well in practice. At the very least, you need to have some more options on the other menus.

[fisch050]

Other Paradigms

I realize that other products that have been out on the market for a few years have a head start here, so I don't expect all features to suddenly appear in the next release. ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre 5 seems to have a nice interface, including having a built-in media browser function. Is it possible that FabMP could copy the best things from that UI?

Regardless of where you go for inspiration, developing a nice, easy-to-use (and stable!) user interface will give you a leg up on your competition, and will attract more users.

[fisch050]

PowerDVD's Take

When I played SpyKids All The Time in the World, PowerDVD popped up a message saying that mouse support was not available, and did I want to use their built-in controller (they don't have a name for their joystick controller thingy either). I selected yes, and was presented with a very robust controller, complete with colored buttons and a keypad. It could be slid around the screen, and quasi-docked with the edge, but it did not appear to be able to auto-hide. I have no idea what all those other buttons could be used for, and they did not seem to work on SpyKids. But it looked kind of cool.

To the score:
Very robust controller: Advantage PowerDVD
Auto-Hide: Advantage FabMP
Ability to use mouse on SpyKids: Advantage FabMP

So, PowerDVD has a controller a geek can love, with lots of buttons, even though the vast majority of them don't seem to actually function most of the time. FabMP has several features that actually matter, and a controller that is less intimidating to non-geeks. (Not that it can't use some improvement.)

Overall, FabMP is the clear winner in this contest.