View Options
MOVIES
Now that we have all of our Media added into XBMC’s library we can continue with setting our preferred View Options for each content type (MOVIES, TV SHOWS, and MUSIC).
Start from the Home screen and go into MOVIES. Go into View Options using the Left Arrow key again. You will be at View: List (or another option). Hit Enter to cycle through these one at a time. Feel free to take your time and get a sense for all the options. Cycle through a few times if you want. Once done select View: Fanart Slide.
Now press the Left Arrow key once to exit out of the View Options and note that now the Up Arrow key is used to get back into View Options (some views have different keys depending on how the content is navigated through in each one).
Take some time to explore the Fanart Slide view. Note browsing fast will bring up a Alpha-numeric indicator as to where you are in your movies (by first character of the movie). If you have any Movies that are missing fanart or posters (black or blank) you can stop on the Movie in question and hit the “i” key.
This will bring up the Information screen. Note the options at the bottom. The Get thumb and Get Fanart options will allow you to manually add or select different Posters and Fanarts. Most if not all movies will also eventually have a Trailer button that you can use to launch the Movies trailer as well.
Note: Installing Couch Potato will also help make sure you have trailers for all your Movies. Stay tuned for my upcoming Couch Potato guide if interested!
Once you are comfortable with navigating Fanart View in Movies and are ready to move on go back to the Home screen and we’ll move on to TV SHOWS.
TV Shows
In TV Shows you’ll likely be again in the View: List and need to hit the Right Arrow key to enter the View Options menu again. Just like as under MOVIES cycle through until you find View: Fanart slide.
There are definitely some other nice views and feel free to explore them after completing the guide (and if you find a combination that works better for you I’d love to hear about it!), but for now I suggest sticking to the ones I have chosen for the most consistent, information rich, and polished viewing experience.
The TV SHOWS Fanart slide view is almost identical to the MOVIES Fanart slide view. Note that the “i” key once again gets you into the Information screen for a given series. Here you will again have Get thumb and Get Fanart buttons accompanied by the Get Logo button.
The Get Logo button can be used to get logos, clearart, showthumbs, banners, and posters. Getting the logos is best done from the Skin Settings screen however, and now would be a good time to go back and do that so everything is populated properly (for quick reference: Settings > Skin > Misc > Get Images).
Once the Get Images process has completed and you’re ready to progress with configuring the TV views select a show (preferably one which you have multiple seasons for) and enter the View Options again with the Seasons not the Series visible this time around. The option we’re looking for this time around is View: Poster Slide.
Once Poster Slide view is selected select one of the seasons so that you’re now viewing the Episodes themselves and not the Series or Seasons. Enter the View Options menu here. By default this may already be on View: Episode Slide. If not cycle until it is selected.
Congratulations, all levels of the TV SHOWS are now configured for a consistent viewer experience which matches closely with the MOVIES!
this is great, I had lots of trouble installing xbmcin mint and this did the trick,now I am gonna follow rest of your suggestions, thanks again.
Hey, good to hear Gychang! Best of luck!
i just keep getting
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found
Hey Eddknightuk,
If you’re running Linux Mint 11 or Ubuntu 11.04 that’s why. XBMC has yet to add a PPA repository for Natty Narwhal. You can still use the Maverick Meerkat one though (which is what I’ve been doing without any issues. Simply replace “natty” in both the sources to “maverick”. You will need to got to Sources or Edit Sources and edit the specific entries.
I’m currently stuck on a work computer so can’t give exact instructions. If you get stuck let me know or Google it.
Best of luck!
XBMC is informing me that the Simplicity Add-On cannot be installed as it has broken/missing dependencies, any idea how to fix this?
Hey Catman,
Right off the top of my head I’m not sure. Try another theme like Neon and see if you get the same result. It may just be that Simplicity is broken currently or that something is borked in your XBMC install. As soon as I get my guide updated, I’ll likely be switching from Simplicity to Neon anyway so if that works you may be in for a treat.
Best of luck, and let me know if you have anymore questions!
This guide helped me a lot! I tried installing xbmc on Windows, Fedora, Ubunutu but this guide is definately the clearest! Great work and thank you!
Hey Aegir81,
Glad it worked well for you!
Thanks for the comment!
Excellent detailed instructions on all of your guides! Wish I would have found you sooner. Make all this so much easier to understand. Goodbye torrents!! :)
Hey SAB_Addict,
Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad my guides helped ya out!
Cheers!
Nice guide any plans to do it on Mint 12…????
These instructions don’t work with Mint 12. Adding the PPA does not result in XMBC appearing in the Software Manager..
Hey Johnny,
Nice generalization there. Anyway, since XBMC does not do a great job at maintaing a PPA with the current Ubuntu releases you may need to manually edit the Other Software entry for XBMC to reflect the code name of the highest Ubuntu release that they do support (Maverick currently). If that doesn’t fix your issue the PPA authentication bug may be getting you. In which case the easiest fix is to add the PPA via the Terminal Emulator (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:PPANAMEHERE).
Good luck,
daemox