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I am addicted to DVD's almost as much as I am to the changing my Pronto's ccf. The video
quality is what first attracted my attention. The amazing Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks
blew me away, and I was surprized by how much I love the extra features many DVD's contain,
particularly the commentary tracks and extra footage. I love widescreen movies, and am very
impressed when a DVD manufacturer has the foresight to include 16x9 enhancement.
I have my DVD player's S-Video cable plugged directly into one of the inputs on the back of my TV. That means that when I want to watch a DVD I need to change input on my TV, and my receiver (for the sound). When I am done watching DVD's, I need to change back to the inputs used for watching tv shows. I used to accomplished this via a pair of macro's that did all the work. You can see how my main panel used to be arranged in the screenshot below. 
One thing that I try to do whenever I add a new device to my CCF is try and figure out which button's I use most often. Armed with that information I try to group buttons in ways that prevent having to jump from panel to panel much, or at least make jumping easier. The main problem with the way the panel is arranged in the screenshot above is that I ran out of room and could not include all the buttons that I use frequently. I have found that many DVD's default to Dolby Digital 2.0 mode rather than the much better Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track. One common solution is to hit the "audio" button, to switch to the DD 5.1 track. Sometimes the DVD manufacturer disables the "audio button" method of selecting DD 5.1, and you need to go into the DVD's menu and select DD 5.1 from there. I did not have room left on the main panel for the Audio button or DVD Menu navigation controls, so I could not include them. When Daniel Tonks posted his ccf with the awesome DVD transport control graphics, my screen space problems were eased quite a bit. His transport control takes up less room than using the standard pronto button graphics, yet are large enough that I have no problems using them. This created enough extra room for me to add the Audio button, and a button to jump to the DVD menu control panel. I eventually found discrete inputs for enough of my devices to automate things enough that I could lose the "DVD to VCR" and "VCR to DVD" Macro's. This created enough room for me to add subtittle control button's, which I like to use occasionally. I am so glad that Gecko and Craig found discrete IR codes that work with my VCR's and TV. 
There is not much else to note about the DVD portion of my ccf, it mostly exists so that I can put the physical remote into storage without wondering if I will need it for some obscure function. Go back to the Pronto Chronicles main page. |