Dave’s Happy Place

I’m using the Aeon skin for XBMC and the skin doesn’t support scroll bars. This makes it a bit time consuming navigating long lists.

To workaround this you can configure the XBox remote to perform PageUp and PageDown actions by altering the Keymap.xml file in the UserData folder.

UPDATE: This no longer seems to work on later versions of XBMC. I will post another article that contains details on the changes necessary.

Change the existing buttons mapped to the PageUp and PageDown actions for the remote.

Change them to be and as shown below (at the top of the Keymap.xml file).

<keymap>
  <global>
    <remote>
      <three>VolumeUp</three>
      <six>VolumeDown</six>
      <nine>Mute</nine>
      <play>Play</play>
      <pause>Pause</pause>
      <stop>Stop</stop>
      <forward>FastForward</forward>
      <reverse>Rewind</reverse>
      <left>Left</left>
      <right>Right</right>
      <up>Up</up>
      <down>Down</down>
      <select>Select</select>
      <!-- Alteration for PageUp/PageDown starts -->
      <skipplus>PageDown</skipplus>
      <skipminus>PageUp</skipminus>
      <!-- Ends -->
      <back>ParentDir</back>
      <menu>PreviousMenu</menu>
      <title>ContextMenu</title>
      <info>Info</info>
      <skipplus>SkipNext</skipplus>
      <skipminus>SkipPrevious</skipminus>
      <display>FullScreen</display>
      <start>PreviousMenu</start>
      <record>Screenshot</record>
      <volumeplus>VolumeUp</volumeplus>
      <volumeminus>VolumeDown</volumeminus>
      <mute>Mute</mute>
      <power>XBMC.ShutDown()</power>
      <myvideo>XBMC.ActivateWindow(MyVideos)</myvideo>
      <mymusic>XBMC.ActivateWindow(MyMusic)</mymusic>
      <mypictures>XBMC.ActivateWindow(MyPictures)</mypictures>
      <mytv>XBMC.ActivateWindow(Home)</mytv>
    </remote>
  </global>
</keymap>

The XBMC wiki has more information about the Keymap.xml file.

Version 1.0 of the Photeon (Photo + Aeon) backdrops for XBox Media Center (XBMC) Aeon skin are now available for download.

UPDATE: An updated Version 1.1. of the Photeon Backgrounds for the XBMC AEON skin have been released!

Download Photeon Backdrops Version 1.0. If you download and use them please leave a comment. I’d love to know what people think of them!

All images in this Photeon series of backdrops for the Aeon skin were obtained from stock.xchng and then modified as necessary. All images are still protected by the original terms and conditions of that web site. Please respect the original license conditions as noted within the photeon-backdrops-1.0.zip file.

Special thanks to each of the image authors for giving permission to redistribute the modified versions of the images:

• TV Shows - Jayson Gatdula (jaylopez)
• Movies - Jean-Luc ST-Hilaire (clasixart)
• Pictures - Piotr Lewandowski (LeWy2005) - no response after a week so I hope it’s OK
• Music - Bart Noszka (noszki)
• Weather - Gabriel Schouten de Jel (gabriel77)
• Live TV - Viktor Hujer (v_hujer)
• Settings - Kalyana Sundaram (kavitha)

TV Shows

Movies

Pictures

Music

Weather

Live TV (courtesy of the aeonmod by Rand Al Thor)

Settings

To install:

1. Download the photeon-backdrops-1.0.zip (9.8Mb)
2. Unzip the photeon-backdrops-1.0.zip file and transfer to the skin directory of your XBMC installation. This will created a series of named folders within XBMC/skin/Aeon/backdrops/photeon/720p. Each named folder corresponds to Live TV, Movies, Music etc. and contains a single 720p BMP backdrop image.
3. Open Settings for XBMC (press Up from the main menu while using the Aeon skin)
4. Choose Aeon from the Settings menu and then configure the backdrop folders for each of the main menu items to point to the appropriate folder under .../photeon/720p.
5. Configure the Settings backdrop image to point to the image within the .../photeon/720p/Settings folder. If this is not done, the existing Settings image will be used when a Setting menu item is chosen.

The download is hosted by Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) so tell all your friends, it’s hardly costing anything to host and share this with everyone.

I’ve created some abstract backdrops for the XBox Media Center (XBMC) Aeon Skin.

Sample photos of the backdrops using the Aeon skin are shown below.

TV Shows

Movies

Pictures

Music

Weather

Live TV (part of the Rand Al Thor Aeonmod)

Live TV recordings listing

Live TV channel listing

Settings

All of the images were sourced from stock.xchng which is a stock image library with free content. I still need to contact the authors of the images that were manipulated to get their permission to redistribute to anyone else that would like to use them.

I purposefully chose images that were crisp and not colored. I wanted the actual colored content in each menu, such movies and pictures, to pop out of the screen yet still have some level of eye candy for the menus. There could still be some improvements to align better with the Aeon menu overlay and perhaps refining of each image, but these will do for the moment.

If you are interested in using these backdrops with your Aeon skin please leave a comment below (might help convince the photo owners to allow redistribution).