Adding programs to front row

Hi all, sorry if this isn't the right place for this question, but I was wondering if there was any way of adding programs to front row? What I really want to do is open the dashboard from my remote control so I can check for emails and the weather from the comfort of my bed!!!

Hi, Iain.
I suspect Sijmons meant to refer you to the Keyspan RF Remote For Front Row.
According to this tip on Mac OS X Hints, one can assign AppleScripts to the programmable buttons on the Keyspan RF Remote for Front Row.
This Mac OS X Hints tip has a simple AppleScript for invoking Dashboard, as well as some interesting variants.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Similar Messages

Front Row Movie Player Problem

I have lots of movies that are all in .avi format. I watch them regularly on my computer with VLC, but I can not seem to get them to play in Front Row. I can find the movies that I want to watch, but when I click to play them the screen is blank and there is no sound. The length of the movie, however, does appear and it acts as if the movie is being played. Is there any way to use VLC as the movie program in Front Row?

Try the Front Row forum http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1164

I thought as a consumer, Apple works for us. Had I known what I'd lose by upgrading, I would have thought twice!!! I want Front Row BACK!!! also what is this new playlist that was auto added when I upgraded? It's called iTunes Artwork screen?

I thought as a consumer, Apple works for us. Had I known what I'd lose by upgrading, I would have thought twice!!! I want Front Row BACK!!! also what is this new playlist that was auto added when I upgraded? It's called iTunes Artwork screen?

Think the iTunes artwork playlist is for a new screensave they put in where if you click the album artwork it plays the song.

Anybody know if adding more ram to an iSight iMac will speed up front row

Just got a 20" iSight iMac (love it) with the base ram but as most people seem to be experiencing, front row seems a little sluggish. Just wondered if anybody knows if sticking another gig of ram in it would improve front row performance?

The answer is absolutely yes. I ran with 512MB for a while and I noticed it seemed like I was getting PageIns every now and again. Sometimes quite often if iPhoto or other big apps were open. A pagein is like virtual memory in OS9. RAM has to be swapped to disk to free it up to do another task.
Check out Activity Monitor- it'll give you an idea of what's going on. Don't get me wrong MacOS X is very good at managing its resources. However disk paging is a slow reality.
I upgraded to a total of 1.5GB of RAM a while ago. The difference is nothing short of phenomenal. All the big pauses in FrontRow are gone (occasionally iTunes still has to fire up if it was closed...2-3 Sec). I leave iPhoto open all the time and everything is always snappy. Daskboard is another big beneficiary- it's way better. I think 1.5GB was a good choice because I still use it all every now and again- perhaps 2 PageIns/Day, but not often enough to notice. Even upgrading to a 1GB would certainly be a big help but remember if you don't benefit from 1.5GB now you will in a year.
Cheers, Ed.
P.S. Now is a great time to buy, prices have stabilized, find a good sale and buy today- you won't regret it. I paid $96 total including all tax and shipping for a 1GB stick.

When will Airtunes be added to Front Row 2.0

It was already a gross oversight for this feature not to be in 10.5.0. I was straight-up peeved that it didn't make 10.5.1 and I'm about ready to throw a 2 or 3 year-old temper-tantrum if it doesn't make 10.5.2. How can this be such a low priority fix for the developers...I know lots of Mac owners besides myself that used airtunes and frontrow all the time...especially for house parties!

The Apple Discussions are not for "venting". Once again, this is a user-to-user forum. It's for specific technical questions you have about your Apple hardware or software. None of us can tell you when the AirTunes/Front Row 2.0 issue will be addressed.
All anyone here can do is suggest you send Apple some Mac OS X feedback. Someone might also suggest you join the Apple Developer Connection and submit a bug report. However, other people here have already reported that their bug reports have come back with an answer that it's already been reported.
-Doug

Ugh. help me if you can! Proplem w/ front-row. no music on slideshow

forgive me if this is a small problem that I should be able to resolve on my own.
When using Front Row to access a slideshow, the music that I added to the show doesn't play! Yet, when I launch the show from iPhoto, it plays. This happens on only one particular slideshow. ..I did delete the "plist" for iPhoto, but this didn't fix it (this was a sort of "fix all" tip that I found using the help menu.)
Any suggestions? Front Row is pretty cool - I'd hate to not be able to use it.
Thanks in advance.

Yes, thank you, i realised that headphones with noise canceling are something i must get....but, i cant belive that the same headphones with touch and nano produce such dramatic different experience...i can hardly belive that nano has better what..sound procesor, amplifier than touch...it shouldent be that way.
i am thinking it must have something to do with ..say latest regulations regarding volume imput in some countries or what, and i thought that it must be the program that cansels it..or so..since i have wireless on this thing.
Message was edited by: ljut123

Front Row preferences: I think it's about time

My experience with Front Row is limited, as I've only had my iMac for a few months now. However, in the short amount of time I have spent with it I find myself wondering why Front Row wasn't built with the notion that users may just want to have control over their experience. A few of the options I've found myself wanting:
*Turn on/off file scrolling*
- I've spent many hours creating cover art for my movies, so if I only want it to display the icon I've replaced for the folder icon, then I should have that option. I don't want to see the contents of that folder.
*Ability to target a different source folder, disk, or computer*
- I realize there are workarounds to this, but it should be much simpler than it currently is to do this. Most people in this day and age have external drives, or additional computers within a single household. It shouldn't be assumed that everyone prefers to store their media in those predetermined folders.
*Option to resume movie*
- This one seems so obvious that I have to assume that I've simply overlooked this option somewhere. Shouldn't one have the ability to resume playback of a movie where they left off if the movie is interrupted?
*Keyboard shortcut and/or remote command that exits Front Row*
- Again, I feel like I'm missing something here. Is there really no way to exit Front Row with one key/button stroke? I find myself having to back out of several screens before I can finally get back to my desktop. I've tried several logical keyboard shortcuts and tried holding down the 'menu' button on the remote and got no response. I realize we're only talking about a matter of seconds here, but it does become an inconvenience over time.
*ID3 tags for movies*
- I realize this is asking a bit more than just adding a couple of checkboxes, but it would really enhance the user experience if you could give your movies ID3 tags (or equivalent) so that the process of finding cover art, previews, synopsis, cast/crew info, etc. would be automated. Currently it takes about 5 minutes per film to manually download/optimize this content. Honestly, if I didn't have OCD I probably wouldn't waste the time.
Consider this a running list of requests to Apple, if anyone out there is listening. The more I use the program the longer this list will undoubtedly get. It's an amazing feature which makes the Mac platform stand alone, but it's time to take this application to the next level. I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to usability, and right now this product has fallen short in my opinion.
I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts on this. I'm sure I haven't covered everything here.

I would really suggest you send Apple some Mac OS X feedback for each of your suggestions.
Option to resume movie...
Movies/TV Shows/videos inside iTunes will pause and resume. It's only the movies that live outside of iTunes that, currently, won't resume.
-Doug

Front Row can't see photos in iPhoto library

I have been experiencing intermittent problems with Front Row and its ability to find my iPhoto library. I have even tried changing/adding libraries, but it doesn't want to work! I keep on getting "You don't have any photos in your iphoto library" when I select "Photos" from my Front Row interface.
Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone have a fix?

This is a hint from "iphoto library manager" which helped me. If you run this program you will see if there is a problem in your albumdata.xml file...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7158
In my case the keywords caused the problem. i opened iPhoto, deleted the keywords and ran iPhoto again. then front row worked again...
i hope this helps you as well...
Advanced Troubleshooting
If you want to try to find the item in your library that is causing the problem, follow these steps as a general guide:
The error message displayed in iPhoto Library Manager, after saying "The album data file for this library is malformed", should then read "XML parser error:", followed by a more specific error that specifies a line number. Take note of that line number
Select the library in question, click the Reveal In Finder button to show the library folder, then double click the folder to look at the library's contents. The AlbumData.xml file should be inside.
Open the AlbumData.xml using a text editor that has a function that will allow you to jump to a particular line number in a file. Microsoft Word provides this function, as does the free text editor TextWrangler.
Once the file is open, jump to the line that is specified in the iPhoto Library Manager error message.
You have now found the point in the file where the data is malformed. From here, the exact steps to actually fix the problem can differ, depending on what part of the file the error is in.
If you see a line reading "<key>List of Keywords</key>" not too far up from your position in the file, then the problem is with one of your keywords. Open your library in iPhoto, open the preferences window, and go to the keyword list. Double click on the offending keyword to rename it, and just re-type the name of the keyword to get rid of any invisible characters that might be in the keyword's name.
If the problem is located in a record for a particular photos (you should see lines for properties such as "MediaType", "Caption", "Comment", etc.), then you can either go to that photo in your library and try to edit the photo's information, or you can just remove that photo from your library altogether and re-add it later. Finding the photo can sometimes be tricky, especially if the bad data prevent's the photo's title or filename from being written out to the file.

What is the best older version of iTunes for Front Row?

Can anyone share some opinions please on which older version of itunes I should download that has the least amount of bugs when using "front row" (I currently have 9.0.3 and Mac OS X 10.5.8)? . Also, should I download the regular version or the 64-bit version? What's the difference/advantage between the two?
Many-many thanks in advance.

I am right up there with iTunes biggest proponents, and try and to recruit anyone who will listen...
I've got about 75 "complete season" Television DVDs, and it was really time consuming to decide which series and episode I wanted to watch by pulling out a box, reading each episode summary that came with the DVD, then take it out of the box, insert it, view it, put it back etc. etc....all for one episode!
Then I heard about adding video files to iTunes and viewing them via Front Row (or iTunes)...couldn't wait to try it. Was totally won over by Front Row's little opening fanfare and the look of the table of contents/episode screen etc. Every feature worked fine.
Since downloading 9.0.3 (from either 9.0 or 9.1) however, I inherited that scrolling issue were it skips and jumps to the last TV Show played or occasionally a random episode, and keeps reverting to that one as well. With my previous version, that scrolling issue appeared, but only several times in about a 3 month daily viewing period then stopped doing that altogether. With that version of iTunes, it seemed to stop after I held the up and down buttons on the remote and let it rapidly scroll up and down (from top to bottom) throughout that particular series. That doesn't work now, and even scrolling up and down/back and fourth, full speed ahead, I can see it semi-pause for a split second on a specific episode. This now became constant problem.
Now a newer problem. I had some misc. TV shows that were catalogued in iTunes as Misc., which front row correctly displayed as such and were properly filed in it's own iTunes folder. I tried to rename that folder, and since then, the iTunes window displays the new name correctly, but Front Row doesn't. I tried dragging that folder to the desktop, creating a new one in the iTunes folder, then dragging those desktop files (sans folder) into the new one and it's still back to square one! I've got about 840 TV shows, with 145 GB of free space remaining.
Again, thanks all for your help.

Front Row Sharing - Some TV shows not showing up

Hi all,
I have a problem with iTunes' shared libary - it only shows a subset of TV shows within iTunes. I have a Mac Pro in my den, which hosts a pretty large itunes library (about 750GB), of which 350GB are TV shows I've either bought from iTunes or ripped from DVD. The machine is running 10.6 and iTunes is fully up to date. Everything works as you'd expect on the Mac Pro, and Front row can see all the videos iTunes can see.
In our bedroom we have a fairly recent Mac Mini. If i use iTunes ->iTunes sharing, all the titles show up correctly and I an watch any TV show.
However, if we use the sharing feature in front row on the mac mini, only a subset of TV shows appears - and infuriatingly it's not even 100% reliable which items will fail to show - but it is about 90% reliable, which is even more frustrating, as it's clearly not totally random. The shows most likely to be effected seem to be the ones added in the last few months.
I've also tried running front row on different clients on the same LAN - both my wife and my Macbook pros do the same, as does an iMac in our kitchen, so it seems to me to be either a problem which effects Front Row generally, or a fault on the iTunes server Mac Pro. Is my library simply too big for the Front Row sharing feature to work correctly? If so - this is ridiculous!?
I've looked into alternative clients for the Mac Mini, like Mediacentral, which doesn't seem to support sharing of iTunes videos, and also Plex which again doesn't appear to support this, but is frankly so complex it's hard to tell - if it will support seamless iTunes sharing of all content, I'd be happy to give it a go - but it doesn't look like it does.
Preferably there would just be a fix like deleteing some iTunes cache files or something on the Mac Pro - I've had a sniff about the iTunes XML file, and compared the data of some of theTV shows which turn up to some of those that don't and they all look identical, schema wise, so I'm none the wiser.
All machines tested are totally up to date, OS/iTUnes wise..
I haven't managed to find anything on the internet about this, which leads me to think it's probably an obscure issue with my iTUnes installation, rather than a problem with library size, since I'm sure many other people have bigger libraries than this....
Any help greatly appreciated!

I have the same issue. My home shared library can all be seen on my iPhone or my Apple TV 3rd Gen but not on my ipad. Only some movies and tv shows show up. Also. Many of the TV shows are all mixed up. Episodes shows up in different series and all mix up. All those issues only on the iPad, on other devices, all seems fine.

Is there any way to change the screen resolution in Front Row?

Hi all,
I've got a Mac Mini plugged in to my TV, and I want to be able to change the screen resolution depending on the content I'm watching (as some content is in 4:3 aspect ratio, some is in 16:9, and I'd prefer to have the picture filling the screen completely). Unfortunately, the TV doesn't have a "stretch" mode for making an 4:3 picture fit a 16:9 aspect ratio. If I know what I want to watch in advance, I can set the resolution accordingly using system prefs on the mac, but if I'm just sitting back choosing what to watch with the Apple Remote, it's annoying to have to leave front row, walk over to the computer and change resolution once I've decided what to watch, open system prefs, change resolution, re-launch Front Row and find what I wanted to watch again.
So I was wondering if anyone had figured a way to allow the screen resolution to be switched from within the FrontRow UI. I've seen that people have written python based plug-ins such as PyeTV and Understudy that allow different types of content to be added to FrontRow, but I've not found any utility plug-ins such as what I'm looking for on the net (nor could I find SDK documentation on this API in the stuff that comes with XCode).
I guess the other approach might be quick keys: has anyone had any success hooking up quick keys macros alongside front row in response to apple remote events? (seems too few events to be able to choose from, but I've never tried it, so I won't assume!) Or how about is there a way to trigger an AppleScript from within Front Row? And, of course, I'm very open to any other ideas you might have!
Thanks very much in advance for any ideas on this.
Andy
Message was edited by: Andy__D

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), set a good rez there.

Noob questions about front row and back up...

Dear all,
Please can you assist with the following for a proud new mac owner?
1) Why do some songs/albums not play in front row but work in itunes?
2) I have an external hard drive, iomega 500gb, which is very noisy. So i keep it switched off from the back. Can time machine still back up or does the external HDD have to be switched on?
Many thanks...

Hi Fireball Dragon
1. I don't have a definite answer for you, but it sounds like a problem with your iTunes Library or the way you Imported your music into it. Go to: *Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility* and run *Disk Utility Repair Permissions.*
Also how are you selecting Music to play in Front Row, Shuffle or by Albums, Artist, Songs?
2. No Time Machine will not backup with the External HD turned off, but it will resume backup as soon as it is switched on mounted. I personally don't run Time Machine backups every hour, I only switch it on for a few backups every day or after adding important files.
Dennis

Two problems with Front Row

Hello.
I have all my music on my iMac and I am streaming it to my Mac Mini connected to my TV and stereo. What I have noticed is that the cover art on my music tracks don't show when I play any of the shared tracks or playlists, just the default picture with the two notes. Is there something I can do that will display it? I have tried to start iTunes and connect the shared library there before starting Front Row but that didn't help.
I also have a problem with listing my pictures in Front Row. I have an external drive connected to my Mini that has all my pictures and movies. I have no trouble playing the movies (I created an alias in the Movies catalog to the Movies catalog on the external drive), but if I create an alias in the Pictures catalog to the Pictures catalog on the external drive the catalog isn't shown in Front Row. Do I have to import all the pictures into iPhoto? I don't use iPhoto at all because I always use the program that came with my Nikon camera that shows all the picture information, such as focal length, what lens I used, white balance setting, etc. (or Adobe Photoshop Elements it I want to make some changes). Is there something I can do to fix this too?
Thanks,
Erik Aleksander Moe

Bernd, since your comp is still under warranty you may wish to give the online tech support a try -->HERE<--</a>. Click on the "Chat with a support agent" link.
If you don't want to go that route, then I suggest that you call them over the phone. Hopefully, you have the AppleCare Protection Plan if your 90 day warranty ran out.
Good Luck.
G5 20' iMac w/iSight/Remote, 2.5GB RAM, 250GB HD Mac OS X (10.4) OS 10.4.3

I have upgraded to lion but it seems that front row has disappeared, how do I get it back?

How do I get Front Row back? I used to use it all the time!!

antrozous wrote:
Front Row got taken off Lion.
But you can search on youtube for a work around (not sure I can post links here)
If you do a search here you will find a couple of other programs that work in a similar fashion under Lion. Can't recall their names, I never used Front Row, but I recall the posts being on the Lion Forums somewhere.
Good Luck
Pete

99% CPU on Front Row with Snow Leopard, possible workaround...

This might be helpful for some who have experienced this issue as well. It seems that Front Row will continue to work in the background when you exit from it using Apple - Q, but if you exit using the remote, holding down the Menu button for a couple of seconds it completely quits. You can check using Activity Monitor.

I have similar problems.
I have an AirPort Extreme with two USB hard drives connected to it. One drive is for media such as our iTunes library and some movies. The other drive is used as TimeMachine backup.
After upgrading to Snow Leopard we only have sporadic access to the media drive with our two laptops (MacBook Pro and MacBook) and the TimeMachine backups have stopped working completely because TM can not connect to drive. Sometimes Finder can se the drives, but most of the time it does not. When drives are visible in Finder, most of the time we can not browse the folders on the drives at all.
AirPort Utility can detect the AirPort Extreme but when I attempt to configure the unit manually the program can not read the AirPort Extreme's configuration.
The AirPort appears to work all right when it comes to accessing the internet.
Apple needs to fix this AirPort debacle ASAP!

Adding programs to front row

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