New Escient Pieces
jjames
Posts: 2,908
Has anyone worked with the DVDM-552 and the MP-200? We just started working with these pieces only because the client already had these. I for the life of me cannot figure out how these work, and on top of that - we've had to reboot the Escient pieces for the module from Escient's website to even work. Hopefully someone can give us some pointers, or at least some feedback as to how your jobs have gone using these pieces with Escient's supplied module.
Many thanks in advance.
Many thanks in advance.
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All that said, the modules do work. The key is doing all the required operations in order: choose a library, do some manner of search within the library ("all" being just another type of search), then drilling down for your individual disc details. Escient forces this by tying the appropriate actions to the buttons that call up those pages; you can't skip any of that. They also add this annoying thing where you have to choose your player with that opening screen, or the panel won't respond. This can be forced to a default if you set the variable that goes to the module with the right value.
The bottom line is they take some playing with. I don't know that the intrinsic flaws in the protocol can be overcome completely, but they can be mitigated. It just doesn't, to me, leave you with the polished interface I would like to see.
Any others with input? Past experiences? New experiences with these pieces?
Many thanks again.
Has anyone first-hand experience with the latest Escient-provided modules?
Anyway, Dave's comments appear to hit right on the nose when talking about having to "tweak" them to work, yet still have an unpolished interface.
I agree! I've worked with Escient and ARQ over the past years and ARQ is a much better product all around.
I've worked extensively with the Escient 5.0.1 module. I've done a few things with it: eliminated the bouncing play state feedback (you hit play, the play button lights, then the stop button lights, then the play button lights again); got rid of some of the frequent error messages; and added now-playing cover art. Somewhere along the line I broke something else though, and my genre lists won't populate, so I'm ripping it apart once again to figure out what went wrong.
What I hate most about needing to modify provided modules is that every time they update them, I have to go through and transfer all my modifications to the update. At least they gave us the code to play with, not just a tko.
Whether it's good enough kind of depends on the end user. It works; it mostly does what it's supposed to do, with a few quirks. The biggest issue I had was customers who have come to expect cover art; the Fireball provides it, but the module did not, so I had to put that in. While I was there, I dealt with some of the other oddities I didn't like (a play state button that doesn't have a label until you change the state; the aforementioned "bounding" transport feedback). One of the things I wasn't able to fix (though given enough time puttering I might) was database fields not always populating, or populating inconsistently ... at which point you have to hit the "all" button to refresh it. As I have said, it just lacks a certain amount of polish.
But polish is a big issue with my customers: they neither know nor care about the intricacies of making things like this work. If it can be done with the on-screen functions, they want to do it with the AMX panel. If it can be done with a browser interface, they want to do it with the AMX panel. That is one of the really nice things with the ARQ - the on-screen and web interfaces are identical to the AMX module.