Meedio Essentials 1.15.22.0, Part 1 - A Sleek and Clean HTPC Interface

Meedio Essentials - Themes

There are a total of eight themes: four included with out-of-box installation and another five at the MAID website (Meedio Add-In Directory) (themes are continuously added). Technically, we have already gone over one of the themes ("meedio default") for the review, so we will quickly look at the other seven.

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Bariloche theme Description: "Nothing much to say, really."

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Blue-Who theme Description: "Blue, black and sharp corners."

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Ala myHTPC theme Description: "For those longing for the golden days of myHTPC."

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Spitfire theme Description: "A Meedio theme with images supplied from CrispyXUK."

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Spitfire MK II theme Description: "CrispyXUK's Theme."

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WTC Tribute theme Description: "Tribute to the World Trade Center."

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Beach theme Description: "Cool down and relax with this theme."

Of all of the themes, our personal favorite is the newest theme called "HdeeTV" (seen below), but we also like Spitfire MK II and the WTC Tribute themes. The sub-menus for the Spitfire MK II are nicely laid out and it is nice to see that the lower left hand corner, which shows track details, also has mini-controls for when you are not in the Now Playing menu. The WTC Tribute and Beach themes have a unique layout that is kind of a love-it or hate-it feature, but we liked it. They are basically identical except for the background pictures used, but we prefer the darker color scheme of the WTC Tribute theme and the NYC backdrop.

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HDeeTV theme Description: "HDTV widescreen theme."

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The newest theme is the HDeeTV theme, optimized for 720p output (1280 x 720). We tried it on a computer monitor under 1280 x 1024 and 1024 x 768, and they both worked fine, though the developer says that he only supports 720p. The really nice thing with this theme is that everything is well laid out for widescreen displays, even though it still looks great in a 4:3 resolution. On our HDTV projector, it is crisp and is a good example of a well laid out UI, though it does need volume controls in the Now Playing screen. We only found one glitch, granted that this came on the last day of our writing period: the headphone button doesn't do anything as far as we have been able to test. We thought the icon might change when we muted audio from the Now Playing screen, but that didn't pan out.