Mythbuntu and Ubuntu Media Center are sweet distro's and all, but it's not good enough for an operating system for a device that you hook up to a TV. I mean: we can do better than Windows Media Center. The mouse and keyboard should be optional from the moment that you put the LiveCD into your computer to the moment you start your first movie on your freshly installed system.
What Media Center-like OS'es have now is a two-layered desktop environment: the normal DE is almost unusable with a remote control, and the second layer (10') is unusable with a mouse. A Media Center shouldn't function as a computer, but as a very advanced, menu driven, user friendly video recorder.
I'll try to be a little more detailed now.
The Remote
The remote should be automatically detected and work. If it can not be detected, Ubuntu should prompt for it. This is the *only* place where the use of a keyboard can be necessary. The minimum of buttons to use should be six, like Apple's remote control (I think that's impossible in Mythtv for now): directional buttons that also function as volume up/down and skip buttons, an OK/Play/Pause-button, and a Menu-button. Clicking the Menu-button brings up a context menu. Double-clicking the Menu button would open the system menu.
More advanced remote controls can of course take advantage of the extra buttons.
General System Menu
* Back-arrow or close button (a typical symbol that is easy to recognize and always in the same place in every window)
* Tasks (default; replacement of the task bar, brings up something Compiz Scale-like but with larger icons and extra task options... plus maybe some launchers, something Dock-like)
* Applications
* Locations
* System (replacements of the panel buttons, these menus should contain the same as they do now in Gnome... Maybe add something mythwelcome-like to System)
* Power (brings up something like the Gnome red power button)
This menu would be presented as big icons spread over the screen, something like modern mobile phones have.
The Desktop would be this menu, so by clicking the Menu button, you just bring up the desktop.
Notification Area
The system tray in the upper right should behave more normal than it does now in Ubuntu, that is, no permanent network icon and stuff but only show something if it is worth showing, like pidgin, the current music playing and updates, and have it disappear after a couple of seconds. The only thing that can be permanently there is the time and date, when there's no video playing of course.
Browsing
Browsing Help-documents, text or the Web should function in the same way: one mode for scrolling text, another one for scrolling links in the visible area, and the OK-button to click them. You can switch between them in the context menu.
Other Applications
Most of the applications should have a 10-foot interface. I don't know whether it is technically possible to adjust GTK/QT theming options to make every app magically usable for a TV and remote, but I hope that there is a better option than a complete rewrite of every graphical interface ;-) Oh, and text that does not fit on the screen should not just fall off like in MythTV, but scroll automatically.
Most windows will be fullscreen except for dialog boxes. Maybe we need a feature to easily move these little windows too.
The DPI that X calculates should actually be used and not ignored like in Gnome. If it is impossible to find the screen dimensions it should prompt for it, and maybe also incorporate the viewing distance. Maybe have a database of TV types so that the optimal resolution and overscan can be set too (since this can not be detected with most TV's).
Overscan should be supported by default: applications and text should never exceed this border, but video can.
I don't think distro's like Mythbuntu are heading this way. I mean, mythbuntu-control-centre is a nice app (except that it installs non-free components without warning you about it), but why isn't it designed with a 10 foot interface?
And yes, Elisa Media Center is nice too, but, for Pete's sake, stop copying Apple's looks. Apple is nice, but there are a million ways to represent this visually with some eye candy. We can do better than Apple.
