For the umpteenth time when we recently looked at some pictures I decided the 'media centre' way of looking at them is truly awful!
I have my digitised photographs arranged the way I want them in a hierarchy of years/months/days with descriptions in (most of) the folder names. So when I view them I want to be able to use the hierarchy to navigate easily.
We have a WD TV Live media player which is quite well thought of in reviews but it makes viewing pictures a real chore for a number of reasons:-
It's slow by design because of the way it fades from one image to the next, thus you're never quite sure if you really have clicked on the '>' button or not.
It hides the hierarchy above the current directory so you have to navigate by memory basically, or go too far up and then down again.
No image manipulation at all, you can't zoom in for example.
There's no way to jump to the next folder/directory in sequence, i.e. if I have just looked at 1973/04/07 I want an easy way to go to 1973/04/08 but I can't.
The other 'media' software have seen (we have another make of media player where my wife stays during the week, also built-in TV apps) is no better as far as I can see.
So, what I suspect I want is an easy way to use the program(s) I use on my Linux desktop (or laptop) directly on the TV screen.
I could dedicate a system to the TV but this entails either leaving it on permanently or waiting for it to boot every time one uses it. A Raspberry Pi is a possibility, leaving it on is then not an issue but there are downsides like will it be fast enough and it needs a keyboard and mouse. Another fundamental problem is that whoever is managing showing the pictures needs to be close enough to the TV screen to read text and that's likely to be too close for comfortable viewing and/or sociability.
So on to my final idea, use a laptop with the TV as a remote display. The viewing software runs on the laptop and the person running it can use the laptop keyboard and touchpad/mouse to control things. The only issue is handling the dual display, has anyone got any advice on this front, e.g. ways to have different views on two different displays, etc.