‘New media designer Massive’s chief technical officer, James McParlane, for example, discussed the MCE version of the companys V8 Supercars channel, which combines actual telemetry information for particular cars with video from those cars — or uses the MCE box to tune in live race coverage when the races are on TV.
“We wanted a ‘lean back’ experience,” he said, “with that immediate gratification thats halfway between a video game and a DVD menu. If the user isn’t sure whether the application is part of a game or a DVD, we’ve succeeded.”
Massive designers quickly learned what works and doesn’t work when developing for the big-screen MCE environment. Menus need to be designed as clearly and simply as possible, while certain colours must be avoided: Red, for example, tends to bleed on some older TVs while many sets will struggle to distinguish between dark blue and black.
Newer LCD and plasma TVs “make this go away”, McParlane said, “but then you have to deal with burn-in [on plasma TVs]. You don’t want to have a white square sitting in the corner for four hours a time while someone’s watching the race, then be burned onto the screen when they change to something else.”‘
James McParlane's Blog 