About Touch Screens and Ultimate Jukebox

We often get asked if this touch screen or that touch screen will work with Ultimate Jukebox, so we thought we would explain a few simple things. This page doesn't go into the technical details of touch screens, it simply discusses what a touch screen means to your computer (and of course to Ultimate Jukebox).

Touch Screen Types
There are a few types of touch screen interfaces available (resistive, capacitive, surface wave, infrared etc). The difference between the types is "clarity" (resistive sits "on top" of the screen), accuracy, durability, price etc.

So what kind of touch screen do I need for Ultimate Jukebox? Well, the answer is pretty easy, ANY kind, as long as it has Windows device drivers available. The important thing to remember is that a Touch Screen is ONLY a mouse (in simple terms), all it does is send clicks (and drag movements) to Windows, Windows then translates that to mouse commands and routes that to the application window under your finger. So there's nothing special about Ultimate Jukebox in terms of using a touch screen, it just sees it as a mouse and handles mouse clicks and drags on the buttons and scrollbars. The only thing you need to do is load the larger skin (Settings->Skins->Skins (tab)) to make it easier to "touch" the buttons. Accuracy is the main problem with "touching" the screen. A mouse points at a single point (pixel) but your finger is MUCH bigger than a single point, so you need larger buttons to click on. Ultimate Jukebox has a number of options for changing button sizes, list display sizes, on screen keyboards etc to make it easier to use with a touch screen.

What touch screen do I purchase?
In our opinion, touch screens are still mainly designed for industrial or commercial applications and home use is not likely to be anywhere near that of one in used at a store checkout for example. So we don't think that this is really an important consideration. At the end of the day it's really personal choice, but usually it will be cost related. Resistive touch screens are the cheapest by far, and when buying a new touch screen this will be the most likely factor.

So where do a buy a touch screen?
There are MANY online stores selling touch screens. Often they will be POS (point of sale) focused, but the touch screens are still the same (if it works with Windows it will work with Ultimate Jukebox). Computer Stores seem to carry a limited range of Touch Screens, however they seem to usually be the cheaper resistive ones but then that's probably all that you need. Many users also purchase off eBay, often getting industrial style screens for a good price, 2nd hand though of course.

What about Touch Screen Overlays?
Actually I have one, it works fine. It's just a device that attaches to your monitor. It hangs down over your monitor. This is a cheap alternative to a new touch screen monitor. They come in different sizes for different monitors.

What about the little 7 or 8" touch screens on eBay?
We have some users with these. Some even install them in their cars to run Ultimate Jukebox. You really need to run them at 800x600 resolution, but if you get the font settings and button/item heights in UJ right then apparently they work great?

What about the DIY touch screen kits on eBay?
We only discovered these recently. They look like a good option if you're comfortable pulling your LCD monitor appart to install one. They are resistive screens and we see no reason why there should be a problem with them. A customer has been buying similar devices for some time and installing them to their own screens. Apparantly the only thing to be wary of is the size of the monitor's "bezel", to ensure it fits OK.