About a year ago some of the team members came together to discuss the future of MediaPortal. We evaluated the current situation and realized that we where running into problems. Over the last few years MediaPortal has grown and grown and we've reached a point where it is getting harder and harder to get MediaPortal stable and add new features to MediaPortal. This means release schedules kept moving and developers where spending more time fixing bugs then actually adding new features or enhancing existing features.

Another trend we see is that the HTPC community has been changing.  When we started developing MP a few years ago, we had this idea of a stand-alone PC in your living room holding all your media and playing it back on your TV. But today we're moving to a networked enviroment where you want to watch your media anywhere. In the living room, kitchen, bedroom, on your xbox360 but also remotely for example on your ipod video, zune or via the internet.

It became clear that MediaPortal as it is today is not ready for the future and that something had to be done. So some members of the MediaPortal Team started thinking about a new generation of MediaPortal, called MediaPortal II.

At the time I'm writing this MediaPortal II is still in a very early stage and not as feature rich as Mediaportal I.

We will soon release an alpha release of Mediaportal II (codename Infinity) to the public to play with and offcourse to receive feedback and suggestions.

With the release of Infinity (the alpha version of MediaPortal II) we will also present a roadmap for MediaPortal II. This roadmap which will show what features will be added in the upcoming versions and whats the planned release date for each version.

What is MediaPortal II?

With MediaPortal II we have decided to start from scratch to get a better design and architecture.

Architecture

The biggest problem we have with MediaPortal I is that the architecture is not flexible enough. Because of this many features get hardcoded and behaviour is hard to change. Developing plugins for MP-1 required great knowledge of the entire MP code.

Our main goals for MediaPortal II are: stable & flexible and yet easy to understand.

This means that the for endusers, skinners and plugin developers it should be possible to change anything they want while keeping things simple for beginners. We want MP-II to be very easy to use and configure, even for people who never seen it before.

some examples of what MediaPortal II should be able to do

• menu customizations: end users, plugin developers and skinners can create, change and modify menus
• skin customizations: a skin can be easily customized by using themes
• metadata customizations: an end user can easily change whats shown onscreen
• auto updating: an end user should be able to select, download, install new plugins from within MediaPortal II using a nice GUI

Another concept we introduced in MP-II is that its build around (internal) services.

The core implements all features as services. These services can be used by plugin developers and they even can enhance  or replace those services with more advanced versions. They can also add there own services which can then be used by other plugins.

We also have a message broker in MP-II. A plugin can subscribe to messages send by the core to do some action but it can also create and send its own messages to others

With MediaPortal II we are going a new way. The main application will only provide basic functionality. But because of the new design, community plugin authors will have much more freedom and power for their cool features.

MediaPortal II also contains an inbuild version of the MPI (MediaPortal Installer) which will allow the user to browse the online repository, download, install and configure available plugins and skins without leaving MediaPortal II.

This means that because MediaPortal II will be and stay a slim application, it will be much more stable then MediaPortal I is. Community Plugins will be playing an much more important part in the MediaPortal II.

This also means that because we will have less bug hunting to do for the main application, we will have more time on our hands for support.

MediaPortal II will allow the user to do as much configuration as possible inside the main application. For advanced settings like creating new views and changing the menu, you will have an external configuration tool available. The great thing about this external tool is that it will be completely localized.

In the very early stages we have been evaluating WPF/XAML for the skinengine. WPF/XAML is a great technology allowing for fanastic graphics gui's. However when playing with it we discovered that WPF/XAML is missing some key features needed for building a media center. So we developed our own new DirectX based skinengine, which uses the same architecture as XAML/WPF and is easy to understand for skinners.

Since one of the design goals of MP-II is flexibility we have the option to replace the skinengine with a WPF/XAML engine when WPF/XAML has matured and can be used for building media center type of applications.

LIST OF SKINENGINE FEATURES

• complete separation between GUI and code
• databinding
• commands
• styles and templates
• 2D and 3D
• animations
• flexible and easily expandable
• supports vertex and pixel shaders
• supports use of scripts
• supports themes

Current Feature List:

• UPnP:
  • MP-II contains an internal UPnP server
  • MP-II can control & render media from any other UPnP server
• Picture in Picture (PIP)
• Intelligent Zoom
• My Pictures
• My Movies (+DVD)
• My Music
• Settings
• Extensions installer for skins, plugins ect. (known as MPI)
• Core:
  • new skinengine (see feature list above)
  • Customizable menus
  • customizable views
  • general media manager
  • general database manager
  • Message broker

As you can see there is no Tv or Radio yet. Infinity will be an alpha release which is not feature complete. Of course those missing features will be added in the next version (codename Haïti).

We have created a new forum thread and are looking forward to your comments and thoughts.

Note: The announcement of MediaPortal 2 does not mean that the current Version is now dead and abandoned. We will post news about the future of "the old lady" and the TV-Server very soon.

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