As promised in the previous news, we are releasing MediaPortal 1.0 RC3 today.
Before you scroll down to the end of the page to get your hands on the download, we would like you to read the following lines as they contain some important information regarding this release!
A new Style!
We are very happy to announce that with MediaPortal 1.0 RC3 we release the first version of the new default skin named Blue3.
It's a completely redesigned skin which features some new and very cool animations, which were added to the SkinEngine recently.
In MediaPortal 1.0 RC3 "only" the 4:3 version of Blue3 is included. But we've already started with the "wide" (16:9) version which will be part of the untested weekly svn builds soon.
In MediaPortal 1.0 RC3 the "old" skins Blue2 and Blue2wide are still included, but they will be fully replaced by Blue3 and Blue3wide when finished.
Even though Blue3 is a 4:3 skin, we would like you to test it on 16:9 displays and share your opinion in the newly created Blue3 sub-forum about what we should change for the wide version in order to profit from the additional width of 16:9 displays...
Again, the great support from the community made this possible.
Special thanks to the users that took some time to test issues and create proper bug reports by following the Support and Bugreport guideline...
During the last testing period minor and major issues were reported. Sadly we have a few bugs in our current applications which we can not fix for the 1.0 release, because the potential fix would be so risky that it could cause a lot of other bugs.
This is one of the downsides of the current architecture, which we will get rid of in MediaPortal 2.
If you are interested in the list of currently known issues and for which version the fix is targeted, please take a look at the roadmaps of MediaPortal, TV-Server and the Deploytool.
PayTV related configuration changes in TV-Server
Inside the TV-Server Configuration we did a few changes in order to get cards with and without CAM's to work properly.
If you use a CAM + smartcard from your provider, you will have to enable your CAM in the new configuration section we created.
Please have a look at the TV-Server Manual where this is described in detail.
A common missunderstanding
It seems to be a common missunderstanding that the MediaPortal TV-Server is only "useful" if you use more then one HTPC. This is definately not the case.
The MediaPortal TV-Server is included in MediaPortal 1 and it represents our latest version of the TV-Engine.
Besides the feature that you are able to connect multiple HTPC's to one server, in order to watch LiveTV and recorded shows, there are plenty of other new features and enhancements for stability and useability .
With the TV-Server it is also no longer required to "code" support for new tv-cards. It automatically discovers analog, DVB and ATSC tv cards that are installed in your HTPC.
We would like to encourage all our users to take use of all the benefits the MediaPortal TV-Server offers.
Reporting Bugs you found in RC3
If you find any issues or bugs then please report them in the according bugreport forum.
Please make sure that you read and follow the bugreport and support thread guidelinesor you might find your thread deleted without further notice to keep the forums clean.
Installation:
Before you install MediaPortal 1.0 RC3 please verify that your system meets the requirements.
During our tests we noticed that in some cases the uninstallation of a running TV-Server might fail. We will try to fix that for the 1.0 final release.
To avoid issues we recommend that you manually uninstall MediaPortal and/or the TV-Server before you launch the RC3 installer.
If you recently installed the ServicePack 3 for Windows XP then it is essential that you re-apply the dvb-fix mentioned on the requirements page.
If you had MediaPortal 1.0 RC2 installed, then it is possible that the RC3 installer will show you an error message.
This is caused by an old xml file from the RC2 installer.
If you encounter this error, please just run the RC3 installer again, and the installation will work without problems.
This behaviour will be changed in the next release.
Download MediaPortal 1.0 RC3
We hope that you've read all the information above and wish you much fun with the latest release of MediaPortal!
Looks great guys, I was hoping to have RC3 released before my new HTPC case arrived... and it did! But that is because my case is delayed for more than a week now :@...
Looking forward to testing this release... but need my case first.
Everything seems good except IT takes about 5 minutes to start mediaportal since this install. RC2 only took 15 seconds this one literally takes 5 minutes. Any Ideas?
