Today I'd like to share with you what our developers are currently working on that will eventually be included in an upcoming release of MediaPortal 1.

For those of you who don't know already, we created a forum section called "Area 51" some time ago to let the community become more involved with the actual development process of new features, reworks and bug fixes. In "Area 51" you can see what we are working on and actually speed up the development by helping us with coding, testing and documenting those changes.

So let us take a look at what our developers are working on at the moment.

Full/Half-Screen issue with HDMI connection - or thats how it started

The issue where MediaPortal would display in a small window, sitting in the top left corner of the screen, is a problem many users of AV-receivers sadly have experienced. Scythe42 is working on a solution to this problem, and while he is at it, he also started to fix several other small and larger issues in the code areas where the "full/half-screen" issue originates.

The complete list of changes is quite long. So I picked a few highlights for you:

• You can use resume/suspend of Windows without any side effects to MediaPortal anymore. Supports all states including Win8's Fast Boot. All workarounds for various configurations have been removed.
• For HDMI audio, playback is stopped when the receiver "disconnects" or "reconnects", preventing a crash of DirectShow where possible (depending on used filters/drivers).
• You can make full use of Windows' screen savers. Note: they do not start when using always on top in full screen. That is a limitation of Windows not MP. You cannot have two 'always on top' full screens at the same time. It is either always on top or not.
• Resizing of windows and switching between full screen and windowed mode is now blazing fast
• Resizing of windows is now aspect ratio safe and defined by the ratio of the skin you are using.
• Full support for switching displays on the fly without re-starting MediaPortal. Internally it always works with the resolution of the display you started MP.
• DPI Awareness. You can change Windows' font sizes without font sizes of skins being affected.
• Improved mouse handling. There may still be some glitches remaining where a possible combination has not been discovered or tested. That's why we need YOUR feedback in Area 51, with proper descriptions of reproducibility.
• Option to minimize MediaPortal to the tray from full screen instead of always popping up as background with a reduced frame rate.
• Faster startup by loading each window plugin in its own thread.
• Startup times of plugins are now logged, so you can find out what takes the most time on your system.
• New D3D device handling, transferring more load to the GPU during rendering. Possible with the font engine changes from tourettes.
• Enhanced dealing with various cultures over the world. We now even pass the infamous "Turkey Test" ( http://www.moserware.com/2008/02/does-your-code-pass-turkey-test.html)
• Starting playback and TV zapping should be faster (removed unnecessary D3D device resets)
• Enhanced compatibility with using IOS or Android based tablets as a secondary screen (limited by the used Air Display technology, though, back buffer and bandwidth for movie playback/streaming). In general it works now properly, though it depends on the solution you are using.

The combined fixes are available as binaries. That means that you only have to backup the files in our current installation which get replaced by the fix - so you can help us with testing very, very easily.

Last.FM Rework and Auto DJ mode

jameson_uk is currently reworking the last.fm support in MediaPortal and adding some very cool new features!

Scrobbling (last.fm account required, but no subscription)
 The scrobbling side has been rewritten from scratch

• Announce now playing track on last.fm website
• Scrobbling tracks when played
• Love / Ban functionality

Last.fm Radio (Last.fm account and subscription required)
Basic radio/playback functionality based on the new API but this does require a subscription and may not be available in all countries.

• Standard last.fm radio stations
• better integration with the rest of MP
• Downloading (and deleting) temporary thumbs for tracks being played if no local thumb exists

Auto DJ (no last.fm account needed)
Although a last.fm account is not required, having one is free, and scrobbling improves recommendations for everyone.
This feature will simply look for similar tracks in your music database (it only works if you have scanned tracks into the database)

• Will attempt to keep playing music forever
• Tracks must be scanned into the music database

Due to the scale of the rework, it is only available as a full installer. The current version also includes the Music Player Rework from hwahrmann.

This means that you can not easily go back to your current setup. So while testing is highly appreciated, and required to eventually get this rework included in an upcoming release, you have to take precautions (backup or install on another machine) to not damage your live installation.

WorldWeather Lite

With weather.com disabling free access to their weather information, we had to remove our weather plugin from MediaPortal which retrieved the information from that service. So since MediaPortal 1.2.0, we could not offer our users a weather feature as part of a MediaPortal release.

Micropolis, the creator of WorldWeather, is now working on WorldWeather Lite that will eventually become part of an upcoming MediaPortal release.

Installation is very easy, because Micropolis is proving the latest version as a MediaPortal Extension.

If you are interested to see a simple weather feature return to MediaPortal, then please have a look at the WorldWeather Lite development thread.

Picture Thumbnail Generation rework

One of the biggest usability flaws in MediaPortal that affected me personally too, was the extremely slow thumbnail generation for pictures. With the success of digital cameras and resolutions increasing from year to year, the speed at which MediaPortal generated thumbnails just became unbearable.

In a very short time Sebastiii managed to completely rework the way thumbnails for pictures are created. It is just ridiculously fast now!
However, the generation of the thumbnails is just one part of the solution. The thumbs are now also stored in a folder-tree, because storing many thousands of small thumbnails in just one folder, was an additional slowdown for thumbnail generation as well as when loading them to show them inside "Pictures" of MediaPortal. With this fix, the folder-tree storage is also used for video thumbnails, to gain a small speed up in that area too.

If you feel the need for more speed, head over to the thread in the Area 51 forum where you can find this fix available in binary form. So you only have to backup the files the fix will replace and you can always quickly and easily go back to your original setup.

Blu-ray Playback enhancements

Sebastiii is also working on enhancing the support for Blu-ray playback even further.

Included in his "Add-on" are:

• Possibility to enable/disable native Blu-ray (when disabled, it will use the LAV Splitter and BDHandler to manage the selection list).
• Fix 'Resume on Title' mode (MediaPortal then treats the Blu-ray as a DVD player and tries to resume using DVD player code).
• When Blu-ray discs are remuxed, MediaPortal didn't prompt to show the menu and instead started to play the movie directly.
• Add possibility to set a Post-Processing filter / bdplayerAR (Ratio / Zoom etc).
• Add Audio channel amount to OSD Info (Context Audio menu like 5.1 / 2.0 etc).

The enhancement is available as a full installer and as binaries. That means that you only have to backup the files in your current installation which get replaced by the fix - so you can help us with testing very, very easily.

Replace PowerScheduler with PowerScheduler++

Save power does not only mean to reduce CO² emissions, but also saves money :D So to ensure that your HTPC(s) does not waste your money by being on while you are not even at home, PowerScheduler will put the system to sleep.

While PowerScheduler, which is part of MediaPortal, is working fairly well, it does have some quirks and shortcomings. michael_t, who is the creator of PowerScheduler++, is now working on replacing our current PowerScheduler with the ++ version.

If you want a better PowerScheduler to be part of an upcoming MediaPortal release then have a look at his thread in Area 51. Testing is very easy because it is also provided in form of binaries. So you only have to backup your current files the change is going to replace and you can easily revert back to your current setup.

 

As you can see we have quite a few nice changes in the works. With your help they will quickly find their way into an upcoming MediaPortal release.  
When?  As soon as we get enough test results, and document the changes, the new features or fixes will be included in the next release. So the ball is in your court!

It's been a long journey that came to an end now. We are very happy to present you the final version of MediaPortal 1.3.0 today which includes an incredible amount of great new features, the stunning Titan skin, the completely revamped default Skins, bugfixes and usability enhancements.

In fact, the amount of changes is so large that we can't cover them here. So we only picked a few highlights of what is new in 1.3.0 compared to 1.2.0.

Highlights of this release

New Skins - Better than ever!

The most obvious change for the 1.3.0 release is the new Titan skin, designed for users with a 16:9 display and a native resolution of 1080p. This skin has been refined during the beta and release candidate phases to provide an amazing out-of-the-box experience with MediaPortal. More information can be found in the Titan News Item. Team Titan did not stop at producing a new skin for MediaPortal. In addition to the new skin selection option, the installer also offers you the choice to install 'Titan Extended'. This is a MediaPortal Extension which adds support for many community plugins, as well as a 'Titan Skin Updater' plugin. Titan Skin Updater enables us to easily provide you with updates to the Titan skin - including bug fixes and support for new plugins - over the coming weeks and months.

Titan is great, but for those who like the old default skins, these have also been enhanced. DefaultWide is designed for users with 16:9 display and a native resolution of 720p. Default is a non-widescreen skin for users with a 4:3 display and various native resolutions.

 

Enhancements to the skin engine and more skin features

The following significant skin engine enhancements have been made to improve the usability and extensibility of the MediaPortal user interface:

• Skin themes - Skin designers may offer themes for their skins. By convention, a skin theme should be selectable from the Settings -> General window where the skin selection is also made.  Skin themes provide the ability of the skin designer to offer such features as colour changes, font changes, layout changes or any combination of these or other special skin appearance or function related changes.
• New menubutton control - A new versatile button control for displaying a list of selectable items.
• Skin settings - Skin settings provide skins with user-definable (by the skin designer) property settings that can be leveraged for many purposes including making logical decisions about when or how controls are displayed and what the controls display. Skin settings add the capability to have significant design control over GUI customization.
• TV guide genre/custom colouring - Provides the ability to highlight programs in the TV guide using colours. Based on your feedback, 1.3.0 now allows you to configure genre names in TV-Server setup so they work for all clients too! You may still configure genre colors in TV Client setup differently for each client. You may even enable or disable the colored buttons or borders and the the display of the genre map in the new TV Settings within MediaPortal.

We have a lot to look forward to when skins start implementing these new features. In fact, some of these features are already being used in our new Default and Titan skins!

 

Native Blu-ray Support

MediaPortal can now play your unencrypted Blu-ray discs, including the menus, extras, etc! Development will continue because BD-J (Blu-ray Java) menus aren't supported (yet), but you can play the movie. So now you can enjoy the best video & audio quality right within MediaPortal, without the need of an external video player (like PowerDVD or TotalMedia Theatre) or a separate Blu-ray player. 

Attention -- Encrypted Blu-ray discs require a 3rd party "on-the-fly" decoder. The wiki (link below) holds more information. Besides the playback of encrypted Blu-ray discs there are a few other limitations at the moment about which you can read more in our Wiki.

 

Perfectly Smooth Video Playback with MediaPortal Audio Renderer

Nothing is more annoying than having your favorite actor (or actress) 'stuttering' on the screen because several frames are dropped or repeated to keep the video and audio in sync. Smooth video playback is one of the key requirements of all movie enthusiasts; but even if you have the right hardware, it is still a big challenge to achieve it. 

So, our developers set out to create a solution for MediaPortal. It is called the "MediaPortal Audio Renderer (MPAR)". With MPAR you are not only able to get perfectly smooth video playback but in addition you get also the chance to speed up your video stream on the fly e.g. from 23,976 fps to 25 fps which gives you no more dropped frames if your TV only supports a refreshrate of 50 Hz.

 

Enhanced out of the box experience and improvements to codec configuration

Some of you may experienced 'codec hell' or you maybe just don't know exactly which codecs need to be installed to play all kind of your video and audio files. There is no need to worry about all this anymore because with MediaPortal 1.3 we will give you the option to install the LAV Filters. LAV Filters allow you to play most audio and video formats 'out of the box'. No need to install codec packs or separate codecs and filters! Supported video acceleration types are DXVA, NVIDIA CUDA and Intel QuickSync, so you choose the best one for your HTPC hardware.

In addition to that it’s now possible to configure all codec and/or filter properties from within MediaPortal Configuration. Simply click on the screwdriver icon right next to the specific codec/filter to set your preferred options. To give you even more control, we've also added a few new Codec sections like VC-1 & DivX.

 

"Settings" inside MediaPortal

 Configuring MediaPortal is a lot easier in 1.3.0

Now you can configure almost all MediaPortal settings without leaving MediaPortal. Deda has dramatically enhanced the "Settings" section inside MediaPortal as you can see in our latest news: 'While you are waiting for 1.3.0 beta...'

 

Big rework of My Videos

Many new features and enhancements are included. Some highlights:

• Folders view screen
• Database view screen
• Movie info screen
• Actor info screen (new screen works only if movie info have IMDBid, otherwise old screen will be visible)
• Configuration + Scan
• Fanart support rework for database movies

 

Text file support in Videos

For scraping accuracy every video file can be accompanied by a simple text file which contains only the IMDbid number (e.g. tt1234567). If a scraper, such as IMDb, supports search by IMDb's ID number, MediaPortal will use the ID number for accurate scraping.

 

Windows 8 Support

Windows 8 is now officially supported by MediaPortal. Of course, supporting a new operating system is not trivial, and there might still   be issues that we don't know about. If you find a problem that seems to be specific to Windows 8, please open a bug report in the forum.

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Full list of changes

You can review the complete change log for 1.3.0 by using the following links:

• • • Changelog: MediaPortal
    • Changelog: TV-Server
    • Changelog: Installer - DeployTool

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Compiled List of Skin and Plugin related changes

Community Skinners and Developers should have a look at the following pages to find out about the changes which will effect their extensions.

Some of these changes are mandatory to become 1.3.0 compatible:

• changes which affect skins
• changes which affect plugins

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Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback

Installation

When doing a clean installation of 1.3.0 final there is nothing special to worry about.

Upgrade

Notice:

There is a small known issue during upgrades. The option "Use Existing Skin" doesn't seem to work at the moment and Titan will always be choosen as the default skin after an upgrade. You can easily change to your prefered skin via MediaPortal configuration or even directly in MediaPortal -> Settings. We are working on a fix of this issue for you!

Upgrading from 1.2.x, or 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC to 1.3.0 final

All MediaPortal 1.2.x and 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC installations can be upgraded to 1.3.0 final, without losing your settings.

Plugins:

If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.x, then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.3.0 final! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses.

If you are running MediaPortal 1.3.0 Alpha, Beta or RC, then all your plugins are compatible with 1.3.0 final.

If a plugin provides skin files for MediaPortal's Default skin, then the author should also check the Skin related changes.

Skins:

Warning! Due to the new features and changes introduced, none of the 1.2.x nor 1.3.0 Alpha skins are compatible with 1.3.0 final!

Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates.

Skins that work under 1.3.0 Beta also work under 1.3.0 final!

Upgrading Extensions:

The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the MediaPortal Extension Installer, and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version.

Upgrading from 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier to 1.3.0 final

All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.3.0 final, without losing your settings.

If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier, then none of your extensions (plugins and skins) will work after the upgrade to 1.3.0 final! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! 

So, please make sure that 1.3.0 final compatible versions of your extensions are available before you start the upgrade!

General note about Upgrades

Manually stop TV-Service!

On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped.

For upgrades to 1.3.0 final we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager (enable the "all users" option), that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade.

Custom TV-Service properties

If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service (like restart on error options), then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service.

Feedback

Skin related

We are very curious what you think about our new skins in 1.3.0. Please share your thoughts in the forums created for feedback on Titan and the Default skins.

Bugs

If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our Bug Reports Forum.

Make sure your report includes all the required information. Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean.

Download

Finally - the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes.

  If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation!

The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release!

.::. Download - MediaPortal 1.3.0 FINAL .::.

 

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