After a long wait we are really excited to release Media Browser Beta 2.1.0.0. for Vista Media Center and Windows7 Media Center. For the eager folks you can download Beta 2.1 here, the rest of this blog will highlight some of the new features and enhancements in 2.1. I have a lot to talk about so get comfy.
New enhanced home screen
CORE CHANGES
As Media Browser grew from release to release we realized that our core engine was not as flexible as we would have liked. A lot of work took place behind the scenes with attention to the engine driving Media Browser, the direct results are quite impressive.
Behind the scenes we’ve implemented many changes to Media Browser’s core including a lot of enhancements to the data logic layer including a complete revamp of the library refresh mechanism, metadata workflow stack, new provider model, item management and merging, plug-in architecture… I can do this all day long but I can sense some eyes starting to glaze over at my geek out – moving on…
Speed
Our core scanning process is now over a complete order of magnitude faster than before. Sam put a lot of hard work and man-hours into this and the results speak for themselves. This increase in speed allows us to potentially issue a full metadata refresh every time you launch the application which is unheard of compared to previous versions of Media Browser. (Ok we don’t really issue a full refresh as we’d probably D.O.S our data partners but I’m just saying we could and not miss a beat ;-) )
Note: Chart is for illustration purposes only.
Stability
As we progress with each release the stability of Media Browser keeps improving. So much so that this is perhaps the most stable release of Media Browser.
PLUG-IN FRAMEWORK
We now support an open plug-in model where anyone can contribute and extend Media Browser so you don’t even have to be on the Media Browser team to write a plug-in. Media Browser looks for plug-ins under the C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Plugins\ folder. If you don’t want to use a particular plug-in for whatever reason you can use the configurator to add or remove plug-ins as you like, or if all else fails simply remove it from the plug-in folder and voila.
Plugins Folder
We will be providing more technical information on the plug-in framework very soon, ultimately this framework allows developers to extend our object model, entities, define new media types, and even append items to the root menu. To validate the new plug-in architecture there are a number of plug-ins available with this release of Media Browser.
Apple HD Trailers Plug-in
Prior versions of Media Browser were in essence very limited to the type of content it could handle, going forward you can begin enjoying digital media outside of your home network. It begins with online trailers we are shipping a plug-in for Apple HD Trailers that allows you to consume the vast amount of great trailers in high quality. The downside of Apple trailers is of course the codec format being .mov which is not playable on extenders.
Film Trailer Plug-in
For those of you who may have problems with Apple Trailers we have a second online trailer source available.
Obligatory screenshot
We are sourcing trailer content from filmtrailers.co.uk in .wmv format, however, the trailers are encoded using Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2 (MP42) why is this significant? Unfortunately we found out the hard way the Xbox 360 doesn’t support playback of certain flavours of wmv, and yes you guessed it MP42 is one of the unplayable formats. I can’t comment on the Linksys or other extenders as I don’t have them available to test on (although I should point out I am more than willing to accept extender donations ;-) ).
DVR-MS Support
The DVR-MS plug-in with the ability to decode your recorded TV files and extract metadata so you get the same rich experience with dvr-ms files inside Media Browser.
DVR-MS Plug-in In Action
Movie Thumbnailer
Another frame grabber has been added based on the Movie Thumbnailer project here. This frame grabber has greater support for working with different media formats to generate a preview thumbnail. Some of the codecs supported are:
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VODCAST – ONLINE MEDIA!
How would you like to view online videos within media browser? We have taken steps to begin aggregating online content starting with vodcasts. Using the configurator we have made it super easy to add a video RSS feed to Media Browser, it’s literally a 2 step process.
First you within the configuration utility navigate to the podcasts tab, and press the add button. The second step is enter the video podcast feed into the input box, and press OK.
Configuration Utility: built-in vodcast support
The Config utility creates .vodcast files by default in the c:\programdata\mediabrowser\Podcasts\ so you can add streaming video rss feeds into Media Browser. Before you start adding any old video RSS feed in my experience RSS feeds with video attachments are more stable and less error-prone.
TIP: You can add a custom folder image for podcasts by placing a folder.jpg or folder.png file in c:\programdata\mediabrowser\Podcasts\ location.
Just to get you started here are a few of my favourite video podcasts (.wmv friendly of course for extenders):
NOTE: If you have a slow internet connection be aware that adding high-bandwidth video podcasts can result in a bad end user experience.
A NEW INTIAL EXPERIENCE
I have personally have been working very hard on this exciting new addition to Media Browser. There are so many customization combinations available for Media Browser that it can get a bit hard for the novice user to setup initially. We were looking for a way to decrease the complexity for new users while also providing a common interface that we as a team can control and predict. It is hoped that with the Media Browser team controlling this default intro screen we can begin providing even more services to our users, something that would have been very difficult to do with the dozens of customization options otherwise.
Enhanced home screen (with black color scheme, and custom backdrop)
Initially this view was not intended to be enabled by default, however, though the course of alpha testing and other feedback the enhanced home screen (EHS) is now on by default. If you prefer the old default screen you can disable the EHS in a couple ways: either in the configuration page of the application, or the configuration utility.
Configuring the Enhanced Home Screen
Recent Items
One of the most common scenarios after living with any media aggregator is how well it handles your growing media collection on a day to day basis. With the introduction of the home screen we have taken significant steps to enhance this experience. The last 5 recent videos for each selected folder are automatically displayed on the initial screen allowing you to select and play that file immediately without having to navigate into your collection.
Recently Added List
Weather Forecast
We’ve also implemented weather support using Yahoo! Weather Data Services. For those of you living in the US you can simply enter your zip code, the rest of the world can visit Yahoo’s weather website and retrieve the unique location ID here. Typical location Ids look like this “UKXX0065” “CSXX0032” etc. Once you have your location ID users can leverage the configurator to set this information in the display tab under the Enhanced Home Screen section.
The weather service is refreshed every 3 hours and viewable only on the new home screen. When highlighted the weather control also displays a forecast for the next day.
CONFIGURATION UTILITY
You seen some of the enhancements to the config utility already, with this release we have added even more customization options keeping with our long term goal of making changes to Media Browser as fast as possible.
Enhancements
We’ve added a new folder browser dialog system, a lot of users were complaining about not being able to add network locations through the configuration utility. So I overhauled the whole folder browsing mechanism while making it just as simple and easy to use. Network traversal really works this time I promise.
Display Tab
This tab provides more configuration of Media Browser’s display. It allows for quick and easy setup of your theme and a whole host of other options.
External Players Tab
About a month or so back a Media Browser user J.Brown emailed me to donate some code for the config utility. Thanks to JB users can now add external players for selected media types very easily through the configuration utility. Thank you JB!!
OTHER STUFF
Multi-Backdrop Support
The default movie screen now has multi-backdrop support, with a nice cross-fade when switching between the different backdrops. If you want to have your own custom backdrop fades all you need to do is name them accordingly, starting from backdrop.jpg to backdrop1.jpg and so on.
Director Links
Directors are now selectable links and work just like the existing actors capability allowing you to view all movies in your collection for a particular director.
Global Indexing
Global indexing is fantastic, now it is possible to have your collection separated into several sub folders and if you perform a search for a genre filter say “Action”, we now index and return your entire collection that has the genre tag “Action” not just the current folder as in the past.
Another example, previously if you had split your movie collection into say Hollywood and Foreign films the search would only be performed on the folder you were in. Now we correctly search through your entire collection even online content for that actor. This is really awesome if you have a favourite actor combined with online trailers you can know in advance what their next project/movie is!
Folder Play Menu
It’s been a long time coming but now you can play all files within a folder with a simple key press. You can choose to play all sequentially or random. This is a great feature for the kids as you simply point to the “kids cartoons” folder and press the PLAY button on the remote (CTRL + P on the keyboard) which brings up the folder play menu and select random play – job done!
NOTE: Right now videos played under this mode do not toggle the unwatched/watched flag.
Synchronized Views
It’s kind of amazing when you realize one of the most requested feature is finally in but it takes this long just to talk about it. We have implemented sync views for TV shows, specifically season and episode layouts respectively. So if you set the episode listing to say the detail view, Media Browser will cascade that to all other episode layouts for your other TV shows.
Startup Folder
I have been warning users on the forum since the launch of the configurator application to migrate to the new start up folder. In this release we have moved one step closer to that by setting the default starting folder to C:\programdata\mediabrowser\startupfolder\ .
I strongly advise users to utilize the configurator application for setup of your media collection and try to migrate to the new startupfolder location. We cannot guarantee we will support custom initial locations in the future.
Enhanced Item Shortcuts
We have added a number of shortcuts available for both the remote and keyboard, here they are listed below:
| Name | Description | Remote Shortcut | Keyboard Shortcut |
| Refresh Metadata | Performs a manual refresh at the item or folder level. | [REC] Button | CTRL + R |
| Folder Play Popup | Play all or play random on folder level. | [PLAY] Button | CTRL + P |
| Watched Indicator | Toggles watched / unwatched indicator. This command also works recursively. | [CLEAR] Button | CTRL + W |
| Layout Switch | Toggles the UI layout (not available on the enhanced home screen). | [STAR] Button | * |
| Config Screen | Brings up the on screen configuration menu in the vanilla theme. | [HASH] Button | # |
DIAMONDS ARE A GIRLS BEST FRIEND…
There is a special treat for long-time users in the form of a brand new theme for Media Browser titled Diamond. Here is a little teaser, I won’t spoil it so it’s up to you to explore the rest of theme for yourself.
I’m very certain there are items I haven’t talked about (e.g. Log Viewer app) hopefully I’ll cover that in another post. As always comments or questions are welcome in the forum, if you found this useful and want me to continue this sort of thing in the future drop me a line here.
Hope this helps.
- Jas
LINKS
Download Link: Media Browser Beta 2.1
Forum Link: Media Browser Forums