There’s a lot to like about OS X Yosemite , Apple’s brand-new, super-powerful operating system of the future, but a quick glance around the software’s official support forums shows that not all users are having a trouble-free experience. If you’re struggling with strange bugs and quirks in Yosemite then these are the fixes you can try. Read more…
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The Worst Bugs in OS X Yosemite and How to Fix Them
Chrome: What was formerly known as Google Stars— before it was pulled from the Chrome Web Store —is now the Bookmark Manager extension, which makes bookmarks more powerful with improved search, bookmarks by topic, and the ability to share them anywhere. Read more…
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Google Gives Bookmarks an Overhaul with Bookmark Manager for Chrome
Pray silence…for the Queen’s first tweet. 88-year old Elizabeth II sent a message from the royal @BritishMonarchy account this morning to mark the grand opening of the Science Museum’s new Information Age Gallery. Bless. Read more…
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The Queen Just Sent Her First Tweet
We’re no strangers to unwanted toolbars and browser-hijacking malware. Neither is Google. The company has released a tool that helps combat the problem by scanning for bad software and (optionally) resetting your browser if it’s misbehaving. Read more…
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Google’s Software Removal Tool Removes Crapware, Resets Your Browser
Steam has been experimenting with an in-home streaming feature that allows you to host a game on one machine and play it on another. Now, that feature is out of beta and it’s releasing on time, for everyone. Read more…
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Steam In-Home Streaming Now Available to Everyone
Pushbullet recently updated with IFTTT support, following Tasker integration last month . That’s a lot of our favorite words together in a single sentence. Naturally, it’s a good time to take a look at some of the best uses for Pushbullet. Read more…
Originally posted here:
How to Use Pushbullet to Get Notified of Anything on Any Device
One of the more annoying things about Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon’s television streaming libraries is the vast difference between the selection available. It would be almost impossible to get a thorough idea of who has the better library without searching for hundreds of TV shows on each service and comparing them manually. So we did just that. Read more…
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TV Streaming Head-to-Head: Netflix vs Hulu vs Amazon Prime
Dropbox is easily the internet’s favorite cloud storage provider—at the very least it’s our favorite . There are plenty of clever things you can do with it right out of the box (get it?). However, there’s also no shortage of apps and extensions you can get to make using Dropbox itself even easier. Read more…
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Seven Downloads and Extensions to Make Dropbox Even More Awesome
MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release We are very happy to present you the Pre Release version of MediaPortal 1.7.0 today. This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes. These new features need a lot of testing to make sure everything works fine. Please report any problems in the bug reporting sections of the forum. Oh, and enjoy it! We are calling this a pre release, but it is very stable. Highlights of this release Many of the changes in this release are things that you might not notice at first, but they are designed to improve the stability of MediaPortal moving forwards for the next few releases. Using SkinSettings/Expressions Skin Settings and Expressions are really powerful. Skin designers are going to be doing some amazing things with them in the near future. We have already been testing a home screen editor entirely within the MediaPortal GUI. Look for this in Area 51 very soon. Separate the WindowsPlugins to individual files This is one for the developers. Since MediaPortal started, the core plugins (My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, etc.) have been stored in a single file called WindowsPlugins.dll. This means that a lot of code has been loaded that isn’t always needed. Also, making a change to one plugin often resulted in another plugin developing a new bug. We can’t carry on like that, so the plugins are now in their own self-contained files. This will make things more stable and easier to fix/improve in future. Enhancements to the TV and Video OSDs TV recording thumbs and comskip markers were not properly shown in the TV and Video OSDs. This is fixed. Improvements to the Installer You probably have the LAV Filters package installed to get the best quality playback of most video files, and TitanExtended installed to provide skin files for your plugins. The installer correctly detects the installed version, and only offers to install these if a newer version is available. Wake On LAN MediaPortal can now wake your server if it is in sleep mode and you want to access your files. Add MediaInfo For Files in the Background We use a code library called MediaInfo to obtain certain information about video files when you play them. This information can be displayed by MediaPortal. Up to now, it has only been possible to obtain this information when you actually play a file. With this release, we have added a setting to allow all files to be scanned in the background. This is turned off by default, so check out the documentation for changes to see where this setting is and how to enable it. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for 1.7.0 Pre Release by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release Compiled Plugin related changes Community Plugin Developers should have a look at the following page to find out about the changes which will effect their extensions. Some of these changes are mandatory to become 1.7.0 compatible: changes which affect plugins Additional Information: TVE3 Code freeze At the moment we are working hard on releasing a new version of our TVEngine – which is called TVE3.5. Development is still in early stage and some features are missing. To make a release of this happen in the future we have to put our current TVEngine (TVE3) on code freeze. This means only critical issues will get fixed. Everything else will have to wait for a TVE3.5 release. When we think it is ready for public testing you will find a testbuild in our Area51 forum part. Since we have limited resources we are not able to give you a specific release date. It is ready when it is ready! We’ll hope you understand that. Thanks! Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation With MediaPortal 1.6.0 we switched to .NET4 so you need to make sure you have .NET4 installed on your computer (not needed if you are on Windows 8 because it comes with .NET4, but you NEED the .NET 3.5 features enabled!). Otherwise you are not able to install MediaPortal and the installer just quits. Download-Link: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Aside from that when doing a clean installation of 1.6.0 there is nothing else special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0 or 1.6.0 MP 1.7.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 installations can be upgraded to 1.7.0 Pre Release without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.6.0 or earlier, many of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.7.0 Pre Release! We have been working hard with the plugin developer community to ensure that updated versions of plugins are available as soon as possible. Run the ‘MediaPortal Extension Installer’ and select ‘Update All Installed’ from the file menu to update in one click. Skins: Warning! Due to the new features and changes introduced in 1.4.0, none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.7.0 Pre Release! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. 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 1.7.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.7.0 Pre Release, 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 1.7.0 Pre Release! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.7.0 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 1.7.0 Pre Release 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 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 1.7.0 Pre Release .::. :: Post a Comment ::
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MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release released
MediaPortal 1.6.0 Final We are very happy to present you the final version of MediaPortal 1.6.0 today. No new features were added between the Pre Release and the Final Release but a lot of bugs encountered by Team internal testing or because of our community who reported them in our bugforum have been fixed. Enjoy it! Highlights of this release Update to MySQL 5.6 to increase stability Due to performance and stability improvements we decided to switch from MySQL 5.1 to MySQL 5.6 which comes with InnoDB as default database engine. It is more reliable than MyISAM which was the default database engine in MySQL 5.1 and the cause of many TV database crashes. MySQL 5.6 gets only installed if you do a clean installation. If you perform an update, MySQL 5.1 will be kept. This is because users might still want to use MySQL 5.1 for other purposes than just MediaPortal. Enhanced TV experience There were quite some improvements like fix stuttering/dropped frame problems with H.264 video streams which use mixed field/frame (interlaced/progressive) encoding e.g. UK Freeview HDTV channels as well as handle some NZ Freeview channels which were causing problems. Recognition of DolbyDigital+ streams was added and a deadlock was fixed which leads to TV Server crashes or can cause a BSOD quite frequently on some setups. Music improvements A lot of things have been fixed and worked on in the Music section since our last release. Below you find the most important enhancements. Hopefully you will enjoy them! Last.FM rework Because Last.FM changed their API, the Last.fm Radio & scrobbling functions (Last.fm account needed for both!) are rewritten. As a bonus an awesome new AutoDJ function is added, which will attempt to play music forever, and you don’t even need a Last.fm account for it! Music Visualisations Music Visualisations got fixed and are now correctly listening to the beat. Furthermore while on the NowPlaying screen, you can now switch to (fullscreen) visualisations by pressing X on your keyboard. PageUp/PageDown are used to cycle through the available visualisations. To make the visualisations work you need to download and install them first. It is highly recommended to only use the visualisations provided by our visualisation package. Allmusic.com scraper update As you might have noticed, the Album/Artist scraping was broken in MediaPortal 1.5 because allmusic.com changed their layout. For your convenience, this has been fixed now. Gapless playback Gapless playback is working now and can be enabled through MediaPortal configuration. MyVideos scraper rework for better maintainability Not only Album/Artist scraping was broken in MediaPortal 1.5 but also Fanart/Poster scraping in MyVideos because of the TMDB API change . This has been completely fixed and was improved in a way that the MyVideos scraper can now be updated outside the MediaPortal release cycle which means we are more flexible when it comes to fix scraper issues. Other small improvements Besides the switch to .NET4 we also modified our core to support plugins like the amazing Auto3D plugin or the great Atmolight plugin. Furthermore we fixed a DPI scaling issue for Win 8.1 users and RefreshRate changing on multi monitor setups was fixed too. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for 1.6.0 by using the links below: Changelog: MediaPortal 1.6.0 Final Changelog: MediaPortal 1.6.0 Pre Release Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.6.0 Compiled Plugin related changes Community Plugin Developers should have a look at the following page to find out about the changes which will effect their extensions. Some of these changes are mandatory to become 1.6.0 compatible: changes which affect plugins Notes: The WifiRemote plugin can crash MediaPortal 1.6.0 while playing music. FanartHandler scraping does not work in Mediaportal 1.6.0 because plugin changes are needed. Intelligent Frame Correction (I.F.C ) plugin has been updated to work with MediaPortal 1.6.0. You can update via our Extension Manager or download the MPEI package from here ! There were several reports that the old I.F.C version did not work with MP 1.5.0 and MP 1.6.0 and causes LiveTV and Video to freeze. Additional Information: TVE3 Code freeze At the moment we are working hard on releasing a new version of our TVEngine – which is called TVE3.5. Development is still in early stage and some features are missing. To make a release of this happen in the future we have to put our current TVEngine (TVE3) on code freeze. This means only critical issues will get fixed. Everything else will have to wait for a TVE3.5 release. When we think it is ready for public testing you will find a testbuild in our Area51 forum part. Since we have limited resources we are not able to give you a specific release date. It is ready when it is ready! We’ll hope you understand that. Thanks! Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation With MediaPortal 1.6.0 we switched to .NET4 so you need to make sure you have .NET4 installed on your computer (not needed if you are on Windows 8 because it comes with .NET4). Otherwise you are not able to install MediaPortal and the installer just quits. Download-Link: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Aside from that when doing a clean installation of 1.6.0 there is nothing else special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0 or 1.5.0 or 1.6.0 Pre Release to MP 1.6.0 All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0 and of course 1.6.0 Pre Release installations can be upgraded to 1.6.0 without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.5.0 or earlier , then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.6.0 ! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. Skins: Warning ! Due to the new features and changes introduced in 1.4.0 , none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.6.0 ! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. 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 1.6.0 All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.6.0, 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 1.6.0! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.6.0 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 1.6.0 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 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 1.6.0 Final .::. :: Post a Comment ::
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MediaPortal 1.6.0 FINAL released