According to multiple reports, Web of Trust, one of the top privacy and security extensions for web browsers with over 140 million downloads, collects and sells some of the data of its users — and it does without properly anonymizing it. Upon learning about this, Mozilla, Google and Opera quickly pulled the extension off their respective extension stores. From a report on The Register: A browser extension which was found to be harvesting users’ browsing histories and selling them to third parties has had its availability pulled from a number of web browsers’ add-on repositories. Last week, an investigative report by journalists at the Hamburg-based German television broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), revealed that Web of Trust Services (WoT) had been harvesting netizens’ web browsing histories through its browser add-on and then selling them to third parties. While WoT claimed it anonymised the data that it sold, the journalists were able to identify more than 50 users from the sample data it acquired from an intermediary. NDR quoted the data protection commissioner of Hamburg, Johannes Caspar, criticising WoT for not adequately establishing whether users consented to the tracking and selling of their browsing data. Those consent issues have resulted in the browser add-on being pulled from the add-on repositories of both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, although those who have already installed the extension in their browsers will need to manually uninstall it to stop their browsing being tracked. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tag: plugin
New Default: Mozilla Temporarily Disables Flash In Firefox
Trailrunner7 writes with news that “Mozilla has taken the unusual step of disabling by default all versions of Flash in Firefox.” Two flaws that came to light from the recent document dump from Hacking Team could be used by an attacker to gain remote code execution. From Threatpost’s article: One of the flaws is in Action Script 3 while the other is in the BitMapData component of Flash. Exploits for these vulnerabilities were found in the data taken from HackingTeam in the attack disclosed last week. An exploit for one of the Flash vulnerabilities, the one in ActionScript 3, has been integrated into the Angler exploit kit already and there’s a module for it in the Metasploit Framework, as well. Reader Mickeycaskill adds a link to TechWeek Europe’s article, which says these are the 37th and 38th flaws found in Flash so far this month, and that the development “is a blow for Flash after Alex Stamos, Facebook’s new chief security officer, urged Adobe to set an ‘end of life’ date for the much-maligned software.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Default: Mozilla Temporarily Disables Flash In Firefox
Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance
Thorfinn.au writes with this paper from four researchers (Jehan-François Pâris, Ahmed Amer, Darrell D. E. Long, and Thomas Schwarz, S. J.), with an interesting approach to long-term, fault-tolerant storage: As the prices of magnetic storage continue to decrease, the cost of replacing failed disks becomes increasingly dominated by the cost of the service call itself. We propose to eliminate these calls by building disk arrays that contain enough spare disks to operate without any human intervention during their whole lifetime. To evaluate the feasibility of this approach, we have simulated the behaviour of two-dimensional disk arrays with N parity disks and N(N – 1)/2 data disks under realistic failure and repair assumptions. Our conclusion is that having N(N + 1)/2 spare disks is more than enough to achieve a 99.999 percent probability of not losing data over four years. We observe that the same objectives cannot be reached with RAID level 6 organizations and would require RAID stripes that could tolerate triple disk failures. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance
Pro Tools Is Releasing a Free Version of Its Legendary Audio Software
Pro Tools is the industry standard for digital audio production, but if you wanna get with the pros, you’ve always had to pay. No longer! Now, there’s a free version of the software targeted at beginners, and that rules. Read more…
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Pro Tools Is Releasing a Free Version of Its Legendary Audio Software
MediaPortal 1.7.0 FINAL released
MediaPortal 1.7.0 Final We are very happy to present you the final version of MediaPortal 1.7.0 today. This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes. Please report any problems in the bug reporting sections of the forum. 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. Attention: This change made us ‘bump’ the plugin subsystems, so there is a chance you need an updated plugin to be compatible with the 1.7.0 Release. 1.7 Pre Release compatible plugins will still work fine with this release. Enhancements to the TV and Video OSDs TV recording thumbs and comskip markers were not properly shown in the TV and Video Info 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. We also updated the library to v0.7.67. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for MP 1.7.0 by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.7.0 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 1.7.0 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 1.7.0 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, 1.6.0 and 1.7 Pre Release to 1.7.0 All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0, 1.6.0 and 1.7 Pre Release installations can be upgraded to 1.7.0, without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.6.0 or earlier , then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.7.0 ! 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 1.7.0 ! 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 1.7.0 All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.7.0, 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 1.7.0! 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 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 Final .::. :: Post a Comment ::
MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release released
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 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
MediaPortal 2 Alpha 4 released
We are proud to offer a special Christmas gift for you: MediaPortal 2 Alpha 4 ! Although this version is still tagged “Alpha”, which means there might be still problems, don’t hesitate to try it. It works very smoothly and will probably be the last Alpha release before we take the next steps to a “Beta” release! Be sure to read the instructions at the end of this news regarding installation, upgrade and extension compatibility. Why MediaPortal 2? If you don’t know what it’s all about, read the blog: MediaPortal 2: What does it bring to the table? or just give it a go and find out what the most advanced media center dares to offer you in future. Summary of changes This release brings a lot of new technologies to your HTPC. We upgraded to .NET 4.5.1 framework , switched from SlimDX to SharpDX , switched the default database to SQLite , updated many 3rd party libraries, implemented new features and of course fixed some bugs. Improved user experience: Major improvements to Media Library navigation and layouts, user selections are now saved and reused the next time. This affects filter, sorting and layout of each screen. Reduced complexity in Media Library menu items, moved filters into own dialog. Added support for browsing Media Library shares by filesystem structure. Improved GUI performance due to newly added VirtualizingWrapPanel (which reduces memory required and speeds up display because only visible items are allocated). Improved media importing performance. Improved video thumbnail creation. Improved database performance with no size limits due to SQLite as new default database. Fixes Browsing network shares could fail under certain cases. Some minor fixes in the MediaPortal UPnP library. Updated plugins OnlineVideos plugin is included in this release. SlimTV plugin (both NativeTV and MPExtended) has been significantly improved for Alpha 4 release. WebRadio plugin to play your favourite web radio streams inside MP2! More plugins are available! (via our MP2 Plugins Downloads section on the website and forum) WiFi configuration plugin (included). CEC remote plugin allows controlling MP2. The full change log is available here: MediaPortal 2 Alpha 4 change log Screenshots Installation Before installing MediaPortal 2 make sure all requirements are installed. Then extract the downloaded .zip archive and simply run the .msi installer file. For screenshots or further details, refer to our Getting Started wiki. Upgrade notes Due to the new default database (SQLite) you cannot use an older version (SQLCE, MySQL) with the default installation. You must add your media shares again. However, performance is much improved compared to Alpha 3. Local cached online data will be kept (like covers and backdrops). Feedback & Support Discuss this release in the official release thread MediaPortal 2 Alpha 4 If you are looking for further information please check out MediaPortal 2 wiki first. We are working constantly to improve it, and you can help! If you don’t find an answer there create a new thread in MediaPortal 2 forums . If you find a bug, please check our Issue Tracker & bug report forums first. If it has not been reported already, create a new thread. Download 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 2.0 Alpha 4 .::. .::. Download MP2 plugins .::. .::. Post a Comment .::.
MediaPortal 1.6.0 Pre Release ready!
MediaPortal 1.6.0 Pre Release Attached to this news you will find the Pre Release version of MediaPortal 1.6.0. Pre Releases are provided as a way for the community to test and give feedback on all the exciting things we have lined up for the next release. We allocate about one month for Pre Release testing. In that time we only do bug fixes… and then comes the final release! 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 aswell 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. 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 Pre Release by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal 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 Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation Since we switched to .NET4 you need to make sure you got .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 Pre Release 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 to 1.6.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0 and 1.5.0 installations can be upgraded to 1.6.0 Pre Release, 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 Pre Release ! 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 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 1.6.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.6.0 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 1.6.0 Pre Release! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.6.0 Pre Release 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 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 1.6.0 Pre Release .::. :: Post a Comment ::
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MediaPortal 1.6.0 Pre Release ready!
MediaPortal 1.5.0 FINAL Released
MediaPortal 1.5.0 Released We are proud to announce the release of the Final version of MediaPortal 1.5.0. The download link is at the bottom of this news item. Thanks to our great community for a lot of testing during the last four weeks. Because of this we were able to provide many bugfixes in all areas and hopefully make this release the best one ever! New features PowerScheduler++ Integrated In previous releases PowerScheduler was installed during the MediaPortal installation and PowerScheduler++ could be installed as an extension. With MediaPortal 1.5 we’ve integrated the PowerScheduler++ functionality into MediaPortal. This change should make configuration easier (Plug&Play) and provides lots of new features like scheduled system reboot, configurable away mode and more options for remote clients. Improved IPTV Support Today most of us receive our TV via terrestrial, cable or satellite transmissions. However, the global increase in stability and speed of the internet over the past few years is making it possible for more and more internet service providers to offer television services which you can receive via your internet connection. MediaPortal has been able to receive so-called IPTV for about 4 years. In order to keep up-to-date with the newest IPTV transmission techniques, we’ve overhauled our IPTV support to ensure MediaPortal 1.5 is capable of meeting your IPTV needs now and well into the future. CableCARD™ Tuner Support If you live in America, are passionate about HTPCs, and haven’t heard about CableCARD… chances are you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years! For those of us living in other parts of the world who have no idea what a CableCARD is: maybe you’re familiar with using CAMs and CI slots to receive encrypted channels from your TV provider? Well, a CableCARD is similar to a CAM. Up until a couple of years ago if you wanted to use an HTPC to receive encrypted cable TV in America the only option was a complicated and sometimes temperamental IR blaster setup. CableCARD has finally given Americans (and some Canadians) the ability to easily use their HTPC to receive encrypted cable TV. With MediaPortal 1.5 we’ve added support for CableCARD tuners… with one caveat. Some channels or programs may not be receivable due to digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on the content. Exactly which channels are available varies between cable providers. Generally speaking, premium and “subscription” channels such as HBO, Showtime, PPV and XXX will not be receivable… but other channels like TBS, FX, TNT, USA, ESPN, NFL, MLB, Fox Sports are usually no problem. For people who are savvy with technical jargon, that means you’ll be able to receive “copy freely” content. ViewModeSwitcher Plugin Enhancements A major update of this plugin to fix some long-standing problems, improve the performance and add continuous Black-Bar detection/removal capability. ViewModeSwitcher enables automatic changing of the zoom mode/aspect ratio selection and can optionally perform continuous or one-shot ‘Black Bar’ removal, for both TV and video playback. It provides similar functionality to the Intelligent Frame Correction plugin. Improved Video & TV Recording Thumbnails With MediaPortal 1.5 we’ve added an option to change the time offset for thumbnails. Furthermore, if you use composite thumbnails (e.g. 2×2 tiles) the time between the thumbnail parts will be calculated automatically from the video duration. This means no more useless thumbnails! Full list of changes Aside from the main features listed above there are also many other smaller enhancements and bug fixes in this release. A big thanks goes out to all our developers who have carried on working on MediaPortal even in the European summer when there are so many other things they could do with their time. You can review the complete change log for MP 1.5.0 at the following link: Changelog: MediaPortal Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MP 1.5.0 Compatibility There are no changes in MediaPortal 1.5.0 that will break compatibility with skins or extensions. Every plugin and skin which worked in MP 1.4.0 will also work in MP 1.5.0. Windows XP support ends – Support for Windows 8.1 added In this release, Windows XP is no longer supported. When you install MediaPortal on Windows XP you will get a warning that the OS is unsupported. However, as far as we know everything still works (and we even put in a couple of XP-specific fixes) so there is no need to panic. Moving forward, in the interest of further improving MediaPortal we will start a long process of cleaning up the code base. This will involve updating the system requirements to the point where maintaining any semblance of Windows XP compatibility will be simply impossible. So, if you are using MediaPortal and Windows XP, this is a good time to think about upgrading to a more modern OS. Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation When doing a clean installation of MP 1.5.0 there is nothing special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0 or 1.5.0 pre-release to 1.5.0 All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0 and of course 1.5.0 pre-release installations can be upgraded to 1.5.0 without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.3.x , then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.5.0 ! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. If you are running earlier versions of MediaPortal, it is likely that none of your plugins are compatible with 1.5.0 . 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 in 1.4.0 , none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.5.0 ! 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 1.5.0 All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.5.0 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 1.5.0! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.5.0 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 files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.5.0 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. Known Issues – My Videos Downloading Fanart and Actor Details Due to API changes scraping Fanart and Actor details in “My Videos” is currently broken. Furthermore you are not able to change covers in GUI (e.g. if you want to have a cover in your language). We think this is a main feature of MediaPortal but it was too late (and therefore not well enough tested) to include it in MP 1.5.0. Nevertheless, in our opinion it is worth to provide a build that is MP 1.5.0 + those MyVideos scraper fixes which you can find under the link below. Link: MediaPortal 1.5.0 Final + MyVideos internal scraper rework In the linked Area 51 thread you will find instructions of how and what to test. We need your help with testing this so that we can include it in 1.6.0. Thanks! 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 1.5.0 Final .::. Post a Comment in Forum
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MediaPortal 1.5.0 FINAL Released