Finally here it is! The next MediaPortal 2 alpha release – dubbed Alpha 3 – is out the door. Although progress since Alpha 2 has been immense, please be aware that this is still an alpha release and therefore not meant to be used on a productive system. Make sure that you read the instructions at the end of this news regarding installation, upgrade and extension compatibility. Summary of changes Improved user experience: Added support for resuming playback, the resume position stored in central MediaLibrary Added support for more image formats that can be used inside MP2 Added audio album cover support for Titanium and Reflexion skin Added animated fanart backgrounds for Series and Movies Improved navigation, restoring focus now works better when returning to previous screen Improved structure inside media navigation (Series and Audio) Fixes Fixed opacity mask rendering in SkinEngine MediaLibrary importer now only does refresh imports Updated plugins Updated OnlineVideos plugin is included in this release News plugin will now download default news feeds per country on first run Weather plugin updated for new API New plugins are available! New WiFi configuration plugin (included) WebRadio plugin to play your favourite web radio streams inside MP2! CEC remote plugin allows controlling MP2 ( Forum ) SlimTV plugin got a reworked miniguide ( Forum ) – Download: SlimTV – NativeTV or SlimTV – MPExtended from the new MP2 Plugins section on our website. The full change log is available here: MediaPortal 2 Alpha 3 change log Screenshots Installation Before installing MediaPortal 2, you need to make sure all requirements are installed. Then extract the downloaded .zip archive and simply run the .msi installer file. For screenshots refer to our installation wiki . Upgrade notes If you had an earlier version of MP2 installed you might not see your media items inside the libraries. The metadata for the media items have been extended (like the added geographic location support for images). Remove your existing share, then add a new one for the same location. Local cached online data will be kept (like covers and backdrops). Feedback & Support Discuss this release in the official release thread MediaPortal 2 Alpha 3 If you are looking for further information please check out MediaPortal 2 wiki first. We are heavily working to improve it. If you don’t find an answer there create a new thread in MediaPortal 2 forums . If you found 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 3 .::. .::. Download MP2 plugins .::. .::. Post a Comment .::.
MediaPortal 1.5.0 Pre-Release Attached to this news you will find the pre-release version of MediaPortal 1.5.0. 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! So what’s in store? 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 “subsciption” 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 pre-release 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 pre-release 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 pre-release. Windows XP support ends – Support for Windows 8.1 preview 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 1.5.0 pre-release there is nothing special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final or 1.4.0 to 1.5.0 pre-release All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final and 1.4.0 installations can be upgraded to 1.5.0 pre-release, 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 pre-release ! 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 pre-release . 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 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 1.5.0 pre-release All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.5.0 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 1.5.0 pre-release! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.5.0 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 files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.5.0 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 1.5.0 Pre 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 1.5.0 Pre-Release .::. Post a Comment in Forum 
MediaPortal 2 has progressed quite nicely, bringing exciting new features for every release! The rapid increase in features is a result of the clean code, structure and architecture that MediaPortal 2 is built upon. The main goal of MediaPortal 2 is to provide the best mediacenter software available when it comes to usability, flexibility and extensibility. While you’re waiting for the highly anticipated Alpha 2 release of MediaPortal 2 , here is a short summary of what MediaPortal 2 will bring to the table. Easy installation and configuration The installation process is quite straight forward, with only one setting to configure; whether you are installing as a client, a server – or both (we’ll get back to that later). The entire process takes less than two minutes. Then you’re going to need to do some configuration, like the path to where your media is located, or Windows power saving settings. Everything is configured from inside the MediaPortal 2 GUI – no need to exit to launch a configuration utility any more! Low resource usage and swift startup When you first start MediaPortal 2 , you’ll first notice the rather simple splash screen without any information on what’s going on in the background. The simple reason for this is that there really isn’t any time to read anything before you enter MediaPortal 2 – about five seconds later! Feel free to use task manager to monitor how much CPU and memory MediaPortal 2 uses and you’ll find that it uses very little resources. This is of course good for both economy and the environment, but most of all it means the road to a near inaudible system is suddenly far less bumpy. Robust and flexible skin engine Oh, the skin engine! Where to start! As you might have read already, the skin engine is totally rewritten and in contrast to MediaPortal 1 , the MediaPortal 2 user interface is mainly based on vector graphics and uses less images. The advantage of using vector definitions for graphical elements instead of pixel-graphics will make them scale to different resolutions without any loss of quality. Kinda cool when we’re entering the 4K era, ey? Another cool thing is how robust the skin engine is. If you’re a long time MediaPortal 1 user, you might remember the days we searched the forum for zip’s containing plugins and skin-files to match your preferred skin – just hoping that everything was the same version. MediaPortal 1 has come a long way since then (thank god!), many thanks to MPEI . Because the skins are constructed hierarchically in MediaPortal 2 , there will never be an issue where a particular plugin won’t work with a specific skin. Worst case scenario the template for the default skin will be used. Dedicated client / server – architecture The MediaPortal 2 Server is responsible for the central management of all media. You can connect multiple clients to the server and across all those clients you get the same data. Besides the media files itself, this also includes the meta data like genre, summary, actors, as well as the play count, watched state and last time a media has been played. As a result the client is just that – a client to browse and play content from the server. You can just hook up a new computer with the MediaPortal 2 Client installed, connect to the server, and you are just about ready to go! Of course you can still use one computer for both client and server. There is no graphical user interface (GUI) available when running the server only, but you can always monitor the status of the server from the system tray. Complete modular design Another thing that separates MediaPortal 2 from every other media center is the modular design. In MediaPortal 2 everything is a plugin. Everything! Skins, media players – they are all “just a plug-in”. Due to the modular design, one plugin won’t screw up another plugin and every plugin can thus easily be improved, added/removed or replaced. Which brings us to the next thing… Multiple player architecture Due to the modular design mentioned above, there is no longer “the” media player, as in all other media centers, but rather “a” media player. You can even call multiple players at the same time, which means you now can watch a muted channel while you listen to music (great for football/soccer half-time breaks!) or enjoy the benefits of having Picture-in-Picture (PiP)! Oh, and have you heard about video background? Basically, it is a perfectly looped video used as skin background. You can see a video of it below, but believe me – it is even better than it looks when you get it on your big screen! Try the all new Titanium skin with this loop , and be amazed! Ease-of-use localization MediaPortal 2 uses the web-based localization platform Transifex . Translations are done by both team members and our excellent community. Even if MediaPortal 2 is only in Alpha-state, localization support is quite advanced already – currently 18 languages are more than 90 % complete ! Built-in meta data extractors Not only does MediaPortal 2 offer built-in meta data extractors for music/audio, but it even extracts meta data from videos and pictures. Got a lot of MKV or MP4 media files? You tag them – we read them! Got a GPS within you digital camera, or tag your pics manually with the geo-location? Great! MediaPortal 2 reads it from the EXIF meta data and allows you to display and filter by the country/region/city where they have been taken. And more… much more… As stated before, this is just a short summary of what MediaPortal 2 has to offer. Lots of minor – but still important stuff is already implemented, like proper 3rd party library usage, HTML build reports and excellent thumbnail handling – done with Windows API with fallback method. Follow the development of MediaPortal 2 If you want to follow what’s going on regarding MediaPortal 2 , then I recommend that you subscribe to this thread . If you really want to see how much MediaPortal 2 has progressed since the last release, have a look at the changelog . GIVE IT A SPIN! MediaPortal 2 (Alpha 2) is just around the corner. Make sure to give it a try once it is released! (And if you can’t wait – or want to help test – you can find a pre-release here ) ::: Discussion thread for this blog ::: 
An anonymous reader writes in with news of the continuing saga of Java patches and exploits. “If you’re a Mac user who suddenly can’t access websites or run applications that rely on Java, you’re not alone. For the second time in a month, Apple has silently blocked the latest version of Java 7 from running on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or higher via its XProtect anti-malware tool. Apple hasn’t issued any official statements advising users of the change or its reasons, but it’s a safe bet that the company has deemed Oracle’s most recent update to Java insecure. That’s why the company stealthily disabled Java on Macs back on Jan. 10, the same day a Java vulnerability was being exploited in the wild.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 