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
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MediaPortal 1.5.0 Pre-Release ready for testing!
After you might have read about the new release here , finally there it is! The next MediaPortal 2 alpha release – dubbed Alpha 2 – is out the door. Although progress since the winter-release has been immense, please be aware that this is still an alpha release and therefor 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 Server as a Service (# 3823 ): see MP2 Updates thread Improvements of share importer (# 4402 ), media shares are automatically imported once per day Configuration of Server settings from within the client (# 4283 ): Defining the server’s Dokan drive Defining the credentials the server uses to access network shares Installer and configuration improvements Simplified access to installation log files by providing a batch file (# 4329 ) Automatic download and install of LAV Filters during installation by offbyone LAV filters are preferred codecs (# 4364 ) New and improved plugins: New shutdown menu (# 3998 ) Weather plugin improvements by Valk: improved first run experience and a new feature to suggest location OnlineVideos plugin is included in this release News plugins includes new default news feeds per country Experimental 3D support (GUI / Video rendering of SBS/TAB videos, press F12 to toggle modes) ( 3D Video Support for MP2 ) The full change log is available here: MediaPortal 2 Alpha 2 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 Alpha2 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 Mantis & 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 2 .::. .::. Post a Comment .::. 
To create the map of Liberty City, creators stitched together nearly 80,000 in-game screenshots into around 3,000 panoramic views. [Read more] 
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 ::: 
Seagate will be shipping a 4TB hard drive that has the distinction of being the world’s first to include a 1TB per platter design. This basically means that each spinning disk in the hard drive has a capacity of 1TB, and that there are four of them. It’s not everyday that you can claim to that have something that’s the “world’s first”, so don’t be too hard on Seagate. This certainly isn’t the first hard drive to have a 4TB capacity, but apparently the new 1TB per platter design significantly increases the hard drive’s performance over the competition. It consumes 35 percent less power than comparable drives on the market with 4TB capacities, and at 145MB/s, it has the highest average data rate as well. But most importantly, the new design will also bring down costs. A hard drive in an external casing can be had for $212, while just the bare drive will cost around $190. Bring on the terabytes, Seagate. My body and my illegally downloaded movies are ready. 
It’s been a long journey that came to an end now. We are very happy to present you the final version of MediaPortal 1.3.0 today which includes an incredible amount of great new features, the stunning Titan skin, the completely revamped default Skins, bugfixes and usability enhancements. In fact, the amount of changes is so large that we can’t cover them here. So we only picked a few highlights of what is new in 1.3.0 compared to 1.2.0. Highlights of this release New Skins – Better than ever! The most obvious change for the 1.3.0 release is the new Titan skin, designed for users with a 16:9 display and a native resolution of 1080p. This skin has been refined during the beta and release candidate phases to provide an amazing out-of-the-box experience with MediaPortal. More information can be found in the Titan News Item . Team Titan did not stop at producing a new skin for MediaPortal. In addition to the new skin selection option, the installer also offers you the choice to install ‘ Titan Extended ‘ . This is a MediaPortal Extension which adds support for many community plugins, as well as a ‘ Titan Skin Updater ‘ plugin. Titan Skin Updater enables us to easily provide you with updates to the Titan skin – including bug fixes and support for new plugins – over the coming weeks and months. Titan is great, but for those who like the old default skins, these have also been enhanced. DefaultWide is designed for users with 16:9 display and a native resolution of 720p. Default is a non-widescreen skin for users with a 4:3 display and various native resolutions. Enhancements to the skin engine and more skin features The following significant skin engine enhancements have been made to improve the usability and extensibility of the MediaPortal user interface: Skin themes – Skin designers may offer themes for their skins. By convention, a skin theme should be selectable from the Settings -> General window where the skin selection is also made. Skin themes provide the ability of the skin designer to offer such features as colour changes, font changes, layout changes or any combination of these or other special skin appearance or function related changes. New menubutton control – A new versatile button control for displaying a list of selectable items. Skin settings – Skin settings provide skins with user-definable (by the skin designer) property settings that can be leveraged for many purposes including making logical decisions about when or how controls are displayed and what the controls display. Skin settings add the capability to have significant design control over GUI customization. TV guide genre/custom colouring – Provides the ability to highlight programs in the TV guide using colours. Based on your feedback, 1.3.0 now allows you to configure genre names in TV-Server setup so they work for all clients too! You may still configure genre colors in TV Client setup differently for each client. You may even enable or disable the colored buttons or borders and the the display of the genre map in the new TV Settings within MediaPortal. We have a lot to look forward to when skins start implementing these new features. In fact, some of these features are already being used in our new Default and Titan skins! Native Blu-ray Support MediaPortal can now play your unencrypted Blu-ray discs, including the menus, extras, etc! Development will still be ongoing because BD-J (Blu-ray Java discs) aren’t supported (yet) but for now you can enjoy the best video & audio quality right within MediaPortal, without the need of an external video player (like PowerDVD or TotalMedia Theatre) or a separate Blu-ray player. Besides the playback of encrypted Blu-ray discs there are a few other limitations at the moment about which you can read more in our Wiki . Attentention — Encrypted Blu-Ray discs require a 3rd party “on-the-fly” decoder. most commercial BD software comes with one that you can use for MediaPortal’s native player. The wiki (above) holds more information. Perfectly Smooth Video Playback with MediaPortal Audio Renderer Nothing is more annoying than having your favorite actor (or actress) ‘stuttering’ on the screen because several frames are dropped or repeated to keep the video and audio in sync. Smooth video playback is one of the key requirements of all movie enthusiasts; but even if you have the right hardware, it is still a big challenge to achieve it. So, our developers set out to create a solution for MediaPortal. It is called the “MediaPortal Audio Renderer (MPAR)” . With MPAR you are not only able to get perfectly smooth video playback but in addition you get also the chance to speed up your video stream on the fly e.g. from 23,976 fps to 25 fps which gives you no more dropped frames if your TV only supports a refreshrate of 50 Hz. Enhanced out of the box experience and improvements to codec configuration Some of you may experienced ‘codec hell’ or you maybe just don’t know exactly which codecs need to be installed to play all kind of your video and audio files. There is no need to worry about all this anymore because with MediaPortal 1.3 we will give you the option to install the LAV Filters . LAV Filters allow you to play most audio and video formats ‘out of the box’. No need to install codec packs or separate codecs and filters! Supported video acceleration types are DXVA, NVIDIA CUDA and Intel QuickSync, so you choose the best one for your HTPC hardware. In addition to that it’s now possible to configure all codec and/or filter properties from within MediaPortal Configuration. Simply click on the screwdriver icon right next to the specific codec/filter to set your preferred options. To give you even more control, we’ve also added a few new Codec sections like VC-1 & DivX. “Settings” inside MediaPortal Configuring MediaPortal is a lot easier in 1.3.0 Now you can configure almost all MediaPortal settings without leaving MediaPortal. Deda has dramatically enhanced the “Settings” section inside MediaPortal as you can see in our latest news: ‘ While you are waiting for 1.3.0 beta… ‘ Big rework of My Videos Many new features and enhancements are included. Some highlights: Folders view screen Database view screen Movie info screen Actor info screen (new screen works only if movie info have IMDBid, otherwise old screen will be visible) Configuration + Scan Fanart support rework for database movies Text file support in Videos For scraping accuracy every video file can be accompanied by a simple text file which contains only the IMDbid number (e.g. tt1234567). If a scraper, such as IMDb, supports search by IMDb’s ID number, MediaPortal will use the ID number for accurate scraping. Windows 8 Support Windows 8 is now officially supported by MediaPortal. Of course, supporting a new operating system is not trivial, and there might still be issues that we don’t know about. If you find a problem that seems to be specific to Windows 8, please open a bug report in the forum. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for 1.3.0 by using the following links: Changelog: MediaPortal Changelog: TV-Server Changelog: Installer – DeployTool Compiled List of Skin and Plugin related changes Community Skinners and Developers should have a look at the following pages to find out about the changes which will effect their extensions. Some of these changes are mandatory to become 1.3.0 compatible: changes which affect skins changes which affect plugins Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation When doing a clean installation of 1.3.0 final there is nothing special to worry about. Upgrade Notice : There is a small known issue during upgrades. The option “Use Existing Skin” doesn’t seem to work at the moment and Titan will always be choosen as the default skin after an upgrade. You can easily change to your prefered skin via MediaPortal configuration or even directly in MediaPortal -> Settings. We are working on a fix of this issue for you! Upgrading from 1.2.x, or 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC to 1.3.0 final All MediaPortal 1.2.x and 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC installations can be upgraded to 1.3.0 final, without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.x , then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.3.0 final ! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. If you are running MediaPortal 1.3.0 Alpha, Beta or RC , then all your plugins are compatible with 1.3.0 final . If a plugin provides skin files for MediaPortal’s Default skin, then the author should also check the Skin related changes. Skins: Warning ! Due to the new features and changes introduced, none of the 1.2.x nor 1.3.0 Alpha skins are compatible with 1.3.0 final ! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. Skins that work under 1.3.0 Beta also work under 1.3.0 final! Upgrading Extensions: The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the MediaPortal Extension Installer , and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version. Upgrading from 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier to 1.3.0 final All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.3.0 final, without losing your settings. If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier, then none of your extensions (plugins and skins) will work after the upgrade to 1.3.0 final! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.3.0 final compatible versions of your extensions are available before you start the upgrade! General note about Upgrades Manually stop TV-Service! On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.3.0 final we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager (enable the “all users” option), that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade. Custom TV-Service properties If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service (like restart on error options) , then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service. Feedback Skin related We are very curious what you think about our new skins in 1.3.0. Please share your thoughts in the forums created for feedback on Titan and the Default skins. Bugs If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our Bug Reports Forum . Make sure your report includes all the required information . Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean. Download Finally – the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes. If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release! .::. Download – MediaPortal 1.3.0 FINAL .::. :: Post a Comment :: 
Today Canonical announced Ubuntu for phones. The new operating system is designed to provide easier access to apps and content than is provided by current mobile OSes. They do this by relying on swipe gestures from the edges of the phone’s screen. “Every edge of the phone is used, letting you move faster between apps, settings and content. A short swipe from the left edge of the screen is all it takes to reveal your favourite apps. Page either left or right from the home screen to see the content you use most. A full left-to-right swipe reveals a screen showing all your open apps, while a swipe from the right brings you instantly to the last app you were using. … A swipe from the right edge takes you back to the last app you were using; another swipe takes you back to the app you used before that. It’s natural to keep many apps open at once, which is why Ubuntu was designed for multi-tasking. … Swiping up from the bottom edge of the phone reveals app controls.” The Ubuntu phone OS is built to work well on low-powered devices. Canonical will be at CES next week working on raising interest from manufacturers. As far as software goes, they have this to say: “Web apps are first class citizens on Ubuntu, with APIs that provide deep integration into the interface. HTML5 apps written for other platforms can be adapted to Ubuntu with ease, and we’re targeting standard cross-platform web app development frameworks like PhoneGap to make Ubuntu ‘just work’ for apps that use them.” (In the attached video, the phone OS discussion starts at about 6:37.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.