Software Update: MediaPortal 1.9 Pre Release

While MediaPortal 2.0 has also been in the works for a while, a new development version from the 1.x series has appeared. With this program, a Windows machine can be used as the heart of the multimedia hardware in the living room. This makes it easy to listen to radio and music, as well as watch videos and DVDs. TV programs can also be recorded. By means of plug-ins and extensions, the functionality can be expanded and the look and feel of the program can be adjusted. Here are the main changes in this release:

MediaPortal 1.9.0 Pre-Release

Attached to this news you will find the Pre Release version of MediaPortal 1.9.0. 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 with your help.

For this Pre Release we’ve put our focus once more on Bug fixing and improved stability. However, there are a couple of new features. Skin designers will like the new and functions. There are enhancements to the video resolution logos that will give you more information about the video you are watching. There is a new sort method in My Videos called Name with Duration. There are several improvements to logging, and a significant number of bug fixes.

Highlights of this release

UNC Streaming for Live TV
The default protocol for LiveTV streaming on a multi-seat setup is RTSP. MediaPortal has an option to change this to UNC for those that experience problems with RTSP. In the last release, we fixed some long-standing issues with UNC paths. Therefore, this option (which was previously hidden) is now present in configuration.

thumbnails
Thumbnails are a really important way for you to get feedback about video files, and these have been improved in several ways in this release. Individual plugins can now use their own default thumbs. Issues with large thumbnail creation are fixed.

Content Protection
We found a number of issues with content protection. It wasn’t working properly in date view in ‘Pictures’. Also, the PIN code was shown unencrypted in the configuration files. This is all now fixed, and the PIN code now supports letters as well as numbers. However, you will need to reset all your PIN codes for this release.

Titan Extended
The Titan team have decided to stop development on Titan Extended. Therefore it has been removed from the installer. If you already have Titan Extended, this won’t affect you. For clean installs you will need to download Titan Extended manually from the plugins repository in order to find skin files for plugins. For 1.9.0, plugin developers will need to provide the Titan skin files as part of their own installers.

Titan TNC will be the new skin name of the Titan Extended theme, and this will be released as a stand-alone skin, probably at the same time as the 1.9 Final release.

Full list of changes

• Changelog: MediaPortal
• What’s new for MediaPortal 1.9.0 (Pre Release)