Software update: MediaPortal 2 alpha 4

The fourth alpha release of MediaPortal version 2.0 has been released. 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 & feel of the program can be adjusted. The major changes made in this release can be found below.

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 favorite 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