MediaPortal

The winter release of MediaPortal 2 Alpha 1 has just been released. This build has things like better input handling, copy and paste, new plugins, the option to switch from SQL CE to MySQL and a new skin for MediaPortal 2. Remember this is still only Alpha release and is meant for testing so don’t go upgrading your main HTPC just yet unless you like living on the edge.

You can get the download and more information on the Team Media Portal site.

 

Summary of changes

Here is a list of major changes since the autumn release:

The internal player handling of MediaPortal 2 got extended to control an unlimited number of players, which allows us nice things like Video Backgrounds

Better input handling including support for key shortcuts (see Keyboard shortcuts)

Copy and paste support for Text Controls / Virtual Keyboard

Added UPnP compression support, which improves network performance

Reworked the Fanart handling both on server (extensible provider structure) and client (faster loading)

Multiple monitors are now supported correctly, MP2-Client can also run fullscreen on secondary screen

Integrated news plugin, using news ticker in home screen

Support for more power options. This will be used later for an advanced shutdown menu (WiP)

Support for reading metadata from video MP4-tags

Support for picture geo location (lookup country, state, city from GPS coordinates inside EXIF)

Several tweaks done to further improve performance

And last but not least:  The new skin for MediaPortal 2  – Titanium!

Additionally there are new plugins available, ready to be used with the current Winter Release:

Now it’s possible to use MySQL instead of Microsoft SQLCE, resulting in much better performance and no size limit for database. The required plugin can be downloaded separately from: (MySQL database plugin)

Online Videos MP2 has been updated for Winter Release (OnlineVideos MP2)

(coming soon: Integrated TVE3.5 test build:  Test builds for Native MP2 TV)

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