It’s been a long time in development but the final version of MediaPortal 1.3.0 has been release today. The new version has the new great looking Titan skin which is optimised for a 16:9 display running at 1080p. There is also a Titan Extended which is a supports community plugins. In MediaPortal 1.3.0 there is now unencrypted Blu-ray support so you should be able to play your Blu-rays with menu and extras. For encrypted disks MediaPortal can use Blu-ray apps like PowerDVD, more information is available on their wiki.
In the update there is a new video and audio renderer which will give much better video and audio performance which MediaPortal say will give you perfectly smooth video playback and on the fly frame rate changes. There are improvements to the settings section so you can now configure MediaPortal without leaving the application. My Videos has had a lot of changes, there are folders views, database view screens, movie info screens, actor info and fan art. Also added are support for text files in videos using the IMDbid number.
Windows 8 is now officially supported so get downloading and give it a try. More details about MediaPortal 1.3.0 can be found on the MediaPortal blog where you can also find the download options.
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
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.
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Why use Media Portal over XBMC ? Must admit I have never really tried Media Portal.