The Spring update of the Windows based Media Center system MediaPortal has been released. This release has a lot of new features including a new Windows mode (using Alt-Enter), improved video playback engine, improved media library and improved Windows Media Center remote support.

Head over to team-mediaportal.com for the details and the download links.

Release Notes:

  • Skin engine:
    • New window mode, toggle between them by “ALT-Enter”:
      • Windowed always on top
      • Windowed (normal)
      • Fullscreen
    • Windowed modes keep aspect ratio of Skin and position/size will be restored after restart
    • Fixed wrong MP2 window size after sleep/resume cycle due to resolution changes
    • Added feature to prevent focus stealing during startup phase
    • Updated freetype library to fix occasional crashes
    • Switched texture loading back to GDI (with fallback to FreeImage) to improve decoding performance
    • Added new feature to specify Texture alignment in images sources
    • Extended IScreenControl to allow temporary disabling “TopMost” behavior of MP2 main form (used for OnlineVideos)
    • Fixed logging of shader load errors
  • Video playback:
    • Updated TsReader for smoother playback of TV and recordings
    • Refresh Rate Changer got extended configuration options to allow custom refresh rate mappings (i.e. 25 fps -> 50 Hz, or 23 fps -> 24 Hz)
    • Added support for external subtitles by xy-VSfilter
    • Added new shortcuts to video fullscreen: “Yellow” to toggle subs, “Blue” to toggle audio streams
  • Media Library:
    • Major improvements to Image Player: player starts in “still” mode, allows skipping forward/backward through images. “Play” starts the known slide show. Automatically create playlist to play all audio or image items from current view.
    • New filter for audio “Album Artist”
    • Extended support for IMDB-id detection of non-xml .nfo files
    • Extended online lookup support at TheMovieDb by using tmdb ids
    • Hide “playlists” action from non-media screens
    • Extended SeriesMetadataExtractor to support user defined regular expressions and pre- and post-match text replacements (to clean up filenames)
    • Fixed possible NRE in MKV tag handling
    • Fixed potential crash for imports of UNC locations when checking for IsVirtualSource
    • Improved memory caching logic to avoid “out of memory” for large imports
    • Fixed Resource Server that could return wrong url in some cases (fixes loading of fanart / channel logos)
    • Changed streaming parameters for remote resource bridge (trying to fix interruption of media playback in multiseat)
  • Updates and fixes for SlimTV / TVE 3:
    • Updated core to MP1.14 version
    • Added option to hide “All Channels” group
    • Added new feature to show episode information in TV guide and recording planning
    • Improved schedules management: added scheduled programs list / series view
    • Extended recordings screen to show more details (channel, recording times),
    • Fixed occasional synchronisation issue of channels when switching groups
    • Fixed page up/down, home/end navigation inside EPG view
    • Fixed tuning details filenames due to wrong zip encoding
    • Internal changes to use ILocalFsResourceAccessor for files, while rtsp streams still use INetworkResourceAccessor
    • Reworked group / channel / zap handling to use correct group and channel indexes
    • Changes to UPnP system (removed IP affiinity in some calls to improve device detection, sending UPnP “update configuration” after resume from standby to improve reconnection)
    • Fixed user priorities (solves conflicts with EPG grabber and tuning requests)
    • Fixed recording/canceling of programs of series schedules
    • Disabled redundant TV Thumbnail creation (done by MP2)
    • Fixed endless loop in recording management if folder is missing
    • Fixed storing/reading of some settings due to case-sensitive DB storage.
  • BlueVision skin:
    • Implemented animated page transitions and seamless navigation between home pages
    • Fixed help label overlapping
    • Fixed flickering of “currently playing” group button and changed the icon
    • More fine tuning in all themes
    • Using new ImageSourceWrapper for smooth transitions of fanart images
    • Moved player controls into new “currently playing” screen (right button in top group menu), so they don’t overlap footer contents
    • Added help texts for menu items to make features clearer to new users
    • New “Windows 10” theme
  • OnlineVideos 2
    • Added BrowserPlayer support for MP2, sites like Amazon Prime and Netflix should be working fine
    • Added support for placing BrowserPlayer above the MP2 GUI
  • New plugins:
    • Added UPnP renderer plugin
    • Emulators plugin available for download
  • Installer:
    • Fixed detection of x86 VC redistributables on x64 systems.
    • Removed license link from initial dialog
  • MCE remote support:
    • Fixed duplicated “next” / “previous” key handling
    • Reduced logging to log unmapped keys only once
    • Improved compatibility with some remotes by handling “Windows” keys properly

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