I have spent a fair bit of time refactoring the Media Browser code base, the idea has been to make the product a lot more extensible and maintainable. Lots of tests were added and lots of stability and performance fixes were applied.
The new code base is VERY different, so different I have been contemplating not calling the next version 2.0.12 and instead going with version 2.1 or 3.0.
The list of fixes is so long it probably will not fit in a single blog post. I will leave the list of fixes to the release notes. But I would like to note that overall, MB is now faster, more stable and easier to debug (both in production and dev)
But this post is not really about that, instead I would like to give some people a taste of the features to come:
New plugin architecture:
We now have a way for people to extend Media Browser without joining the Dev Team. The extendability allows you to extend our object model, add new entities, define new types of media and add items to the root menu.
DVR-MS support
I have two media centers, I tape stuff downstairs and watch stuff upstairs. To date DVR-MS support in MB has been a little woeful. No pretty metadata and horrendous filenames. The brand spanking new DVR-MS plugin solves this issue.
Multiple backdrops
This one has a real high WAF, we have a nice transition effect that cycles between multiple backdrops. The backdrops can either be local or we can fetch them from themoviedb.
Podcasts
I love this feature. The configurator now allows you to add whatever podcasts you want to MB and we will go ahead and stream them for you.
Play All and Random
Select a folder, hit play and a little window will pop up that will allow you to either play all the movies in the folder (recursively) or play them randomly. Really slick.
What's new in this folder?
Usually when you sit down to use your HTPC you want to look through the newest videos in your collection. Well, in detail view we will display a list of all the newest children on the right hand side. But wait, there's more, this list is clickable.
Global indexing
If you click on an actor, or index by actor the index will look through the whole collection. Not only at the items in the folder directly below. This allows you to see what TV shows your favorite actors are in.
ITunes HD Trailers
I wrote this puppy today. Pretty ITunes HD trailers with full metadata. Take that front-row. ITunes trailers is a plug-in, getting the videos to stream requires a bit of Codec-Foo we will have to have a wiki page on this.
Share your settings
You can now place your actor images on a network share, you can place your watched/unwatched status on a network share and you can place your display preferences on a network share. You don’t need to install a fancy shmancy database. It just works. Getting it to work was no easy task.
There is more
There are some additional goodies I have not told you about. So hold tight, the next MB is shaping up to be a fantastic release. I’m using it at home on all my media centers.
When will it be released?
When it's ready, there are still some bugs to crush and features to polish. Hold tight, I hope it won’t take too long. Keep in mind, I am going away in a week (for 3 weeks) so if we are not ready by the end of next week you are going to have to wait a month.