Download MediaPortal 1.2.0 beta

The first beta release of version 1.2.0 of MediaPortal became available on Friday. 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. New in version 1.2.0 is an improved skin engine, which allows customization of the appearance. Various improvements have also been made to the video feature and performance improvements can be observed. The main changes since the alpha are discussed below.

MediaPortal 1.2.0 Beta RELEASED!

The release of 1.2.0 beta is a big milestone in the MP 1.2.0 development cycle. During its development we had to make a few tough decisions, which ultimately resulted in a lot of work and delays, yet also brought MP1 to a completely new level of usability.

Notable Changes since 1.2.0 alpha

It would be too much to list all changes between 1.1.0 and 1.2.0. So the following list will focus on what happened since the release of 1.2.0 Alpha.

Find out about the changes introduced in 1.2.0 Alpha in this separate news.

Usability Changes

• Plugin Version Check
  The biggest change in usability is our new version check for plugins. From 1.2.0 beta on, users will never again face the problem of having a plugin enabled which is incompatible with the installed version of MP.
  Attention!
  • Because of this change, none of your currently installed plugins will work with 1.2.0 beta. They will all get disabled and appear in a new section in the Configuration Tool: Incompatible Plugins. Please refer to the developers of the plugins you use for compatible versions.
  • the MediaPortal Extension Installer (MPEI) will be updated in beta2/RC1 of 1.2.0 to automatically incorporate the version information into the .mpe2 file. So plugin developers just have to re-save their MPEI package (if the plugin is already compatible).
• Music and Video View Definition Changes
  Setting up and changing views for music and video was previously complicated and confusing. We have now updated the interface to make setup far more logical and allow views to be easily re-ordered.
  Attention!
  • Because of this change any user defined views you had setup will be lost when upgrading. Hopefully we have mitigated this by replacing the default music views more in-line with those in Kiwijunglist’s guide to setting up music. To learn how to use the new features, see our Wiki: Music Views 1.2.
• Music Changes
  The music section of MediaPortal has been given a thorough health check with lots of changes behind the scenes as well as lots of bug fixes and changes to make things more logical and consistent. There are also some new features
  • Better handling of multi-disc albums
  • A playlist mode
  • Last.fm Love / Ban functions on music Now Playing screen

  More details can be found in an earlier blog. To learn about the changes see Play Music 1.2 in our Wiki.

• TV – Fast Forward
  Fast Forward inside TV should now work smoothly with up to 4x playback speed, which is the maximum for Windows 7 (Note: Windows XP supports only 2x, due to it’s audio renderer ). Fast Reverse will still work in a skip-step like fashion.
• TV – improved LiveTv in multiseat setups
  1.2.0 beta vastly lowers the workload placed on the hard drive by live TV. This virtually eliminates the stuttering and picture corruption that was sometimes seen before on client systems while watching live TV.
• TV – increased performance of channel selector
  Opening and browsing through the channel selector inside TV was very slow for some users. So we increased its performance!
• DVD Playback – added Closed Captioning support
  We have added supported for Closed Captioning (CC) to the DVD playback. You can learn about it’s configuration and usage in our Wiki.
• SMS Style input
  You now have the option to use SMS style input with your remote control, just like you know from your cell-phone. If you want to use the standard keyboard, then you can switch the input style back to it by pressing the related button inside the virtual keyboard.
• Play all videos inside a folder
  This is a feature many users requested for a long time. In this release we introduce the option to play all videos inside a folder with one option.
• MediaPortal Configuration restructured
  We have reworked the sturcture of MediaPortal Configuration in order to group the options more logically.

New Features

• New Design
  With MediaPortal 1.2.0 beta we introduce a brand new look, that replaces Blue3 and Blue3wide which served us well during the last years. We have made the Blue3/wide skin files available to the community, in case someone wishes to make it available, and maintain it, as an extension. The Team certainly hopes that this will happen.
  Besides the new look, we also introduced a couple of new controls for our awesome skinners in the community, plus a brand new layout called “Coverflow” which you can see in action in the teaser video or 1.2.0 beta.
• Hauppauge Colossus TV Card Support
  With this new release we introduce full support of Hauppauge’s new Colossus TV card. We want to thank our community member WileECoyote for his support, which enabled us to add this to 1.2.0 beta.
• Image Caching option for skins
  While this does not sound like much, it will dramatically decrease the loading time required to switch between various screens or sections of MediaPortal, especially for HD skins which use high resolution background images. Skinners should take a look at this new Image Caching skin feature when updating their work for 1.2.0 beta compatibility.
• Cleanup
  Obsolete plugins removed
  We removed the following obsolete/no longer maintained plugins in 1.2.0 beta.
  • Video Editor
  • Burner
  • MAME
  • Foobar2000