What's New
Here are some of the new features introduced in Media Center version 11. Items in italics are new in v11.1.
Views & Display Panes Ø Playlist/Smartlist View Header in Display Pane, where notes can be added to a Playlist/Smartlist.
Ø Library Browser view replaced by View drop-down menus at top of content pane.
Ø Improvements to Theater Mode
Ø Split View. View up to three different panes at once.
Ø New view customization system with more flexibility for thumbnail size, text, etc.
Ø Pane auto-sizing
New Supported File Types and Devices Ø Podcasts (feed.itpc.pcast.podcast), Podcasts RSS (rss) and Podcast XML (xml).
Ø MicroSoft Media Center Recorded Television File (.dvr-ms)
Ø DTS and AC3 audio (see Supported File Types for details)
Ø Video support for iPods.
Ø Adobe files (pdf)
Ø MS Office files (doc, xls, csv, ppt, mde and mdb)
Ø Text files (txt, rtf)
Ø Web Files (html, htm, mht)
Ø Programs (exe)
Ø CUE file playback support with sample-accurate MP3 seeking
Ø MKV and OGM (requires DirectX filters to be installed)
Ø Support for ATI HDTV card
Ø Support for Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150
Ø Full Support for the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 Device
Ø Full support for the Audible Store as a Service Plug-in
Ø Support for Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable)
Ø Support for some UPnP Devices
Ø Support for RIO 500
General Ø Improvements to the logging function (for troubleshooting)
Ø Improvements to thumbnail storage and loading engine (much faster now).
Ø Automatic library backup every three days
Ø New database engine capable of handling 100,000's of files and large amounts of metadata (lyrics, bios, etc.). Now 5 times faster.
Ø Several memory and speed enhancements -- like database and skin unloading when minimizing MC
Ø Much of MC's interface can be translated to other languages
Ø MC can run with guest permissions on Windows 2000 / Windows XP
Ø Multi-zone synchronization
Interface and Menu Items Ø Podcast menu in the tree
Ø New Spectrum Analyzer in Player Window
Ø Media Center now supports user-created language files that translate the interface into another languages.
Ø Webpages inside Media Center accept drag-and-frop of other webpages.
Ø New Library Header Bar appears at the top of the Content Pane when displaying View Schemes.
Ø Dropping files onto a Media Center shortcut begins playback
Ø New Library Browser view
Ø Many Theater View enhancements
Ø Online Shopping Services – integrated on-line shopping (see Service Manager).
TV, TiVo and Video Ø Support of Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 device.
Ø When resuming normal play from FF/REW, TV backtracks to compensate for reaction time.
Ø Supports TiVo 7.1
Playback Ø Podcasting Support with OneClick Podcast subscription.
Ø RealAudio files play natively in Media Center (requires applicable DirectShow filters)
Ø Play WM Profesionnal content as a bitstream (for S/PDIF or ASIO output)
Ø Play WavPack audio format (requires DirectShow filters)
Ø Native playback of m4a files (requires filters)
Ø Dropping files onto a Media Center shortcut begins playback
Ø Preview mode to play the intro of songs
Ø Video CD playback support
Import Ø Import Podcasts (manually or through scheduled automatic downloads)
Ø Integrated database import and update with smart broken linking repairing, and other nice features
Ø Import of new files types (see New Supported File Types and Devices
Search & Smartlists Ø New search syntax for date elapsed, using suffixes s,m,h,d,y (seconds, minutes, hours, days, years). Example: files less than 3 hours old: [Date Imported]=<3h.
Ø New ~fill search modifier automatically detects and fills space left on Handheld/Portable device
Ø Searching inside txt, html, source code files, and rtf documents using [Text]=
Ø Document support with full text searching / indexing
Tagging Ø Improved Real Audio tag importing
Ø File tagging happens in a background thread so MC can continue to be used while it's saving tags
Images Ø Photo Album support for the iPod
Ø Photos uploaded to an iPod now support NTSC output to a TV
Ø Basic image editing
Ø Enhanced album grouping for pictures so pictures taken together get grouped without any user intervention
Misc Ø UpnP Server can specify a fixed TCP port to use.
Ø UpnP Server no longer requires IP address configuration.
Ø Album Gain support.
Ø Audio resampling uses Shibatch's high-quality SSRC filters
Handhelds/Portables Ø OS-level eject on devices like the iPod
Ø Image support for iPod
Ø Album Art support for iPod Video
Ø Number of simultaneous conversions for handheld uploading is configurable
Ø Ipod Shuffle support (will not shuffle Podcasts)
Ø Improved support and performance for Creative Zen Touch and other "All Content" style WMDM devices
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