History
Some of the new features in Media Center v10
Ø Added "Media Mode" system (all, audio, images, video).
Ø View Schemes, Action Window, and 'My Computer' views honor Media Mode.
Ø Remember last Media Mode (Options > Startup).
Ø Display shows "Cover Art" instead of "None" when no display plug-in is running.
Ø Renamed mini-me to Mini View, MEGA-ME to Standard View, Full Screen to Full Screen View, and Hairstyle to Theater View.
Ø 3D visualization presets can be changed with the keyboard buttons 0...9.
Ø Improved "Green Eyes" and Z skins.
Ø Added tree selection skin item. (see Blue Steel for an example)
Ø Two new Theater View skins.
Ø Skins can now specify the Action Window list colors separate from other Action Window colors. (see Blue Steel for example)
Ø Options dialog remembers last page, even if cancel is pressed.
Ø Added new "Customize View..." dialog to List Style menu.
Ø Added Tree & View option "Auto collapse tree." (on by default)
Ø In "Customize Current View", moving a new column up will jump past all the unselected columns. (eliminates unnecessary clicks)
Ø Column auto-sizing uses a more sophisticated best fit system. (and is much faster than before).
Ø 'Favorites' toolbar button renamed 'Navigation' since it shows entire navigation menu along with favorites.
Ø Added "Copy to Clipboard" command to File Properties > Statistics pages.
Ø Added "List Style" to View Settings dialog.
Ø Introduced super high quality image shrinking -- will make thumbnails and program art look better.
Ø Two new Theater View skins, and new and improved Theater View skinning engine.
Ø Improved Navigation system.
Ø Theatre View configuration now allows unused root items to be hidden.
Ø Hairstyle auto-hide only runs when Play (replace) is selected (instead of on Enqueue and other commands)
Ø Play button now plays all visible when in file mode.
Ø If Theater View has a page with no options, it'll show a Back button instead of no buttons.
Ø Theater View remembers list style on a per-root basis (audio, images, video, etc.)
Ø Moved Theater View's "Display Options" out of Playing Now.
Ø Theater View's Playing Now allows selection of list vs. thumbs view.
Ø Theater View's Playing Now always shows the playing file (instead of always showing the first page of files).
Ø Redesigned Action Window system (now includes minimize/restore buttons, smaller icons, etc).
Ø Action Window changes based on selected Media Mode
Ø New "Camera" item (opens "Acquire Images").
Ø "Build Playlist" item in Action Window unifies all playlist creation, including Playing Now.
Ø Rip and Burn CDs through the Action Window.
Ø Added "Print" to the Action Window.
Ø Action Window and file lists have unique window names for easier access with automation tools like Girder.
Ø Selecting a Media Mode shows only the relevant schemes (e.g., selecting Audio Mode displays only Audio schemes in the tree).
Ø Now allows creation of empty view schemes.
Ø Default View Schemes have "Populate Tree" on by default for new libraries.
Ø By default, new view schemes use the same image as their parent.
Ø TV now has functionality of frequency override.
Ø Added option to use Window Media Player engine for video playback. (Options > Playback > Video).
Ø DirectX video viewer no longer using "windowless" VMR control.
Ø TiVo now starts in "Audio" or "Images" as appropriate.
Ø Added 'Aggressive Reset' option to Wave Out playback settings (enable if you hear bursts of sound when starting playback).
Ø When clicking the play button in a view with no files, MC will now start playing whatever is in Playing Now.
Ø Currently playing file item, in content view, now uses bold font.
Ø Added "no files -- double-click here to play all files" feature to Playing Now.
Ø Ability to import AAC tag information into MC.
Ø Import option "Don't import small files" now filters small images and small data files as well.
Ø New Action Window based system for burning and ripping CDs.
Ø Show individual track status for ripping/burning.
Ø CD burn action window shows time or MB remaining rather than percentage full.
Ø The previous type of CD burn (audio/data) is remembered for subsequent burn sessions.
Ø Drive letter from CD burning session is remembered for subsequent burn sessions.
Ø Burning large numbers of files now faster.
Ø Shuffle option added to right-click menu when viewing CD burn file list.
Ø CD text is enabled by default for CD burning.
Ø Checkboxes for selecting tracks to rip.
Ø New advanced ripping options for multi-rip, multi-encode processing.
Ø Default drive for advanced rip configuration is chosen based on CD being ripped.
Ø Full drive model name is now shown when configuring advanced ripping options.
Ø Download Manager window will come to the front when it intercepts a download from internet Explorer.
Ø Pressing Ctrl + V when using "Add URL" dialog will now paste the clipboard content into the Edit Box instead of sending it directly to Download Manager and starting download.
Ø Library searching is now possible from 'Start' tree item.
Ø Added ~limit= search modifier for things like getting "3 random rock albums" or "all pop with no more than 2 songs by any artist."
Ø Added cut (ctrl+x) and delete to the search control and added support for right-hand shortcuts. (ctrl+insert, etc.)
Ø No duplicates (~nodup) smartlist modifier shows one of a file with duplicates instead of none of the files.
Ø Using the smartlist "No Duplicates" shuffles before running so there aren't a lot of track #1 files.
Ø Pressing F3 with an empty list search will prompt for a search before silently repeating the last search.
Ø Smartlist searches are shown in a separate, full length search bar.
Ø When creating a smartlist, you can select from a list of presets.
Ø Search post process commands (start with ~) are evaluated in order, and multiples of the same command can be used (some advanced smartlists may need to be tuned to work).
Ø Setting a numeric field to 0 will show as empty instead of as 0.
Ø Tagging Mode and in-place editing now have auto-complete
Ø Redesigned Tagging Mode system.
Ø Pane in-place editing allowed without picking files below (applies to all visible files).
Ø MC fully supports reading / writing of Unicode (UTF-16) ID3v2 tags on MP3s.
Ø Added support for file format info for WMV & ASF files.
Ø Added support for taggin of WMV & ASF files.
Ø Added photo printing system. (File > Print Images...)
Ø Added "Ken Burn's Style" image slideshows. Press P while viewing images.
Ø iPod will store files numerically, not by filename to solve foreign character issue and any possible error code 80 problems.
Ø WMDM Devices will auto detect on connection and removal.
Ø Removable drive handhelds have a database -- synch and analyze are now much faster.
Ø More robust error reporting for problems during synchronization to iPod.
Ø Portable transfers will notify users of duplicates based on Artist/Album/Name/Genre/Track Number matching.
Ø Rename of tag info will not allow changes to Artist, Album, Genre, Name or Track Number on handhelds.
Ø Added a checkbox option to opt out of sending playlist info on synch to portables for players that are very slow in doing this.
Ø Synchronization for portables will send MC rating info to portable if 'Update tag from Portable' is deselected.
Ø When synchronizing generic drive portables, if 'Delete unselected files' is selected, only files in the default directory will be removed.
Ø Improved speed for WMDM interface with Portable Devices
Ø Added checkbox in Portable Sync dialogue to send all files.
Ø Can no longer drag files to the root handheld player item in the Action Window when there are multiple players present.
Ø Portable AW progress will show number of files, size of files to transfer, and avaialable space after transfer.
Ø Portable drag and drop files will respect order and transfer path.
Ø WMDM file transfer cancel will happen immediately, not at end of file.
Ø MC can read iTunes generated ratings when read from iPod
Ø Introduced experimental database caching system -- helps performance in many scenarios.
Ø Access Control replaces Filters (View > Access Control). If an empty password is used, the program will never prompt for a password again.
Ø Speed improvements to the database / view system.
Ø Web Media shows in "Audio" mode as well as "All" mode.
Ø Media Center always shows tray icon ('Minimize to System Tray' option changes how Media Center minimizes), and it toggles Media Center's visibility..
Ø Print Wizard remembers printer and user settings between sessions.
Ø Alternate playback settings changed in the Player > Player Options menu. (Ctrl+Shift+P)
Ø Date sorting no longer sorts new items to the top by default.
Ø Added additional CD information to multimatch YADB dialog.
Ø Default sorting uses 'Album Artist (auto)' instead of plain 'Artist'. (affects SDK / automation / NetRemote).
Ø Locate On Disk (external) will select the desired file in Explorer.
Ø Added keyboard shortcuts for quick list style changing.
Ø Adding Zone=x to file list part of the command line cause MC to issue the playback command to the specified zone. (ex. /Play "c:\1.mp3|c:\2.mp3|zone=1")
Some of the new features in Media Center v9
Ø Acquire images directly from a digital camera or a scanner
Ø View images in black & white or sipia
Ø MC fully supports images (internal and external) and thumbnails when connected to Media Server.
Ø Quickly rate the currently playing song by pressing Ctrl + Shift + rating number (0-5)
Ø New Toolbars: Top, Bottom and context-sensitive toolbars are easily customizable.
Ø Added Ctrl+Shift+R shortcut to toggle shuffle mode.
Ø Added some some support for Sony RoomLink.
Ø Added "Erase CD/DVD" to right click menu in tree when a re-writable cd or dvd is in the drive.
Ø DVD+RW can now be "erased" by MC. It actually just writes an empty session to the beginning of the disk.
Ø TV audio compression can now be configured (in custom recording profiles).
Ø Media Center's automation can now be accessed from outside the program's process.
Ø When searching a view that's a subset of the whole library, MC shows a "search entire library" message when there are no hits.
Ø Tag parsing in Download Manager is back.
Ø Added clean file properties option "Move articles to end (i.e. 'The Beatles' to 'Beatles, The')."
Ø core graphics component now support per-pixel alpha blending.
Ø MC supports 32-bit PNG files in skinning engine(s). (allows alpha drop shadows, etc.)