History

Some of the new features in Media Center v10

• Added "Media Mode" system (all, audio, images, video).

• View Schemes, Action Window, and 'My Computer' views honor Media Mode.

• Remember last Media Mode (Options > Startup).

• Display shows "Cover Art" instead of "None" when no display plug-in is running.

• Renamed mini-me to Mini View, MEGA-ME to Standard View, Full Screen to Full Screen View, and Hairstyle to Theater View.

• 3D visualization presets can be changed with the keyboard buttons 0...9.

• Improved "Green Eyes" and Z skins.

• Added tree selection skin item. (see Blue Steel for an example)

• Two new Theater View skins.

• Skins can now specify the Action Window list colors separate from other Action Window colors. (see Blue Steel for example)

• Options dialog remembers last page, even if cancel is pressed.

• Added new "Customize View..." dialog to List Style menu.

• Added Tree & View option "Auto collapse tree." (on by default)

• In "Customize Current View", moving a new column up will jump past all the unselected columns. (eliminates unnecessary clicks)

• Column auto-sizing uses a more sophisticated best fit system. (and is much faster than before).

• 'Favorites' toolbar button renamed 'Navigation' since it shows entire navigation menu along with favorites.

• Added "Copy to Clipboard" command to File Properties > Statistics pages.

• Added "List Style" to View Settings dialog.

• Introduced super high quality image shrinking -- will make thumbnails and program art look better.

• Two new Theater View skins, and new and improved Theater View skinning engine.

• Improved Navigation system.

• Theatre View configuration now allows unused root items to be hidden.

• Hairstyle auto-hide only runs when Play (replace) is selected (instead of on Enqueue and other commands)

• Play button now plays all visible when in file mode.

• If Theater View has a page with no options, it'll show a Back button instead of no buttons.

• Theater View remembers list style on a per-root basis (audio, images, video, etc.)

• Moved Theater View's "Display Options" out of Playing Now.

• Theater View's Playing Now allows selection of list vs. thumbs view.

• Theater View's Playing Now always shows the playing file (instead of always showing the first page of files).

• Redesigned Action Window system (now includes minimize/restore buttons, smaller icons, etc).

• Action Window changes based on selected Media Mode

• New "Camera" item (opens "Acquire Images").

• "Build Playlist" item in Action Window unifies all playlist creation, including Playing Now.

• Rip and Burn CDs through the Action Window.

• Added "Print" to the Action Window.

• Action Window and file lists have unique window names for easier access with automation tools like Girder.

• Selecting a Media Mode shows only the relevant schemes (e.g., selecting Audio Mode displays only Audio schemes in the tree).

• Now allows creation of empty view schemes.

• Default View Schemes have "Populate Tree" on by default for new libraries.

• By default, new view schemes use the same image as their parent.

• TV now has functionality of frequency override.

• Added option to use Window Media Player engine for video playback. (Options > Playback > Video).

• DirectX video viewer no longer using "windowless" VMR control.

• TiVo now starts in "Audio" or "Images" as appropriate.

• Added 'Aggressive Reset' option to Wave Out playback settings (enable if you hear bursts of sound when starting playback).

• When clicking the play button in a view with no files, MC will now start playing whatever is in Playing Now.

• Currently playing file item, in content view, now uses bold font.

• Added "no files -- double-click here to play all files" feature to Playing Now.

• Ability to import AAC tag information into MC.

• Import option "Don't import small files" now filters small images and small data files as well.

• New Action Window based system for burning and ripping CDs.

• Show individual track status for ripping/burning.

• CD burn action window shows time or MB remaining rather than percentage full.

• The previous type of CD burn (audio/data) is remembered for subsequent burn sessions.

• Drive letter from CD burning session is remembered for subsequent burn sessions.

• Burning large numbers of files now faster.

• Shuffle option added to right-click menu when viewing CD burn file list.

• CD text is enabled by default for CD burning.

• Checkboxes for selecting tracks to rip.

• New advanced ripping options for multi-rip, multi-encode processing.

• Default drive for advanced rip configuration is chosen based on CD being ripped.

• Full drive model name is now shown when configuring advanced ripping options.

• Download Manager window will come to the front when it intercepts a download from internet Explorer.

• 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.

• Library searching is now possible from 'Start' tree item.

• Added ~limit= search modifier for things like getting "3 random rock albums" or "all pop with no more than 2 songs by any artist."

• Added cut (ctrl+x) and delete to the search control and added support for right-hand shortcuts. (ctrl+insert, etc.)

• No duplicates (~nodup) smartlist modifier shows one of a file with duplicates instead of none of the files.

• Using the smartlist "No Duplicates" shuffles before running so there aren't a lot of track #1 files.

• Pressing F3 with an empty list search will prompt for a search before silently repeating the last search.

• Smartlist searches are shown in a separate, full length search bar.

• When creating a smartlist, you can select from a list of presets.

• 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).

• Setting a numeric field to 0 will show as empty instead of as 0.

• Tagging Mode and in-place editing now have auto-complete

• Redesigned Tagging Mode system.

• Pane in-place editing allowed without picking files below (applies to all visible files).

• MC fully supports reading / writing of Unicode (UTF-16) ID3v2 tags on MP3s.

• Added support for file format info for WMV & ASF files.

• Added support for taggin of WMV & ASF files.

• Added photo printing system. (File > Print Images...)

• Added "Ken Burn's Style" image slideshows. Press P while viewing images.

• iPod will store files numerically, not by filename to solve foreign character issue and any possible error code 80 problems.

• WMDM Devices will auto detect on connection and removal.

• Removable drive handhelds have a database -- synch and analyze are now much faster.

• More robust error reporting for problems during synchronization to iPod.

• Portable transfers will notify users of duplicates based on Artist/Album/Name/Genre/Track Number matching.

• Rename of tag info will not allow changes to Artist, Album, Genre, Name or Track Number on handhelds.

• Added a checkbox option to opt out of sending playlist info on synch to portables for players that are very slow in doing this.

• Synchronization for portables will send MC rating info to portable if 'Update tag from Portable' is deselected.

• When synchronizing generic drive portables, if 'Delete unselected files' is selected, only files in the default directory will be removed.

• Improved speed for WMDM interface with Portable Devices

• Added checkbox in Portable Sync dialogue to send all files.

• Can no longer drag files to the root handheld player item in the Action Window when there are multiple players present.

• Portable AW progress will show number of files, size of files to transfer, and avaialable space after transfer.

• Portable drag and drop files will respect order and transfer path.

• WMDM file transfer cancel will happen immediately, not at end of file.

• MC can read iTunes generated ratings when read from iPod

• Introduced experimental database caching system -- helps performance in many scenarios.

• 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.)