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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