It's been a year since I joined the MediaPortal Team.  As I was reviewing the events of the past year, I was overwhelmed by what has been accomplished . So I decided to write an Inside Scoop on what I see as the Team's major achievements this year, or my Team Top Ten Countdown of 2010 - David Letterman, move over!

Team Top Ten Countdown of 2010

10. Stuttering Playback Guide

Everyone wants stutter free playback, well te3hpurp, one of our new testers, worked with many of our expert Team developers to write a comprehensive guide for troubleshooting Stuttering Playback issues. The new guide, covers everything from display adapter and driver issues to TV tuner issues, codecs, and system requirements.  It contains a lot of detail and tools to help you diagnose your issue, as well as recommendations on how to get the best quality playback in MediaPortal. Of course, it is included in our new Wiki, under both Troubleshooting and our FAQ pages.   It is pretty amazing and definitely deserves a spot in our top ten achievements!

9. Skin Enhancements

As a skinner, I cannot neglect the many awesome enhancements to our skin engine in the past year. Many new skin features, developed by ajp8164, were already added in MediaPortal 1.1.0, such as shadow text, image borders and scrolling text on buttons and fadelabels. That's just the start, there are a LOT more features coming in MediaPortal 1.2.0.

To the delight (and relief) of the whole team, our skin engine guru, Bavarian, returned. He rapidly reviewed and smoothly implemented many enhancements to our user interface as well as our skin engine.

Thanks to one of our new developers, Migue, item count now displays the current item as well as the total number of items. In 1.2.0 skins will have more control over what displays in lists, can index lists by number, align images in nine possible ways, and animations will all work correctly for the first time in MP history.  Yeah, these things get skinners excited, but the end result is even more sophisticated and usable skins which benefit everyone.

8. Wiki

If we want new users, we need a great Wiki, period! OK, I may be prejudiced, since it is one of my main interests; but many new users do not join our Forums, or find them intimidating and filled with technical details and terms beyond their grasp. The Wiki should be the first stop for all users to learn even the most advanced features and options of MediaPortal.

Our new Wiki offers much easier and better searching and browsing, WYSIWYG data entry, easy linking to internal or external web pages and attachment of files as well as resizing of images. Thus, it is much easier for everyone to contribute. We have only just begun, but we have great plans to make our Wiki a vital and valuable resource.

Recently our newest Docs Group member, DieBagger, developed a whole new process to make it easier to document our development: specifically changes that affect skins and plugins. We already had Skin and Plugin Changes pages, but now each change is entered on it's own page, via an easy to use template which ensures consistent and complete documentation and auto indexes all changes on the main index page as well as on skin and plugin architecture pages. This is just the beginning of what we hope to achieve with our new Wiki.

7. Downloads Repository

Our new Downloads Repository is so significant I think it deserves separate mention. My favorite new feature is the ability to search for all extensions by the MP version they support. I also love that extensions can be listed in more than one category, so if you are looking for plugins related to movies and videos, they are all in one place! The whole presentation looks so much more attractive and is much easier to use. After years of trying get 'experts' to fix our old repository I have to give high a standing ovation for solving this pernicious issue!

The new options for voting and reviewing extensions have already proven to be very popular! Plus you can keep track of all your installed extensions by marking them as installed and viewing your personal list via the My Page Directory menu option.

6. Website

Well you can see the results for yourself! However, our new website is not just a pretty face to allure new users. It provides a huge volume of information to help use our online facilities, and highlights the importance of our MP extensions more than ever before. Our new Press Room provides information and support for reviewers. Our Sponsors page is the beginning of our campaign to increase sponsorship and acquire partners for MediaPortal. Best of all is the flashy new MediaPortal promo video courtesy of infinite.loop! All in all, it is a huge step towards creating a more polished image to match our new logo.

5. Design Group

For me, our new Design Group is a significant achievement. catavolt, the author of the PureVision skins, became our Design Group Manager and jumped right into testing many new features and bug fixes, providing extremely valuable feedback to improve our user interface, and integrating the relevant changes into our default skins, Blue3/wide.

Then he lured some exciting new members to join the Design Group:

• tgx – who made MP history by designing one of the most creative, elegant skins ever: Black Glass which reached near perfect stability in record time
• cul8er – who has changed the face of MP forever with his Fanart Handler plugin, X-Factor skin, and his latest spectacular CLR skin, not to mention his new MPGrooveshark plugin (to stream music)

Add to that the knowledge of our master skinner Harley, who has completed more than 10 MP skins! His latest skin, Fidelity, combines stunning elegance with top performance, all neatly implemented in a 10MB package.

Imagine what these guys are going to do for us in the coming year, and even more in MP 2!

4. MediaPortal Extension Installer (MPEI)

One of the most beneficial achievements, for new users especially, was the development of the MediaPortal Extension Installer (MPEI) by Dukus. MPEI provides a standard, easy way to browse, install, uninstall, update and even configure plugins and skins. The companion Extensions browser lets you perform the same functions within MP. Released only a few months ago, there are already over 60 extensions using MPEI.  I can personally attest to its success since double the number of users now download the aMPed skin via MPEI than via Google Code and our MP Downloads Repository combined.  Dukus has already started working on ways to integrate MPEI with the new Downloads Repository.

3. MP 2 Development

In 2010, more of our developers started working on MP 2 development,.  Some of our new Team members are dedicated solely to MP 2. Features planning has begun and the development of MP 2 is really speeding up! The Skinning Contest was just the beginning. Albert will no doubt be keeping us posted in his Blogs. Since this is what we are all looking forward to, it gets my #3 vote!

2. New Team Members

When elliottmc first became Test Group Manager, one of his top priorities was to invite more testers who use a variety of different hardware and features of MP. Along with one of our Forum Super Moderators: Spragleknas, elliottmc spearheaded a major recruitment drive, and we invited many new Team members in 2010, some of whom have begun working on MediaPortal 2:

• Testers: nyt, Helios61, Rivera, te3hpurp, robyf, romuz, riksmith. sebastiii
  
• Development:· armandp, Deda, Owlsroost, SilentException, Migue, davidf, mm1352000, Baboonanza, jameson_uk
• Design: tgx, cul8er
• Documentation: DieBagger
• Moderators: funkstar

Our testers have proven to be much more than testers, and, along with our new developers, have already made significant contributions to MediaPortal, as you will see in the coming months. They brought inspiration and energy to our Team. So I have to list this as the #2 achievement of the year, because in the end it is the people behind the technology that make it great.

1. MP 1.1.0 release

Drum roll please! Our #1 achievement for 2010 was the release of MP 1.1.x.

After months of development and testing, we managed to release the most stable version of MP in history. We added many features and performance improvements, plus Windows 7 support, but most of all we listened to our users, and made the installation and stability of MediaPortal better than it has ever been. It almost killed us, but it was worth it.  

MP 1.2.0 looks like it is going to top even that, but I won't list it as an achievement yet, since it is still in alpha stage of development.

Once version 1.1.0 was released, and the feature freeze was lifted, our team worked hard to respond to our creative community developers.

Since Jan 1, 2010:

• Code Patches:· 89 Approved, 36 Rejected, 4 Assigned, 9 Evaluate, 8 WIP, 6 Pending
• EPG Grabbers/Tuning details:· 70 Approved, 5 Rejected, 1 Assigned, 4 Evaluate and 16 Pending
• Localization/Translation: 24 Approved, 6 Pending
• Movie Info Grabbers:· 13 Approved, 3 Rejected, 6 Pending

Many of these submissions, particularly code patches, can require a significant amount of time to review, test and implement safely. However, the side benefit is that we find some of our best Team developers this way.

We implemented a new process to improve handling code patches. Our Development Group managers now review all patch submissions and either reject them, or set them for evaluation by a developer who then assigns them for review.  Patches will no longer be set and left as Postponed.

What's next?

Well if 2010 was not enough for you, just wait till you see what is coming in 2011.  Version 1.2.0 offers a whole new level of features, performance improvements and GUI enhancements!  Here are just a few teasers to whet your appetite (in no particular order).

More Skin Enhancements

Yes, even more ajp8164 skin enhancements are headed our way - like table layouts, cover flow, improved buttons, line spacing, 'skinnable' SMS keyboards, tile fill for images, image masks, and a lot more! The real fun starts when you see what our talented skin designers can do with these awesome new tools!

On the horizon, in 1.2.0 beta, arion_p has developed a whole new feature for skin expressions. A skin expression is a construct that allows calculations to be performed on property values and the result substituted in the relevant skin control tag/attribute. It all started with adding the ability to combine localized or translated labels with skin properties. However, arion_p did not stop there, he added string formats and functions like trim, math calculations, conversions, date/time functions, and conditions including complex Boolean logic and comparisons.  For skin developers this is akin to opening a door to a whole new virtual reality!

New Life to Videos

Deda, another of our new developers, has given new life to our Videos feature for version 1.2.0, with better matching of movie titles, fanart download and support, multiple posters, movie review info, actors details, actors by movies, and options to play all videos in a folder.  On top of that Sebastiii has contributed several enhancements to control subtitles position, use them with ffdshow, and view Movie Editions in DVD playback..  If you want to know more, check out the Wiki - Videos Database 1.2.0.

Enhancements to Music

We already made some improvements to Music in version 1.1.0, such as Vu meters in Now Playing. However, there are a lot more enhancements coming thanks to our music maestro, hwahrmann, and one of our new, very inspired developers, jameson_uk. Watch out for improved music views and levels, graphic images for group views, improved navigation, menu support in Now Playing and much more. Hey I can't tell you everything, or there will be no surprises!

Major Improvements to Radio

Our Test Group Manager, elliotmc, decided to take our Radio feature under his wing, and make it fly, or else! Soon you will be able to use all the same features in Radio as in TV, like recorded radio, scheduled recordings, and a full EPG Guide with groups.

Upgrade for Pictures

In version 1.2.0, thanks to Gemx, you can play all your camera videos while viewing Pictures. Just add your video file extensions in Picture Extensions configuration and any video files in your pictures folders will be accessible. At last!!!

There is also a feast of awesome new features planned, but I can't tell you about that yet!

MediaPortal Audio Renderer = Perfectly Smooth Video Playback

Smooth video playback is one of the main desires of all movie enthusiasts; but even if you have the right hardware, it can still be a big challenge to achieve.  So, three of our developers (tourettes, arion_p, and Owlsroost ) set out to create a solution for MediaPortal. It is called the "MediaPortal Audio Renderer".  It is already available for testing in our General Development Forum - MediaPortal Audio renderer - better video playback quality

It is likely going to make techies world wide wet their pants!  You are going to hear a lot more about it in 2011!  Stay tuned for our news release once it is 'ready' for public testing.

Promotion

We started to step up our promotion of MediaPortal in 2010.  We increased our news releases and Blogs, added this Inside Scoop series, started a presence on FaceBook and Twitter, and generally improved the presentation of MediaPortal about tenfold!  We increased our sponsors, and now promote them on our new website Sponsors page. We added reviews of MediaPortal to our website, and a Press Room, all in preparation for a proper PR campaign in 2011. We plan to start regular press releases and explore opportunities for partnerships with other open source apps and even commercial firms, like hardware suppliers.

How can you help?  Easy!  Post on any forums you frequent and tell them about the improvements and developments in MediaPortal.  Link to our Wiki pages to help new users get started.  Visit our FaceBook and Twitter pages, and retweet or Tweet yourself about MP development.  When we start our PR campaign we will provide you with many more ways you can help!

What's Missing?

Sleep!!!!  If I overlooked anything, that's my excuse, and I apologize. Please add it to the comments for this Blog.  Thanks.

 

Happy New Year! 

May it bring us all even more delight using MediaPortal.

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