Team Update Blog #1
Team Update Blog #1
Hello, my friendly MePo fans! Your Team members have been hard at work trying new things, overcoming roadblocks and perfecting the awesomeness that is MediaPortal; and we wish to share them with our loyal and lovable community (i.e. you). We will be breaking down our updates into three sections: Development, Documents and Public Relations/Promotions. There are, of course, other areas of our Team (administrators, moderators, testers...) and you will learn more about them soon in a feature blog called “Unsung Heroes”; but for now…. Onward and upward!
Development
MediaPortal 1
While some things have been slated for 1.3, others are still trying to make the cut. Doing the “Dance of the Forum Threads” can glean you an abundance of information, but let’s try to slim-line it for you:
Videos – A lot of work was done with MediaPortal’s video playback and MyVideos plugin for 1.2, but the work has not stopped there. Here is a link describing what changes are forthcoming as well as screen shots and comments. Be on the lookout for MediaPortal to handle your BD Discs/Rips/ISOs like a champ, along with VC1 & VC-1i codec support comparable to H.264 and extended CC/Post Processing support. Also… don’t let anyone know it was me that told you, but configuration settings could also be riding shotgun soon. No, sir (ma’am?), no more ‘back seat’ driving needed to control your database and shares as these settings will be offered in the MediaPortal GUI.
TV – We are hard at work with trying to come up with a few improvements to our TV-Server. A new setup wizard for a simple, flawless configuration is being worked up, as well as fixing many issues with ATSC/US providers for television and increased hardware support for TV cards. Everyone is very excited about these changes and many are hanging on every word, but the truth is, if we want better support for US cable and ATSC then we could use some more US developers to help. For more information on TV updates, keep an eye for threads like:
Multichannel decryption improvements
Digital Devices: cascaded CAM support
And others that will appear in the general development section of the forum.
Codecs – I will not go into what a codec is and why you need it, but suffice it to say that previous versions of MediaPortal, while having support for a lot of your videos, have been lacking in codec support. Well, my friends, I happy to announce that LAV filters are being considered for the next release. Will it happen? I cannot say. But… you can. Try out the new filters here and let us know what you think.
MediaPortal 2
Development of MP2 has come a long way, with tons of steps forward already been completed. As everyone knows, the demand for development of MP1 is ever growing and it hampers the resources for MP2. We need more testers for MP2… plain and simple. With some good testing issues can get identified and corrected much easier. The developers working on MP2 need our help, and I will address that issue a bit later in this blog. For now, let’s move on to what our Docs guys have been up to.
Documentation
Our Docs group has made some improvements lately and through the grapevine I hear a ‘tell-all’ blog is forthcoming. Should be chock full of juicy gossip! I have been given the Okay to give you all a bit of a teaser though, so let’s start out with the new guys. Wonkyd, Vuego, and Rogerleifert have all been added to the Docs group and they have been a great deal of help with the home page and downloads repository, Wiki and IRC. Additions/Corrections have already been made in guides for:
- Home Automation
- Styling (with help pages)
- TV Server
- Radio Configuration
- Display/Graphics Adapter Setup
- Supported TV Card List
They are also currently working on an improved process for adding, viewing and tracking changes to each release of MediaPortal and have already begun updating pages to version 1.2.x. Remember you can use the ‘Recent Changes’ option on the Wiki menu to see all of the latest changes to the Wiki.
Public Relations/Promotions
We are about to have some fun! With the addition of new blogs, we are also rolling out some more ways to get the community more active. Contests with prizes, MediaPortal T-Shirts, Trade Shows and more are all headed your way. Our number one goal to promote MediaPortal is not for money, no sir. You can make a donation if you wish, of course, what we want the most from our community is to tell your friends and family. Our wants and needs are different, though. What we need is for a few good testers and developers to step up and lend a hand with making MP1 better and, maybe more importantly, getting MP2 ready to go. MediaPortal is open source, so you can make a difference. The team at MediaPortal is not an exclusive club. We welcome new members on a regular basis, and we would love to welcome you as well. Take a moment and think if there is any way you can help make MediaPortal better. I bet you can find at least one!
Well, I hope this has helped you to understand what we have forthcoming and we are excited for everyone to start using our future releases. We feel truly appreciative that you enjoy using MediaPortal! Thanks, everyone.
FACT: You do not need a parachute to sky dive. You only need a parachute if you plan to sky dive more than once!
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