Personally, I’m waiting on Mikinho‘s offering which is supposed to be released sometime tonight. His application is supposed to allow for menu manipulation without any resource editing as in Media Center Studio. You can track its development at TGB here.

I do plan on giving both a try, however, so check in sometime tomorrow for some screens and maybe a quick comparison.

Update to this release if you were using version 07.29.09b.

Download Here

Fixes

• Episodes in one folder would not be displayed correctly if View Order was set to “Aired” (07.29.09b)
• Regex fix which could cause Sesaon folders to not be identified correctly and also prevent renaming files (07.31.09)

Additions/Changes

• Now creates DvdId xml files to work with Win7/Vista’s DVD Library
  • Specify location of DvdInfoCache in Options->Movies Tab
  • Have multiple extenders/HTPCs?  Share your DvdInfoCache folder.
• Rename function has been rewritten, should properly rename all forms of subtitles/multi-file movies
• Refresh/Scan rate for TV has been sped up
• Extract Episode Image link is now available even if no Series Id exists
• Season Summaries are now available for you to edit
  • Used by Media Browser to display a Season Summary instead of a list of available episodes
• Lock state for seasons is now saved in a Season folder series.xml

Download Here

Fixes

• Cancel button would remain disabled if movie contained backdrop but no poster
• ISOs are no longer run through MediaInfo
• TV Folders containing movies (that are identified as a movie) would not be listed correctly in the media collection list

Additions/Changes

• Brand spankin new application icon, thanks to forum user NineBall (thread).
• Selected item highlight color has been changed to a light gray so you can see the text color status of the selected item
• Backdrop preview window will now remember your last selection (add, replace all, replace current)
• MetaData is now chached for 7 hours for TMDb and TVDb
• Cached MetaData info is now automatically loaded/displayed while cache is still active and not expired
• Locking/Unlocking an item will now automatically lock/unlock all children items
  • Please note that if children have no xml file, an empty one w/ minimal data will have to be created to save the <LockData> value.
• Revert to Previous Version button added to Cancel button (movies only)
  • The version before any save is backed up to cache and can be reverted back.
  • This means that if you Lock/Unlock (since it writes the <LockData> tag to the mymovies.xml), the previous version would be the previously locked/unlocked version only.
  • When you revert, the current version is backed up and the reverted version becomes the current, so you can switch between the two versions by clicking on revert again.
• Uses Movie Thumbnailer (download) to extract thumbnails of TV episodes if one is not found on TVDb.
  • You have to specify the path to mtn.exe in Options->TV Tab, specifying this location automatically means you want meta<browser/> to try and extract a thumbnail if one does not exist on TVDb.
  • mtn is only used if no thumbnail is found on TVDb and is not available as an either/or.  TVDb is still the preferred method to grab Episode Images.
• Keyboard shortcuts have been added
  • Ctrl+E – Export List
  • Ctrl+I – Process Selected Item (either movie, series, season)
  • Ctrl+T – Treat as Movie/Folder (only for movie containing folders)
  • Ctrl+L – Lock/Unlock
  • Ctrl+O – Open Containing Folder
  • Ctrl+R – Refresh Selected Item
  • Ctrl+S – Save MetaData (Also used in Image Preview windows and Movie/Series search window to select the item)
  • Ctrl+F – Fech MetaData
  • Ctrl+X – Cancel Changes
  • Ctrl+Z – Revert to Previous Version (movies only)
  • Ctrl+P – Poster Preview Window
  • Ctrl+B – Backdrop Preview Window
  • Ctrl+N – Banner Preview Window
  • Ctrl+M – Download/Extract Episode Image
  • Ctrl+A – Download Actor Images
  • Ctrl+(G or up or down)- – Brings focus back to Media Collection List
  • Ctrl+(left or right) – Browse multiple backdrops (if you have multiple backdrops for a particular movie/series/season)
  • Ctrl+(1-9) (not on numpad) – Select the corresponding tab
  • Ctrl+Numpad 4 – Previous tab
  • Ctrl+Numpad 6 – Next tab

Edit: The shortcut icon used on the desktop for vista seems to be a lower res one, to see the real/nice icon create the shortcut from the actual .exe in C:\Program Files\MetaBrowser … i’ll fix it in the next release.

Download Here

Fixes

• Auto fill of empty fields in mymovies.xml has been added again
• Check for infinite loop (shortcut pointing back to an already scanned location)
• A folder rename issue which would not update the path in the Media Collection, making the info page appear when selected and required a rescan to fix
• Treating a containing folder as a movie and then converting back would sometimes keep the item highlighted red

Changes/Additions

• Movie Actor Information is now available through TMDb’s API, no need to scrape the website anymore

Download Here

Fixes

• Correctly identifies seasons 99 and above

Changes/Additions

• HD720/HD1080 icons are now displayed for media files
• Changed the order which the media info cons are displayed
• Display of Media Type overlay is now overridden by the <Type> tag
  • For a Media File, you can set the <Type> tag to the source (eg. Blu-ray) and it will still display the codec image on the overlay
• New option in Options->General Tab to Rebuild List
  • Useful when all that is needed is a rebuild of the list
  • Does not delete any other temporary files or images
• Process All for Movies/TV now processes items filtered in the Media Collection List
  • If you check “Include All Movies/TV”, the filter is ignored an all Movies/TV will be processed
  • Useful if you want to do a custom process all based on a filter applied to the Media Collection List

• none

Additions/Changes

• DropBox now supports filenames with SeriesName/AirDate
  • Example File Names
    • The.Daily.Show.05.21.2009.PDTV.XviD-iHT.[VTV].avi
    • Jimmy.Fallon-2009.05.28.Jack.McBrayer.HDTV.XviD-LMAO.avi
  • The Series Name and Air Date must match that on TVDb
• Process Single Movie as been added
  • Right click the movie and click on “Process [Movie Name]“
  • Will get all associated metadata/images for that movie in the background in one click
  • Will refresh the current movie (if still selected) after it’s done so changes are shown
• Scan for Missing Information now also performs a rename of movie Files/Folders if necessary
• Now uses MediaInfo.dll to get information about the video file
  • Place the file in your %windir%\System32 directory
  • Automatically fills in <Type> field when performing a fetch
  • Displays Info about the video overlayed on top of the backdrop image (does not affect real backdrop)
  • Aspect ratio from xml overrides aspect ratio gotten from video file for movies
• DropBox now supports multiple destination locations
  • The first location will be considered the “default root”, where it would move the file by default if the other disks did not contain the episode being moved.
• Small code tweaks

The <Type> field does not override the type gotten from mediainfo.dll, if you want it to override it let me know I can change it.
Also, depending on user feedback, I might take away the population of the <Type> field w/ the codec type returned by MediaInfo.dll, as I believe the <Type> field should be used to specify the source of the video, not the codec used.

Download Here

• Fix of InvalidCastException caused in Non US versions of Windows in Process All for Movies

Changes/Additions

• Multiple Backdrops for TV Series/Seasons has been enabled
• New Option in General Tab to load the application minimized (easier for those running this app as a service)
• Took out option to select max TMDb Score in Process All for Movies (was a little useless)

Download Here

• Fix of DropBox erroring out b/c of invalid Folder/File characters in Series name, thus not moving it

Changes/Additions

• Scan for missing information will now only scan if XML exists and has a TMDb Id for movies.

Just some minor fixes/changes.

Download Here

• none – running pretty stable

Changes/Additions

• F12 Hotkey to process all items in episode DropBox Monitored location
• Scan for Missing Information option added in Options->General Tab
  • This will scan your Media Collection for any missing information only (no xml/backdrop/poster/banner/actor images)
  • Will download any missing information it finds
  • Runs once every 48 hours
• IMDb Id is now saved to the XML
• MPAA Rating and Aspect Ratio is now fetched through IMDb
• Small code tweaks

MPAA Rating and Aspect Ratio

• Scrapes IMDb to get the information (as this was really the only missing piece of the MetaData that was really needed)
• I will use this until TMDb adds support for MPAA Ratings and Aspect Ratios

Scan for Missing Information

This version uses TMDb’s 2.1 API and the Title Search has been a little flaky and has been getting a lot of wrong titles for the autofetcher. So be careful with this for now as it is possible to grab the wrong metadata for movies that currently has NO metadata.  Travis from TMDb has stated that this should be sorted out in the next week or two.

Download Here

• Fix of non-existent/bad url backdrops on TMDb still being added to the collection, causing a critical error when pressing “Next” on backdrops

Changes/Additions

• TMDb Id is now editable, you can specify your own TMDb Id if you having trouble finding a match using the search (Search is still the preferred method)
• Movie Name can be formatted in the Media Collection to include Production Year, Movie Type, and MPAArating
• New options in Movie Tab to define pattern for Movie Display Format (You have to scroll down using the scrollbar to see the option)

Movie Display Format

Movies in the Media Collection List can be modified to diplay other items next to the Local Title.  This only effects the how the title is displayed in the list.  The available options are:

• %py – Production Year
• %mt – Movie Type
• %mp – MPAA Rating

Example: (%py) [%mp] would display Local Title (2005) [PG-13]

Download Here