• Tied to mymovies.xml for both reading and saving metadata
• Tied to TMDb and TVDb for metadata providers

The next version breaks these limitations and takes some steps in improving the overall usability and flexibility of meta<browser/>.

A few things need to be said and noted before starting this preview:

1. This version will require a $20/year donation for your account to stay active (installable on 2 computers)  (this payment method has not yet been finalized)
2. This version will require an Internet connection for verification
3. This version (in its current state) will not work if installed on a RAID system

 Now that that’s out of the way we can move on to the meat of this article! 

The Idea

Although I am a user of my own application (duh), I still found myself looking online for information that meta<browser/> could not find, especially for foreign movies (bollywood anyone?).  TMDb, although a very nice service, is limited by its age, and thus, limited to the number of titles available through their service. 

With the next version I wanted an easy way to incorporate all the online sources I used in one place, to easily manage my metadata withought having to go to multiple online sources.  I also wanted to support multiple frontends and not be limited to just reading and creating metadata for MediaBrowser.  I also wanted the interface to be clean, well layed out, easy to understand, and most importantly, flexable!  Hopefully I have accomplished that in the next version.

The Interface

The new interface retains a lot of  familiarity and usability of the previous version, but this time the user has full control over the placement of every window.  Everything is scalable, so resolution will not be an issue, as a lot of users learned that a specific resolution was required to view all the available options on the main window in the previous version.

The main application buttons have been moved up to a ribbon for easy access, it gives it an updated look and doesn’t interfere with the flow of the main application window. The poster and backdrop images automatically scale to fit the size of the re-sized window while still retaining their aspect ratio.

Below are some screen shots of some different layouts possible with the new version.  These screen shots were taken on a 720p resolution laptop, so a higher resolution screen will let the user have more customized layouts.

The Plugins

One of the major overhauls that was made to meta<browser/> was a controlled plugin architecture.  The next version will introduce three major levels of plugins that will be the “heart” of how meta<browser/> functions.  With this plugin architecture meta<browser/> is no longer tied to just MediaBrowser or mymovies.xml, it can be used for any frontend that supports locally stored metadata! 

Each plugin can have its own set of options that does not relate to meta<browser/> in any way and meta<browser/> has no way of knowing what these options are.  For example, the Media Browser plugin has options for the user to enter their ImagesByName path.  The MyMovies plugin has options for the user to enter their username/password to be able to use the MyMovies API, and so on.

Let me explain the three major levels of plugins.

Locals

Locals are plugins that look for already existing local metadata that you have stored with your media.  There can only be 1 Primary local and is set by placing it at the number one position in the list. 

For example, in the image to the right you will see two local plugins, one for Media Browser, which will look for and fetch local metadata that is compatible with Media Browser (mymovies.xml/folder.jpg/backdrop.jpg), and is set as the Primary local, and one for XBMC, which will look for and fetch local metadata that is compatible with XBMC (movie.nfo/movie.tbn/fanart.jpg), and is set to Disabled.  

All non-primary locals can either be set to Disabled or Fallback.  If a local is set to Fallback, it will be used as a fallback only if the Primary fails to have any local metadata and any other locals in the order of the list also fail to have any local metadata.  If all plugins fail to have local metadata, it will use the minimum provided details that the primary locals plugin provided. 

For example, if XBMC was set as a fallback and the MediaBrowser local failed to find any local metadata (no mymovies.xml), it will use the XBMC local plugin, and if metadata was found it will use that metadata and display it in meta<browser/> for the user to edit and save.

Majority of users will not need to have any plugins set as fallback, but can come in handy if transitioning from one frontend to another, which will make more sense when we take a look at Savers.

Savers

Savers, as the name suggests, are plugins that can save your metadata locally in various formats.  You can have multiple savers enabled at the same time which allows you to save metadata in multiple formats, for example, enabling the MediaBrowser saver will save metadata, images and actors in a format that is compatible with MediaBrowser (mymovies.xml/backdrop.jpg).  Enabling the XBMC saver will save metdata that is compatible with XBMC (movie.nfo/movie.tbn/fanart.jpg), and so on.

In the image to the left  you will see that there is a separate plugin that saves just the first poster image as a folder.jpg, that is becuase both MediaBrowser and Windows Dvd Library both use folder.jpg, so instead of saving a folder.jpg in both plugins, you can create a plugin that saves only the first poster image as folder.jpg.

Each saver plugin has 5 main functions: save metadata, save posters, save backdrops, save actor images and provide the path to save trailers.  The plugin developer can choose which functions they want to implement in their plugin.

The order in which the savers are called can be set by using the arrow buttons.  In the above picture, the folder.jpg plugin is called first, followed by the MediaBrowser save, followed by the DVD Library saver.  The reason for this is that, for example, a plugin can be created to resize folder images and can be set as the first saver plugin (which actually doesn’t do any saving, only resizes the images in memory), then it would go to the folder.jpg saver which saves the resized image as folder.jpg.  There are many possibilities, this was just an example.

Fetchers

Fetchers are plugins that use online resources to get movie metadata.  These fetchers are for metadata only, not for any images, I’ll cover images a little later.

First i’m going to explain the concept of the Default Fetcher.  The default fetcher is intended to be used as the “main” fetcher.  The way the default fetcher works is the following:

• Uses IMDb.com as the primary movie identifier
• Uses the plugins selected in the dropdown for each metdata field as the source for that field

The reason IMDb.com is used as the primary movie identifier is because IMDb is THE movie database, it has the biggest collection of movies, has the correct titles, correct production years, returns good search results and a majority of the other fetchers have a way to find a movie based on the IMDb ID.  This structure also allows you, for example, to get Descriptions from Netflix, Genres from IMDb, Actors from MyMovies, and so on. (Note: The default fetcher/primary movie identifier can be changed by any plugin developer if they wish to do so)

If something other than the Primary Fetcher is used (either as the Real Time fetcher or in the main application window), then ONLY that fetcher is used to populate all fields of the metadata. Since some of the fetchers return undesirable results (eg Netflix genres are all over the place, MovieMeter does not return roles for actors), you can turn off any specific fields for each plugin from being retrieved and updating your metadata (does not apply to the real time fetcher).  This is helpful if you perform a fetch using the real time fetcher, but want to use one of the other fetchers to retrieve some information that might have been missed…only updating missing information, this would allow, for example, to skip populating the genres from Netflix if you have it turned off in options.

The Mappings

An interesting addition in the new version is global mappings.  Mappings allow the user to replace (map) any values retrieved by the fetcher to a value defined by the user.  Mappings can either be Text based or Regex based, so it can be as simple or as powerful as you want it to be.

If using text based mapping, you can set the mapping to either be an Exact Match and/or Case Sensitive map (exact match and match case are disabled and have no effect when using a regex type mapping).

• Exact Match- Match values that is exactly as the text entered in the pattern, for example, an exact match pattern of “Action” will only match any metdata returned by the fetchers that contains “Action”.  It will not match, for example, “This is an Action movie”, because it is set to be an exact match.  If Exact Match was not set, it would match “This is an Action movie” and replace the word Action with your replacement.
• Match Case – Case sensitive match, “Action” is not the same as “action”.

Mappings can be very useful in managing genres, studios, mpaa ratings, etc, to get exactly the value you want, for example:

• An exact match text map of “R” to “18″ will replace the MPAA Rating value of “R” with “18″
• An exact match text map of “Film-Noir” to an empty value will prevent Film-Noir to be added to the genres list
• An exact match text map of “Warner Bros. Pictures” and “Warner Bros. Entertainment” to “Warner Bros.” will replace your pattern with just “Warner Bros.”, but it will only be added once if both items are returned in a result, so you will not get duplicates if you have two items mapped to the same value.
• A regex map of \((\S+) (\S+)\) to ($2, $1) will replace, for example (Foo Bar) with (Bar, Foo).  This example can be used if using Netflix as the plugin for the description, since netflix puts actor names next to their roles in parenthesis.

The Images

Posters, Backdrops and Actor images are also plugins. Unlike the previous version, they not tied to a specific metadata fetcher, and although most plugins need at least an IMDb ID or some type of ID to perform it’s search, it is possible to code an image plugin to perform a search using any information provided in the metadata.

For the Posters, Backdrops and Actors you can select the preferred plugin you want to use along with an option to only use that preferred plugin. 

Preferred plugin is the plugin that meta<browser/> should use first, before trying to find results in one of the other plugins.  If you put a check next to “Only use preferred plugin”, then meta<browser/> will only use that preferred plugin and not call the other plugins if the preferred plugin does not return any results.

One thing to note is that the “Only use preferred plugin” and “Number of images to download” only comes into play with the Real Time Fetcher or with Process Movie (ie. when you drop a movie into a monitored folder and meta<browser/> automatically grabs metadata for you OR right clicking a movie and clicking process movie).  If manually selecting images meta<browser/> will use the preferred plugin first, but if no results are found, will show results in the image preview window of the plugin that did find results.

Below are some screen shots of the familiar, but redesigned, image preview windows.  You’ll notice there are dropdowns available for you to select which image plugin you want to use to preview and download images from.

The Trailers

Trailers was a topic that kept coming up as there was no support for it in the previous version of meta<browser/>.  The major reason for not having support was because the only way trailers was supported in Media Browser was through a file reference in the xml (previous version of meta<browser/> was really intended to only work with media browser) and I just didn’t feel the xml route was the way that trailers should be handled.

With the new version comes a new trailer downloader.  Trailers, like images, are also pluginable, they return all available trailers they find from its online resource at a specific resolution and meta<browser/> handles the rest.

The image to the right shows the new trailer download manager, which lets you see exactly what trailers are in queue, the speed, the percentage and the size of currently active download.  Downloads can be paused and cancelled, and a cleanup button cleans up all completed and/or cancelled downloads.  The download manager also supports resume, which can come in handy if your download is halted or disconnected.

Besides downloading trailers for movies already in your media collection, you can also download trailers for upcoming movies.  This feature uses Apple’s Recent Trailers feed as the source for the recent trailers and is a built in part of meta<browser/> (not pluginable).

All recent trailers are downloaded to a single folder you specify in options.  The reason for adding recent trailer support was because frontends like MyMovies (and hopefully MediaBrowser soon) allow you to play trailers of upcoming movies before playing the actual movie (gives it a more theater like experience) and meta<browser/> gives the user an easy way to manage it.

A scheduler can also be setup to autotmatically look for and download new trailers, delete trailers after a specific number of days and the maximum number of trialers to download.  

The Rest

The rest i’m just going to glaze over, I don’t think it lists all the new additions/updates, nor is it in any specific order, it’s just a very brief list of some of the new features.

• Renaming has been completely reworked/recoded.  All items that need to be renamed are put in a Rename Que, which is executed every 30 seconds.  The issue with renaming multi-part movies in the previous version has also been resolved.
• The media collection now shows you the number of posters/backdrops each item has by hovering over the item in the list.  This also allows you to filter by the number of posters/backdrops an item has.
• Images can be added using drag/drop, for example, dragging an image from google images to the backdrop window will add it as a backdrop in your collection
• Images can now be deleted from the GUI
• Images can now be rearranged from the GUI, makes it easier to arrange the images in the order you want for the frontends that support multiple images (eg MediaBrowser and multiple backdrops)
• The Cast, Crew, Genres, Studios, Taglines and Countries items support drag/drop to rearrange the items, no need to struggle moving items using the arrow buttons like in the previous version
• Each monitored location can be enabled/disabled in options without the need to delete it from the list
• All buttons on the ribbon can be added to a Quick Access Toolbar
• ValueLists are available in Options for the user to edit the auto-complete fields that metabrowser has, for example, genres and studios
• Real Time Monitoring and Metdata Fetching has been separated.  In the previous version if you enabled FileSystemWatcher it automatically downloaded metadata for newly detected items
• A new saved filters manager is available. This management window lets the user set up saved filters without having the filter applied to the list while configuring the filter
• The search results window now lists the cast to make it easier to identify the correct movie
• The search result window now supports the use of the production year (in  parenthesis) in the search field to filter the search results by that year. For example, searching for Batman (2008) will show all results for Batman with the production year 2008
• A new “Set” field has been added to movie metadata.  This allows you to create sets of movies without having to have the movies in sub-folders.  For example, if you had the 3 matrix movies spread across 3 hard drives, but still wanted to show them as a set, set the value of each movies Set field to “Matrix Trilogy” and it will appear as a Movie Set in meta<browser/>
• A new “Comment” field has been added to movie metadata.  This allows you to have specific comments for that movie and is also available as a value for your movie rename pattern.  For example,  you can set your comment of one of your movies to 1080p Directors Cut, and set the rename pattern to %lt [%cmt], which would result in Local Title [1080p Directors Cut]

The roadmap for future release looks like the following:

• Initial release with Movie support only
• Fix any issues that arise with the initial release
• Add support for TV Series/Episodes
• Add Process All functionality

1. Close meta<browser/>
2. Browse to C:\ProgramData\MetaBrowser
3. Open metabrowseroptions.xml in a text editor
4. Replace the <MPAARatingPattern> and <AspectRatioPattern> tags with the following:

<MPAARatingPattern><![CDATA[MPAA</a>:</h5>\n<div class="info-content">\nRated (?<grp1>(.*?)) for ]]></MPAARatingPattern>
<AspectRatioPattern><![CDATA[Aspect Ratio:</h5>\n<div class="info-content">\n(?<grp1>(.*?)) <a]]></AspectRatioPattern>

5. Save metabrowseroptions.xml
6. Restart meta<browser/>

MediaBrowser

MediaBrowser is capable of fetching metadata using its online sources. Like meta<browser/>, MediaBrowser also uses TMDb for movies and TVDb for TV.  It uses your folder name or media filename to perform its search, which means that you need to name your file and folders to match exactly, or close to, the title listed on its online sources.

Pros:

• Very little user interaction needed
• Each movie does not need to be in its own folder

Cons:

• Very limited control over what metadata is fetched (might need to alter folder or file name to match its online source)
• No way to display metadata for movies/tv shows that are not available through its online sources
• No control over any of the metadata or images displayed by MediaBrowser, as it is stored and used internally by MediaBrowser
• Each machine running MediaBrowser will have to fetch/download metadata from its online sources individually, which can take a long time depending on your collection size
• Each machine running MediaBrowser can get out of sync with its metadata because it fetches metadata individually
• Every time you clear the cache in MediaBrowser, it will again have to fetch/download metadata from its online sources

Locally stored metadata

If local metadata is present MediaBrowser will not try to fetch metadata for it using its online sources and will use the locally available metadata instead, this gives you full control over what MediaBrowser will display.

Pros:

• Fetch exactly the movie you want without having to rename your folder or filenames
• Full control over the metadata and images that will be displayed
• Create metadata for items not available through its online sources
• Each field of the metadata is editable for your OCD
• Metadata for MediaBrowser is populated a lot faster since it is stored locally over your network
• Each machine will stay in sync, as the metdata is stored locally and any changes you make to the local metadata will be reflected on all machines running MediaBrowser
• Repopulating metadata after clearing cache is almost instantaneous, since the metadata is stored locally over your network

Cons:

• Each movie needs to be in its own folder
• Initially requires user interaction to populate metadata
• Your OCD about metadata being complete

One thing to keep in mind is that even though you store your metadata along with your media items, MediaBrowser will still cache all the metadata and images on the local machine running MediaBrowser.  This is done for speed.  The only difference is that MediaBrowser uses the local metadata as its source instead of trying to download it from its online sources.

Hopefully this answers some of your questions, also, this post is Wiki Editable, so feel free to add/change anything.

“With a new house comes new responsibilities” said a voice inside me (maybe b/c I just finished watching Spider-Man 2) as we finalized the paperwork for the house, and I felt it was my responsibility to have a “wired” house! At least, wired for media!

And thus my modest quest began….

First off, this setup is not going to win any awards, nor is it something that you’ll see on the next episode of Cribs, it’s a modest home that underwent a small project to share media across multiple locations, it turned out as per my expectation and am very happy with the end result, so without any further chatter, onto the setup!

Any self proclaimed geek knows that you start dreaming and planning the things you want to do well before they become a reality, and I was no exception.  I already had the basic ideas planned out in my head:

• I wanted all equipment to be in a centralized location
• Media locations should be very minimalistic, containing only the display and, optionally, speakers
• Each media location should have access to all my media on my server (Movies/Music/Pictures)
• Each media location should have access to live TV (Dish Network)
• Each media location should be able to watch any source I have at the centralized location at any time
• Each media location should be able to control everything with one remote (and thus would need some type of IR repeater system)
• Each media location would need to be connected using HDMI
• All displays were going to be 1080p

For the actual connection to the displays I first thought of doing long runs of HDMI (monoprice.com anyone?), but I quickly decided against that as I wanted more flexibility.  And since my longest run was going to be about 120 feet, I didn’t think HDMI cables were gonna cut it.

I then started looking at other ways to distribute media over hdmi and came across devices that do HDMI over cat5/6.  Doing a little research and a lot of reading I found a company called Octava (Octavainc.com).  They had the products that I was looking for, are located locally to me, and their prices seemed fairly reasonable as well (hell, anything is reasonable when compared to Gefen products).

I wanted to make sure everything would work as planned before I actually ran the wires, so for testing purposes I ordered their HDMI over Cat5/6 Extender along with varying lengths of cat6 cables from monoprice.  Octava claims that their cat5/6 extender can do 1080p up to 150ft over cat6 and I wanted to confirm that claim since I needed it to function properly at at lest 120ft.  After receiving their products and doing a mini review I decided that this product would fit my needs.  My plan was to use 4 of their extenders connected to a 4×4 HDMI Matrix Swtich, but about a week after purchasing this product they came out with a 4×4 HDMI Ethernet Matrix which had integrated cat5/6 connections, so I quickly returned the extender and bought that instead.

Running the wires was by far the toughest part of this project, although was a lot easier than I thought. First let me give you an idea of where my media locations are going to be:

1. Living Room (1st Floor)
2. Master Bedroom (2nd Floor)
3. Media Room (2nd Floor)
4. Future Pool Table room (Basement)
5. Office (2nd Floor, not going to be connected to the matrix, but wiring it to connect to network)

Each of the above locations will get 5 drops of cat6 cables. 2 for HDMI, 1 for network, 1 for IR and 1 extra just incase.

For the three rooms on the 2nd floor we were first thinking of running the wires from outside, feeding all the wires up to the attic, then down one side of the house right to the equipment room in the basement.  But my dad (who used to be in construction in his younger days) said there has to be an easier way of running the wires without the need to go outside (this was after I called a professional to get an idea and quote for running the wires, which did NOT include patching up sheetrock).  My dad went to the attic, moved around some of the insulation, and found a pathway that led straight to the equipment room in the basement!  We were already having work done to the house so we got the same guys that were doing work to run the wires for us.  We ran a 4 inch PVC pipe all the way from the attic to the equipment room in the basement and passed all the wires through that…couldn’t be easier (minus all the sheetrock having to be re-patched).

For the Living room and basement they cut open the sheetrock ceiling of the basement and passed the wires through the soffit in the basement right to the equipment room.  One day to run the wires and two days to do the patchwork and painting and it looked as if the house came prewired! (I wish I would have taken pictures of the work in progress :/)

Now it was my turn to setup everything, which meant terminating the wires so they looked neat (WAF) and making sure everything was going to work as planned (another WAF).  I think I’ll let the pictures do the talking for me:

Notes

• I’m including pictures of other work we had done on the house, we got rid of the formal living room in order to make the bottom room bigger with a walk-in closet.
• The IR Passtthrough for the Ocatava is very iffy, it didn’t work well for me at all and I spent many hours thinking I was doing something wrong.  The HDMI Cat5/6 Matrix part of the switch works flawlessly though.
• For the IR I went w/ Xantech IR equipment and ran it through my cat6 cables. It works flawlessly. A RF remote control would also get iffy with its connection especially when going 2 floors down.  IR over cat6 is able to go about 1000ft and is more reliable.
• I decided to go with 2 HTPCs and 2 Dish receivers connected to the matrix instead of 4 HTPCs, just made more sense.
• The Theater is not connected to the matrix and has it’s own dedicated HTPC.
• There’s another TV used in the bedroom we built on the 1st floor.  It is the “TV2″ for the ViP-722k receiver and only has TV.
• I still need to purchase 1 TV for Media Room, 1 TV for Basement, and 1 Pool Table for Basement.
• All wires/keystones/IR/etc. were purchased from MonoPrice, Firefold, and SmartHome.

 

I still have some finishing touches to do and some wires to tidy up, but overall the system is working as planned and each location has access to the 4 sources connected to the HDMI Matrix. I’ve been tinkering with it so much that I haven’t had much time to enjoy it

Hope you guys enjoy the pictures.

CHANGES

• Added: Parental Controls Facility
  • Can control media based on metadata rating, or conversely block everything
  • PINEntry, added support to match diamond theme when user has diamond theme enabled.
  • Option to unlock entire library on first PIN entry this is consistent with most other PC systems but can be turned off.
• Added: Support for music plugin.
• Added: Retrieval of runtime data from mediainfo.dll if no Metadata present.
• Added: Ability to disable weather on EHS, by entering a blank weather location.
• Added: Mouse friendly tweaks to tame mouse enter/exit from scrolling data all over the place.
• Added: Descriptions for options in Config page.
• Added: Tiered Backdrop support (not extender friendly).
• Added: option AlwaysShowDetails (Default true) will always show the details page for all content (Episodes or Movies)
• Changed: Priority of aspect ratio to take metadata if there over mediainfo.
• Updated: Runtime data now stored in minutes to mitigate re-calculations.
• Updated: The default poster size to rectangle instead of square (220×330).
• Updated: EHS, Recently Added now scrolls back to page 1 when transitioning between folders.
• Updated: Information control to support recurring messages for ‘X’ cycles.
• Updated: Cleanup for media delete mechanism (only movies and episodes support deletion at this time).
• Updated: Seasons and Episodes inherit parental rating from their Series.
• Updated: Diamond Theme v0.2 Revamp
  • Diamond supports Episode View combined with ‘advanced commands’ + ‘enable delete’ allows for episode deletion.
  • Diamond – new mini-mode for movies and episodes details page.
  • Changed Title to automatically scroll across screen if text is longer than display area.
  • Diamond added information bar to all views.
  • Due to popular demand changed diamond bottom fade from white to black.
  • Diamond compatible with custom fonts.
  • Coverflow: Radically improved spacing which now allows for large covers without spacing issues (within reason).
  • Movie/Episode Details, Command Buttons no longer overlap poster preview.
  • Modified media info icons.
  • Diamond details view added scrollable overview.
  • Fixed date display for titles with no dates.
• Removed: Classic Theme taken out of Media Browser it is no longer supported.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed: Standard filters so they now display images correctly (visible in genres).
• Fixed: Play All,queue and random.
• Fixed: Remember index-by state.
• Fixed: Auto enter single directory option.
• Fixed: MediaInfoProvider Video Codec
• Fixed: Issue where A|An|The were not being ignored during sorting.
• Fixed: Vanilla season count mistakenly defaults to 0
• Fixed: Crash that would occur in folder validation when a folder has been moved
• Fixed: Patched autoscroller code from sending negative sizes.
• Fixed: Episode sorting now correctly sorts items.
• Fixed: Adjusted positioning of elements on config page
• Fixed: Incorrect Breadcrumbs for actor(s)/genre(s)/director(s).
• Fixed: Data duplication of actors for individual episodes.

Direct download is here. Remember to take any and all bug reports to the Community Tracker. The forums bugs section is closed.

CONTEST: Create a Video of Media Browser in Action
Create a video of Media Browser in action, maybe show off your customizations. Or teach the new generation a thing of two about Media Browser and get your video posted on Media Browser’s homepage.

Prize

• If selected your video will go up on the homepage of http://www.mediabrowser.tv
• Media Browser VIP access
• First ever Media Browser VIP badge

Bonus Points

• Display use of the configurator application as well

How we Judge the Entries

• Presentation
• Originality
• Value Learned (How well did you communicate your experience)

The Rules

• Create a video of your Media Browser setup in action.
• Video runtime must be approximately 2 to 3 minutes in length (some leeway here).
• Videos that breach copyright rules will be disqualified – NO EXCEPTIONS (i.e. displaying ‘The Simpson Season 20′ when the box set hasn’t even been released yet will get your video thrown out)
• Contest is open to all, multiple entries are accepted. Top 5 videos will be chosen by Media Browser team with a final vote by the community to determine the winner of the competition.
• Winner(s) will be contacted and asked for their name and a blog link or other.

How to Enter

• Post your videos on youtube with a link back in this thread to your video.

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.

There’s a video on the page I’ve linked to. If you want to watch it, skip ahead about 1 hour to get to the parts you actually want to see.

I’m not going to repeat everything that was announced, so run on over here and read it yourself. This is some terrific, TERRIFIC news!

I have been doing some research for this on my own over the past week or two and the amount of conflicting information available is really starting to confuse (and annoy) me. What I mean by this is that there appears to be numerous fixes, tools, etc. for almost every RC release that we have encountered and it is making it extremely difficult to find what is actually the preferred working one to use.

Once I can get a good list going, I’m going to compile this into a centralized document so you don’t have to search the entire Internet to find what you’re looking for. You’ll be able to just go down the list and pick how you want your own customized 7MC to behave. I need your help in this, however.

So, far all of you running RTM versions of Windows 7, what are your methods in getting results for your HTPC experience? I want to hear about codec configuration and installation, the registry entries you have to use, utilties available, plugins that you just can’t do without, etc. If you can provide a link to other sites that provide walk-through’s, that’s great…I’ll be sure to give them proper credit. I’m just looking to make a centralized repository of information for you. Leave comments with your best stuff!

Jon
theHTPC.net