theHTPC.net

The Media Browser team released Media Browser v2.2.3 (Pegasus) yesterday and I didn’t even notice it. It primarily consisted of some performance improvements and bug fixes. You can read all about it here.

Latest releases are always available from the Google Code page, here.

I was lucky enough to be included in a very small group of alpha testers for the upcoming meta 2.0 metadata manager – ‘lucky’ being an understatement as this application is going to astound you.

My initial look came around 2 months ago and it was pretty rough around the edges and had very little functionality.  I saw this change dramatically over the following few weeks, up until today, where it is finally available in a state that I have been allowed to write about.

I want to start off by saying that this review is quite long.  However, this review should also be considered a reference guide until documentation becomes available for meta 2.0.   meta 2.0 is full of options and it can easily overwhelm anyone not completely familiar with it.  Even during my testing fatal, the developer, made me aware of many overlooked features and settings.

The currently available version of meta has been primarily geared towards the Media Browser crowd since its inception.  However, meta 2.0 breaks free and offers services for many different types of front-ends and media libraries.  Its highly adaptable framework will also allow developers to create their own plugins to extend meta compatibility even further…the only limitation is you!

TV functionality is currently not included in meta 2.0, but it will be added soon.  There are other small ‘conveniences’ that have also not been added, but rest assured, they will make it into the product over time.

Before we begin, there are three important points for proper installation and operation to observe:

Although incomplete, meta 2.0 already appeared to have a never-ending assortment of options and configuration possibilities…I intend to at least touch on each of these in this review.

After downloading and installing for the first time, you will find that upon first execution you are already met with the first change in the meta 2.0 application – the login prompt.

meta 2.0 must be authenticated upon each execution, hence the requirement for an active Internet connection.

Upon successful logon, the interface will load for the first time and while familiar to current version users, it won’t take long to see that it is a nicely revamped GUI.

The interface is fully customizable via drag-and-drop.  Windows can be moved around and resized and even the numerous tabs can be placed wherever you wish.  I will go into that in more detail a little later.

The first thing we all will want to do after loading for the first time is to head into Settings so that we can configure our Media Locations.  For those of you who are already using meta 1.0, this will also look very familiar.  Media Locations can be easily added, removed and even disabled by unchecking them.  Media Locations can be local system directories or network shares (just make certain you have the necessary permissions to access them).  A full range of additional settings are available below:

Media Collection

Folder Monitoring

Moving down in the settings menu, we have Value Lists.  Value Lists give us the ability to define specific values for different types of static ‘lists’ that meta 2.0 is capable of maintaining.  The values entered in the Value Lists items will be available as a drop-down list on your metadata entry screens.  They can greatly ease the pain when manually entering metadata yourself.  These lists are:

Next in the menu is Mappings. Mappings can be extremely handy for changing retrieved values for other values.  The example in the image below is one that actually allowed me to circumvent an early bug when fetching the PG-13 rating from IMDB.  The Alpha version I was using at the time was populating the PG-13 MPAA rating with PG_13.  Instead of manually editing this every time a movie was assigned a PG-13 rating, I set up a mapping that told meta 2.0 to change the Text value of PG_13 to PG-13.  No more worries as meta 2.0 modified it for me…on the fly!

Mappings could also be used to clean up dirty tMDB genres, convert MPAA ratings to BBFC or any other number of possibilities.  Instead of using a Text match, there is also an available Regex option that makes this an even more powerful tool.  Additional matching options include Exact Match and/or Match Case.  These options allow for very granular control over what gets modified without risking changing similar fetched values in your metadata.

The Regex example above applied to a fetch from Netflix would convert any parenthesized actors names to take a last name first pattern, instead of the default returned first name first.  The images below show the difference between the default return and when the regex mapping is enabled.

Without the regex mapping applied…

…and with it.

Cool, right?

Mappings can be added and removed easily, or completely disabled by simply unchecking the enable box.  Just be careful if you plan to use it! It will change every instance of the mapping value you set.

For the past couple of months, I have been quite busy testing and writing a preview on the upcoming Meta<Browser /> 2.0 application that has been under rapid development.  All I will say is that I have been continuously awed by what I have seen.

Check here on Friday for an extremely detailed look at where this application is and what it is capable of.

Click image for high-res screenshot

I came across a similar site as this some time ago and may have even posted about, but all movies on this site are free to download also.  Some are classics, but most are…well, not.  All are completely legal to download.

Get your favorite torrent engine ready…

Public Domain Torrents.

I was messing around with my codecs this morning and decided to update my ffdshow installation to clsid’s revision3291 (32-bit).  I don’t remember the last revision I had, but I know it did not have the new DXVA decoder available for h.264 and VC-1 sources.  What really piqued my interest, was that it included settings for subtitles.  DXVA+subtitles+ffdshow?  I had a hard time accepting it, but I was interested enough to give it a test run.

This is not really a guide because I’m not going to cover everything necessary to get all of this working.  I stopped using Shark007’s codecs a little while back because I had issues in getting settings to stick for me.  I decided to go back to using Win7DSFilterTweaker which allowed me to install and configure only what I wanted, the way I wanted.

The only codecs I have installed (x86) are clsid’s ffdshow revision 3291, Haali Media Splitter 1.8.122.18 and AC3Filter 1.63b.  That’s all I need and it’s all I use (I use Microsoft’s default TV/DVD codecs).  I used the Win7DSFilterTweaker to allow ffdshow as my preferred codec for just about everything aside from TV/DVD sources.  I may do a separate guide on that later, but I’m pretty sure you can find one if you spend a minute or two on Google.

The first thing you want to do, is to make certain h.264/AVC is not enabled in the standard ffdshow decoder…it must be set to disabled.

Next, open the ffdshow DXVA decoder properties and go to the Hardware acceleration section of the menu.  Check to enable H264 and, if you want, check to enable VC1.  The next part is concerning subtitles, so if you don’t use them, you can actually skip this part and be done.  Go down to the Post processing drop down menu and select Surface overlay.  Subtitles will not work if you do not enable that setting.

Next, go to Subtitles in the menu and make sure there is a check mark present in the box to enable it.  You can pretty much accept defaults here, but I also make certain Accept embedded subtitles is checked for compatibility with some of my files.  The rest of the settings you can play with to taste, but that’s all that’s needed to get them working.

You’re done.  If Win7DSFilterTweaker has been used correctly to setup your codecs, Media Center is ready for your HD MKV files with hardware accelerated decoding…including subtitles.

Now, the bad news…for me anyway.  I was never able to see any signs of hardware acceleration using this.  The DXVA decoder was definitely being used and I downloaded properly encoded h.264 and VC-1 files to make sure it was not just my own files, but I never saw a decrease in CPU usage nor elevated use of my ATi HD 2600 Pro GPU.  I’m hoping it was just my hardware or driver (using latest Catalyst), but I just could not get it to give me any kind of reassuring results.  I tried in Media Center, Media Player and Media Player Classic Home Cinema with identical results.

I would like to know what any of you get if you decide to try this, however.  I’m perfectly happy without hardware acceleration as what I use plays my 720p encoded files perfectly fine.  This is some good ground-breaking for ffdshow though!

Some of you may wonder when I add new plugins to the Plugin Index, or utilities, downloads, ImagesByName packs…anything really.  There’s quite a lot to keep track of, so I understand it’s not feasible to scour multiple pages on a daily basis.

I just wanted to make a quick note that my Twitter notifications only include new or edited posts and pages.  So, if I add anything, it will send a Tweet with a direct link to the page.  All that’s left is to look for the most recently dated item.

If you haven’t already added me on Twitter…do so now!  Stay in the loop!

Just saw the update…Media Browser Thunderblade has just been released.  Read about it and download here.

Craig Thomas (craigt on the Media Browser forums and creator of the Chocolate theme, as well as other plugins) has announced a new theme in the works…Simplicity.  You can see a couple of screenshots of it on his site.

Be sure to click on the Simplicity link at the top of the page to get to the screenshots and current progress page.

It looks pretty nice, but then again, I’ve always been a fan of less-is-more.

…just because I’m here and they just rolled into my email.

OCZ OCZ3P1333LV4GK 4GB PC3-10666 (DDR3-1333) Dual Channel Memory Retail $84.99 after $20 MIR shipped til 2.28

HITACHI 0F10383 1TB SATA 3.0 7200 RPM 32MB Buffer Hard Drive Bulk $74.99 after $15 MIR til 2.28

PATRIOT PS32GS25SSDR 32GB MLC NAND Flash SATA II Solid State Drive (SSD) Retail $79.99 shipped til 2.20

ASUS Motherboard M4A78T-E AMD 790GX AM3 Phenom II/Athlon X4/Athlon X3/Athlon X2 Socket $89.99 after $15 MIR shipped til 2.17

When originally looking for domain names, theHTPC.com was the first one I looked up, but it was not available, nor was it for sale.  Recently, I received a solicitation email from DesirableDotComs asking me if I was interested in purchasing theHTPC.com domain for about $100.  It’s not a bad deal, really, but I don’t make any money from this site and I didn’t have $100 to spare on a hobby, so I declined.

However, I just received another email from them asking me if I was interested in the domain for $39.97.  That’s pretty hard to turn down, so I bit.  I should have it transferred within the next 24 hours and I’m just going to point it to this site until I decide to do something else with it…if I do at all.