[Blog] MediaPortal 2 progress report (2 Viewers)

Albert

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    Hi guys and gals,

    The last progress report for the MediaPortal 2 system was long ago and since then, many things were done.
    And I guess I have to apologize because I didn't write more progress reports although I promised it. I was too much involved in development tasks. But we don't sleep; we're doing heavy development.
    In the mean time, the team has decided to change the name of the project from MediaPortal-II to MediaPortal 2.

    In the last months, many parts of the system have been developed/revised:

    UPnP library
    The MediaPortal 2 system uses the UPnP protocol to communicate. Since the only public available UPnP library for .net was the library from Intel and that one was quite old, buggy and not available as source code when we started, we decided to develop our own library. Now, we can proudly present our fully functional, well-designed and stable UPnP library.
    In the meantime, Intel has reworked their library to a new version which also supports the UPnP 1.1 protocol, but our library is still better :)


    Importer worker
    The importer worker component provides an API to schedule import jobs. Import jobs can run on the client and on the server. Jobs that run at the client are automatically executed when the MediaPortal 2 server is connected and they are automatically suspended when the server connection goes down. The next time when the server connection is established again, suspended client import jobs are continued.


    MediaLibrary
    The MediaPortal 2 MediaLibrary provides a flexible database to store all kinds of metadata of media items like information from ID3 tags, video metainformation about movies, TV channels and EPG data, for example. It also stores metadata to all shares which are available in the system.

    The access to the media library is done on a high-level abstraction layer. We use an abstraction concept called „media item aspects“ throughout the application to flexibly store metadata for videos, music files and other media items.


    Database engine
    To store the contents of the media library and other data from plugins, the MediaPortal 2 server provides a database interface where each plugin can install its own subschema. The system automatically tracks database schema scripts, schema updates and uninstallation of subschemas. Furthermore, it is possible to exchange the database engine by another one.


    SkinEngine
    Many improvements were done in the SkinEngine. The code was simplified and the DirectX access code was reworked.


    This was a small extract of the work amound which was done the last months.
    The development of MediaPortal 2 remains exciting!

    Cheers,
    Daniel
     

    David One

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    Good job. I can not wait to use MediaPortal 2.
    Is there somehow "soft" to migrate from an MP 1 and maintaining the data of the films and series in MP 2?

    A greeting.
     

    joystick

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    Great news, especially the UPNP part is the thing I am waiting for...

    Are there any news on how the implemetation of TV is developing? BTW will the TV part be completely rewritten, or will you be able to use parts of the already existing code?

    cheers

    joystick
     

    Helios61

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    Great news and a big :D to the dev-team! It's very hard to be patient ;-)
     

    Albert

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    Good job. I can not wait to use MediaPortal 2.
    Thank you!

    Is there somehow "soft" to migrate from an MP 1 and maintaining the data of the films and series in MP 2?

    Since we are still in the development phase, we didn't plan such a migration feature yet. I guess there won't be an official way to do such a migration of old MP 1 data to MP 2.
    But MP 2 is redesigned from scratch and it will be much more consistent in its features and with its configuration. It will be easier to configure.

    Are there any news on how the implemetation of TV is developing? BTW will the TV part be completely rewritten, or will you be able to use parts of the already existing code?
    The planning of the TV part is not finished yet. We have good code for the backend library which is developed in parallel to MP 2. That code is based on the code used in the latest TV engine (?). I'm not involved in that part so I cannot say very much about that.
    But I guess finally, we will work with almost completely new code in the backend and with 100% new code in the frontend, off course.
    We will focus on the frontend plugins soon.
     

    weissollo

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    UPnP library
    The MediaPortal 2 system uses the UPnP protocol to communicate. Since the only public available UPnP library for .net was the library from Intel and that one was quite old, buggy and not available as source code when we started, we decided to develop our own library. Now, we can proudly present our fully functional, well-designed and stable UPnP library.
    In the meantime, Intel has reworked their library to a new version which also supports the UPnP 1.1 protocol, but our library is still better :)

    Does that mean that I can use my NAS as an UpNP Server with a MediaPortal Client?
     

    Albert

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    UPnP library
    ...

    Does that mean that I can use my NAS as an UpNP Server with a MediaPortal Client?

    Later: Yes. At the first time: No.

    We are using the UPnP protocol for communication between client and server but we don't use the UPnP AV infrastructure.
    That means, to access a UPnP AV MediaServer at a NAS device, you need a special UPnP AV media provider, which can easily be implemented using the MediaPortal 2 plugin framework and thus will probably be implemented soon (either from the MediaPortal core team or from someone from the community).
    The other way around, the MediaPortal 2 server doesn't implement a UPnP AV compatible MediaServer service. But like for the client, this service can easily be implemented in a plugin.

    The MediaPortal 2 infrastructure provides many "hooks" for plugins to develop desired functionality. Plugins can simply add UPnP devices and services, plugins can add HTTP server modules (for example for remote management), plugins can provide access to media data over foreign protocols (for example by implementing the access over an FTP server etc.), plugins can implement media item metadata extractor code etc.
    So if some required functionality isn't implemented by the MediaPortal core team, it is easy for plugin devs to enhance the functionality.
     

    DieBagger

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    UPnP library
    The MediaPortal 2 system uses the UPnP protocol to communicate. Since the only public available UPnP library for .net was the library from Intel and that one was quite old, buggy and not available as source code when we started, we decided to develop our own library. Now, we can proudly present our fully functional, well-designed and stable UPnP library.
    In the meantime, Intel has reworked their library to a new version which also supports the UPnP 1.1 protocol, but our library is still better :)

    Have you thought about releasing/maintaining the upnp part as a standalone library? I've used the intel lib for a project in it wasn't that great. I'm sure a .NET UPnP library would be of great use for lots of people, also for devs not working on things related to MediaPortal. And if more programs/developers are using the library it will make it even better (bug reports/patches/etc.).

    Just a thought.

    And as always, big :D for the update and your hard work!
     

    1stdead

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    So Albert you didn't talk about the release date? :)
    One of the things i love the most with MP1 is the plugins. You didn't write how that's supposed to work.. Will next MP2 just be the main app and rest plugins? What about existing plugins?
     

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