Media Browser 2.1 Adds Plenty of New Features
by Michael Healy @ 9:00 am on June 21st, 2009 in media browser with 26 Comments
The latest revision of Media Browser has been in the works for a while now. Among the new features are a whole new skin, a plug-in system, Podcast support, weather display and external players. Of course, with such an ambitious release there’s bound to be some confusion and even a few bugs to be found. Let’s take a closer look at some of these new features!
The first thing most users are going to be presented with is the updated configuration program. This new version includes support for downloadable plugins as well as an entire new Advanced section area.
Adding plugins to your Media Browser install was far easier than could’ve been imagined before seeing it in action. Just go into the Plugin tab and select the plugin from the list of available plugins. The program will then install it for you which is about as easy as it could possibly be.
Moving on from plugins you’ll also find tabs to add your favorite podcasts to the new Media Browser as well as the option to add external players for individual file types. Unfortunately, I was unable to get this particular feature to work so it’s still unknown how well it works or the ease of getting back into your original Media Center interface.
Getting into Media Browser where the real action is you’ll find a completely new interface upon entering. This is a big improvement over previous versions that simply displayed a list of the folders you had added.
This new interface is highly informational as well. Here you’ll see your local weather, if you’ve configured it, your folders listed across the bottom and the latest additions to your collection. Each skin includes a different style from this front area as well with Vanilla displaying only a single title but including a short description along with it.
The new weather display is something that would be a wonderful inclusion to the default Media Center interface and is something that other home theater applications have had access to for some time already.
Digging even deeper into this enormous release you’ll find theatrical trailers (if you’ve installed the plugins) available from both iTunes (in HD!) and FilmTrailer.com. Using a fairly straightforward, folder type display, you’ll find more trailers than you’re likely to ever heard of right at your fingertips.
On one machine used it took several reloads of Media Browser to get trailer covers to load into the interface, however, though a second machine got the immediately. Also, the addition of trailers to our existing movie collections would be a big plus that didn’t make it into this release.
Also a big new feature in this release of Media Browser is the inclusion of a complete new theme. The new Diamond theme as an easier to read view to some of the more text intensive areas such as the Movie Details view. Using this new theme the initial view displays five of the most recently added movies in each folder group as well.
For the few bugs they are far outweighed by the advantages of the new features that have made it in. The addition of an entirely new plugin system means that third-party development will likely propel Media Browser even farther in no time at all. This is certainly an ambitious release and a must try for any Media Center user!
