XBMC for Mac - Release 0.5.0b1

["Mark McCall" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As promised in our intereview with the OSXBMC dev Elan last week (
http://tinyurl.com/5c2y4o ) here's the
release with all the new remote
support!  They're calling this the "throw out your XBox" release
:)

M.



http://www.osxbmc.com/2008/05/07/release-050b1-mo-betta-beta/

Or

http://tinyurl.com/5gj6xq




* NEW: Apple Remote support. This is a big one. There's now a helper
that runs and communicates with XBMC. Among other things, this allows you
to
use the Apple Remote to start XBMC, a highly requested feature. The code
has
also been rewritten to handle the buttons much faster, so you should notice
none of the pesky delay that's been present up until now. There are
preferences for the Apple Remote in Settings -> System -> Apple
Remote which
let you specify three modes. Disable the Apple Remote support if you want
to
use a third party application (e.g. Remote Buddy, Sofa Control). Isaac has
been working relentlessly with both companies to ensure that you have great
behavior with those apps, and he is the one who did all the Apple Remote
keymap programming. Very nice work! Standard mode is what is enabled by
default, and is intended for those using, well, an standard Apple Remote.
The other mode is Universal Remote, which I'll explain in the next bullet
item. The Always Running option instructs the helper to start on login and
always run, so that you can use it to start XBMC. If you hit the menu
button
when in the home screen, XBMC will exit, and another press of the menu
button starts it back up again, so it works just like Front Row but without
sucking.
* NEW: Universal Remote support. This is totally awesome, and the
brainchild of Cayce and Scott who are both Universal Remote-aholics. When I
met them in person for the first time, they had each independently brought
their universal remotes along to try to convince me that their model was
the
best. I cannot make this stuff up. Scott sports a Harmony 550, and Cayce
has
an URC-MX900. Cayce's remote could definitely best Scott's in a fight, but
Scott's remote is sexier. Anyway, they came up with this cool scheme that I
coded in the XBMC helper to allow sequences of Apple Remote buttons to
allow
for many more commands than the standard Apple Remote could support, even
with holding down buttons. Check out this page for details on the mappings
and you should be able to program your Universal Remote. You can change the
sequence delay time to work best with your specific remote. Thanks to Scott
for testing the crap out of this with his Harmony, and really making sure
it
works well.
* NEW: XBox360 controller support. Rounding out our controller portfolio
is the XBox 360 controller. Good for those MAME games, when we get them
working. This controller worked with SDL, but the code was buggy and once
the controller shut down, you were screwed. I moved the code into the XBMC
helper and tweaked d4rk's awesome event client stuff a bit to support what
we needed with analog sticks. The controller will fall asleep and wake up
fine, and you can use the big X button to start XBMC if it isn't started.
You'll need these drivers, and you may want to replace one of the kexts
with
the one here since it fixes a bug when plugging and unplugging the USB
receiver. Again, thanks to Scott who tirelessly worked away to create a
keymap for this controller.
* NEW: SSA Subtitles. This was a oft-requested feature, especially by
the infamous Bad Mr Frosty. Luckily for him, a new XBMC team member named
Rudd integrated support for libass (used by mplayer). We took his code,
started with the default libass, integrated some fixes and enhancements
from
mplayer, and enabled enca support (which can detect languages in subtitle
streams using some cool techniques). Fontconfig support has also been
enabled and so SSA subtitles should work perfectly now, except in the case
of fonts embedded in MKV files, which Rudd is working on.
* NEW: Sleep displays and computer. Cayce added two killer features for
this release. There are new options in Settings -> System -> Hardware
that
allow you to have XBMC turn off your monitor after a specified time, and
also sleep your Mac after a specified time. Great stuff! Since the Apple
Remote can wake the Mac from sleep, this ends up being really nice.
* NEW/FIX: Unified upscaling, fixed problems with interlacing. The
initial software upscaling code was pretty hastily thrown together. I
cleaned it up for this release and the software and hardware upscaling
options are all available from the on screen video settings menu when
viewing a video. This is nice because you can flip through the available
settings to compare them. NOTE: There is a known issue with a single frame
of solid green when moving from software to hardware modes, and vice versa.
My OpenGL fu is weak. We also enabled a new algorithm available in ffmpeg
called "sinc" which is supposedly quite good, but also very
computationally
expensive. A mini is not usually enough to use sinc upscaling, but feel
free
to give it a try.
* NEW: Skip to next/previous chapter in DVDs. If you're watching a DVD,
hitting up/down on the Apple Remote (or keyboard) skips by chapters.
* FIX: Shoutcast crashes. The guy working on the Windows port
(charlydoes) fixed the memory corruption issue with Shoutcast streams, and
they should now work perfectly. Awesome work!
* FIX: Skip to next/previous video doesn't work. I'm pretty sure d4rk
fixed this one.
* FIX: Subtitles look squashed in 720p/1080p. The infamous Jmarshall
fixed this one. I'll buy him a beer or five when we visit New Zealand.
* FIX: Add "Get Album Information" back to context menu when not
in
library mode. I was very sad when this option didn't work anymore so I put
it back in. It doesn't save the information to the database, but it's
useful
for reading an album review or getting a thumbnail.
* FIX: Navigation through menus with Apple Remote might leave you stuck.
Navigation should work perfectly now in all skins.


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