MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

The long wait is over and MediaBox 0.96 is available in the maemo-extras
repository for Chinook and Diablo.

UPnP Streaming

http://mediabox.garage.maemo.org/sshots/upnp.png

UPnP/DLNA is a great technology for streaming music, videos, and photos to your
tablet. Simply put an UPnP media server in your home network and MediaBox
will discover it automatically for browsing and streaming its contents.

Playlists and media bookmarks

Playlists can be created and edited and are saved automatically. You can reorder
the items at any time, and you can mix audio, videos, and images in a playlist.

You can now also set media bookmarks in any (seekable) file to mark the best
spots and to find the place where you stopped listening to your audio book or
podcast the last time. Simply click on the star-button to set a media bookmark
for the current position.

Shuffle and Repeat

I don't think I need to say much about these features anymore, except that MediaBox
can do it now, too.

Car-Mode

http://mediabox.garage.maemo.org/sshots/songinfo.png

Car-mode is what I call the fullscreen mode of the music player because it's
very handy to use while driving a car. Big buttons for previous, next, and play/pause,
along with big cover-art and a big title label make MediaBox perfect for this
situation. I use this mode frequently with a shuffled playlist when driving.

Themes

http://mediabox.garage.maemo.org/sshots/themes.png

It seems like every media center these days needs to be themable. MediaBox
follows this fad so you can give it a new skin by downloading themes from the
maemo-extras repository.

Plugins

http://mediabox.garage.maemo.org/sshots/plugins.png

MediaBox can be extended with plugins, and I'm going to cover plugin development
later. Some plugins are already available for download:
- a FM radio (for the N800),
- a YouTube browser
- and internet radio with SHOUTcast directory.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

hmm, any way to mark a shoutcast entry as favorite?

and do the red stripe in the folder section mean it wont look for that kind of media in that location?

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Hi Pycage thanks for this good work and all your efforts to bring about this clean media player, can we remove the svn version and how in other to install this release thanks again U still in mind.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Very nice application.
I am however having a problem with reordering a play list.
I use the icon on the left and drag the item to the top of the list.
So far so good. The new order is there if i move to a different activity and then come back to the playlist.
but if i exit the program and come back the new order has not been saved.
Am i doing it wrong?

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Yes, that's what it means.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

You can remove the SVN version by removing the directory where to checked out from SVN. You can also leave it there to continue running the latest SVN version. Installing from maemo-extras doesn't conflict with the SVN version, as long as you didn't install the SVN version to /usr/lib/mediabox.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

You're doing nothing wrong. This seems like a bug. I'll take a look at it.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Ha the radio is a plug in now...
Let's see if it work.
VERY impressive work. Thank you so much for this very clean player...

Little side question, do you happen to be interested in the (open) Pandora ? Mainly asking to know if we can expect this also on the pandora :)

Edit: made a little thread about this on the pandora forum.linky

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Sure. Get me a device and I'll be happy to make it run there. :)

Thanks.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

I'm currently collecting all your bug reports for 0.96. There'll be a 0.96.1 release before 2009. So let me know what troubles you with 0.96. :)

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Should constant max CPU frequency be counted as a bug?
I'm still trying to figure out wtf is going on there inside launcher (it could be some maemo-launcher/python-runtime bug...).

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Ok, Just got the update to 0.96...

How do I add all tracks to the playlist?

Car Mode? I can' seem to find where to enable it.

Is there something special that needs to be done to the file structure to organize the tracks by "artist" / "album"? I have all my mp3s organized as follows: /music/artist/track. MBMC finds everything in the folder view but only shows a couple of tracks in album / artist view (same 2).

I can toggle random and repeat but they don't seem to effect the playlist?...

TIA

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

I think I am missing something with the track view in the music player. Earlier in a SVN version, the track view would sometime show the tracks on the left and cover on the middle, and sometime albums on the left and the tracks in the middle. But after downloading the 0.96 version, I have noticed that nothing happens when I flip between the two views. What I am missing ?

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Try hitting the zoom button one more time . I believe that is what is referred to as 'Car Mode' - I found out by pure accident :-)

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

I don't like this new vertion.
1. It's slower when starting than the old vertion.and the UI is too compler to control.
2.The CPU consume is greater,especialy when you play the video. Though it play video depending on Mplayer,but Mplayer is better,the later lower resource consume. In mediabox,When you quit the OSD of Mplayer,the Mediabox will ask you to exit Mediabox or not,but I only want to quit the OSD.
3.I can't control the music using the button of earphone.In the older vertion,it can control the music to PAUSE or PLAY.I think it will be better to add the double click to control "The Next Song"in the new vertion.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

i will have to agree that the UI is a little more complex than it needs to be

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Thanks for continuing to develop this app, I like it a lot. I'm still getting used to the UI changes but I think ultimately most of them are improvements.

I have tried playing a few movies (transcoded DVDs) and I have noticed that after a few minutes, the playback suddenly stops. I play the same files in standalone mplayer and this behavior does not occur. This is the only bug I've noticed, a few other comments are listed below for you to do with as you see fit.

When I'm in the music list and I add a track to the (empty) queue, it does not start playing. I need to navigate to the queue and start it playing there, which isn't what I expect. If that's the intended functionality, perhaps you could add another button for "play now in queue" sort of like iTunes has? A "play next in queue" function would also be nice down the road.

In the image viewer, is there a way to start a slideshow (i.e., automatically advance through images in the queue after a delay)? If not, this is not a high priority but it would be nice eventually. Another thing that would be nice is for the program to preload the next image in the queue so the transition is faster.

It is nice having the onscreen keyboard for searching but I find it a little nonintuitive. Let's say I am browsing music and I want to find a track with a particular name. I type the song name in but nothing happens unless I happen to have the tracklist for that particular album open. Is there some way around this?

Finally, while I like the "finger friendly" UI, sometimes it is nice to be able to navigate and start playing solely using the d-pad. Right now if I am browsing, the d-pad up and down buttons seem to be mapped to "flick up" and "flick down," while the center button does nothing. It would be nice if the buttons instead moved the "focus" from one item to the next/previous, and clicking the center button corresponded to "play." The left-right buttons could navigate between the list of items and the types of views ("by album" / "by artist" etc.)

Once again, great job, I really like how this app is coming along.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

The options to shuffle or repeat songs should be available in the upper tool bar not just only in the control panel. The way it is set now will make a user click three times to select those options instead of once, if it was selectable in the upper tool bar. Keep it Simple. ;)

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

seems like mediabox hangs if one try to open shoutcast directory without wifi active.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

I had a play with this app, and although it looked very good and had some very good features, it seems very complicated to add new radio stations, and is lacking in AAC support. I do like the interface though, and it looks as though it may be a two horse race between Mediabox and Canola to be the choice in media player for the majority of NIT users.
Keep up the good work.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Does the Youtube support work for anyone? Anything I seem to do in Youtube takes 100% cpu and I get a not responding dialog when I close it.

Frank

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Sorry I was clicking the queue button on top rated, I can play videos. I was looking for a way to find top rated by week/day/etc.

Frank

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

0.96.1 will have the behavior from the earlier SVN versions back. Additionally, it's possible to close an album in the list instead of having it closed by opening another album.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

This sounds really bad. Is it always the same time position the playback stops at?

To sum it up, the enqueue button should start playback in the queue if there's nothing playing at the moment. This sounds reasonable.

There's no slideshow yet in the image viewer. This is planned, though.
Preloading images is more of a problem on the NITs because of limited RAM. I think the N800 and N810 will be able to handle preloading rather well, but definitely not the 770.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see how well it can be done.

The search as you type currently only searches the contents in the current list. Actually, it's up to the particular plugin how to handle the search, so implementing other search-behavior would be possible.

I'm also planning to do it this way, but it will involve some work.

Thanks, I'm glad most of you like 0.96 so well. :)

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Thanks for the responses. I'll try to determine if the playback issue happens at particular points in particular videos.

The Youtube plugin seems to work quite well so far, by the way. One little quirk I've noticed, if I have a queue of youtube videos (which is a great feature!) and I'm viewing them in fullscreen, when the queue switches to the next video it pops out of fullscreen. If you're watching a longer video that has been divided into parts, that can be a little distracting.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

This works perfectly now - thank you so much !

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

still cant get the "car mode" to work, and how do we get the current playlist to show, ive tried everything.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

When you say you "cannot get the car mode to work", what exactly do you mean ? It seems to be working okay for me - There isn't much to it really ( unless I am missing something ) - you hit the hardware zoom button to get in, and hit it again to get out . Once you are in there, there is not much you can do except pause, skip forward, and skip backwards.

Would it be good idea to automatically flip to car mode after a certain period of inactivity, and then have a software way to go back ?

Also I am noticing that whenever i expand an album in the browser, the tracks in it are automatically played next. Is this on purpose , or a bug ?

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Version 0.96 is very nice. You deserve much praise as usual, Pycage.

I would like to mention one odd thing, though. After scanning my music files, one song in one of the albums (Long Album Name) was listed under an abbreviated name (Long Album), all the other songs in the album were listed under the entire name. I thought that perhaps the tag was wrong, so I checked it using the Audio Tag Tool. It was the only song in the album that had ID3 v2 information. The v2 information had the full album title, but the Audio Tag Tool only showed the abbreviated title without scrolling. I removed the ID3 v2 information, and now the song is listed with the rest of the songs in the album. (Am I being clear or rambling?)
Anyhow, it works fine for me now, but it looks like this may be a (minor) bug.

Back to the main point of this note: The latest release is another impressive version. Thanks!

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

It shouldn't matter if a file is tagged with ID3v2 or ID3v1. But if ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags are present at the same time (technically, this is possible with ID3v1 and ID3v2 because v1 sit at the end of the file and v2 at the beginning), strange things may occur. MediaBox would display the v2 tags in that case.
Maybe this is what happened because the problem went away when you removed the v2 tags.

Getting better with each release, hopefully. :)

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Car-mode is really nothing else than pressing the fullscreen button on top of the device in the music view. :)

The current playlist is visible in the playlist view (2nd icon from left on the menu panel). There you have by default a list called "Queue". This is not really a playlist, but a queue. The queue doesn't get saved across sessions, and played items are removed from the queue automatically.
You can press the [+] button in the toolbar to add new playlists. The currently selected playlist is the target playlist when enqueuing media. Playlists are saved across sessions and can be reordered by dragging the items.

If you have ideas of how to make this simpler and easier to understand for users, I'm interested to hear them. Usability is a top priority.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

@pycage:

Been lurking 'round here for a while and am VERY impressed by the advances you've made over the last several months. Thank you for all the hard work: MediaBox is rapidly becoming my preferred player on the 800 (and we're talking about a serious audio collection stored on a 32GB SD card!).

Think I've spotted a bug or two, though, as well as a usability issue, so here goes:

1. Shuffle is terrific, but it only seems to work on the "Track Info" screen of the music section for me; in the playlist editor section shuffle just never... well.. shuffles. If, for some reason, this is by design, it seems like an omission to me.

2. Given the rich set of information and controls onscreen at any given time, can we get the ability to opt for the screen staying lit while MediaBox is active and the device is charging (or even not)? It's a royal pain to set this in Control Panel before and after a MediaBox session and (I hate to put it this way, but...) Canola can do this...

The issue (for me) is that when tapping the darkened screen I'm more likely than not to accidentally activate a control...

3. I'm having an issue where the default Media Player app can play the internet radio stations I've fed it (local re-streaming of XM Radio Online via the uXM server app running on a PC on my LAN) but MediaBox simply hangs at "buffering".

Thanks again for ALL of your hard work... and Happy New Year!

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

what impresses me about mediabox is that it seems to have all the features of canola, but without the "bulk".

that and i love the concept of the slide up shelf hiding the main menu ;)

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Thank you very much, pycage, for this new release.
I've always preferred MediaBox over Canola because it is lighter and simple.
In my opinion this new release brings big improvements to the usability of MediaBox. The last release also seems to mostly fix the cpu usage of the first 0.96 release, although in the audio player cpu usage is still high (20%) while in the album manager it is right (1%) when playing music.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Thanks for this great Canola alternative! :)

Has anyone else noticed that when using the dark theme and car mode...that the next / previous buttons are not visible?

Also is there any graphical representation of the current volume or volume controls in MediaBox? (not the hard keys;))

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

thanks,realy thanks

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

I've used MediaBox sparingly, but I can't see how the new version works. It doesn't see all my files and I don't see how to us the upNp. I have a server on my network but it doesn't seem to see it. I find the interface very confusing now. I guess I'm missing something.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

Same here. I used in the past MediaBox, and i liked it. Since the last 2 updates I think that the application have more functionality, but it lost somehow in the user friend side. Probably I need to dig deeper.

I also do not find out how to set up the upnp (it works in canola).

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

UPnP shares get discovered automatically. You'll notice this by a popup message saying "device XYZ discovered". Discovered UPnP devices are listed in the folder view (the one where you can browse the filesystem of your device also).
If the UPnP devices don't show up there, they're either not compatible, or don't answer when MediaBox issues a network search for UPnP devices.

Re: MediaBox Media Center 0.96 with UPnP and more
 

The basic idea is that there is a filesystem browser and more specialised views for video, audio, and images. In the filesystem browser, you can add a folder to your library. The first item in a folder list represents the folder itself. There is a button you can press for opening a little menu with buttons for "add to library" and "enqueue to playlist". Folders added to the library are being watched and their contents appear in the specialised views. By default, the library contains only the internal media folders of your device (where the Nokia example files are).
You can manage folders in your library by going to the "library" view in the filesystem browser (button on the right). There you can select what kind of media MediaBox should watch in the folder, or you can remove the folder from the list of watched folders again.

I agree that this whole concept is a bit hard to discover for yourself, and some kind of first-steps tutorial for MediaBox would be a good thing.