I know it is long, but it feels even longer for me spending most of my weekend on my computer! I didn't expect the rewrite to take so long.  Anyway, not complaining at all as this is still very interesting and the progress are good so far despite a few issues.

As of today, I have worked on:

- a brand new core architecture, simpler, more maintainable and scalable. Most of the features of this architecture will not be apparent when I release v2, but it makes room for these features to appear later.

- Some interface tweaks, which include a MUCH better management of the full screen mode: When set to Manual mode, The AV key on the remote can be used to control wether a source appears in full screen or not. Video sources (TV, DTV, PC...) are full screen by default. Audio sources are not. Pressing AV before a source reverses that. Very much in line with B&O's logic. The full screen mode has a slightly updated layout that shows larger CD pictures and is more balanced on large screens. Also the top row can appear in overlay over videos and photos for a few seconds. Looks elegant.

- The virtual remote switches to a mini menu allowing to navigate playlist with the mouse when at your computer. I am also planning to have a floating mini palette that display the song info and picture when not in full mode.

- Better handling of "sleep" mode.

- Adapting LinkRemote, with much reliable connection, and some new features that will prevent some users getting confused when controlling from a different room. Oh and Dot Matrix font on iPad.

- A brand new Preference window. This looks secondary, but this will be the most visible change. Thanks to the new preferences, LinkPlayer will be much easier to setup. Rather than choosing the individual settings, you'll in simply describe your system and LinkPlayer will adapt itself automatically. A Red/Amber/Green light system will also make it easier to self diagnose problems. Oh, and I did spend hours making this window look really good!

- Completely rewritten Beoport/Masterlink driver. In V1, I was trying to replicated the messages exchanged in the PC version without really understanding them. But I now have a better understanding of these messages and I am able to build my own logic. The main difference as well, is that in the past I was recognising incoming messages by matching them to a "signature". But every B&O TV or Hifi send slightly different messages, and I constantly had to update these signatures. I have since found out that I can only look at a very small portion of each message to understand what it means. This will increase the compatibility and reliability. Here again, the whole engine use much less code.

- New LinkMusic source. Will looks and behave very similarly to the current one, but rewritten with much less code. The main feature is that it will preload the next song, so that there is less gap between songs. Previously I developed all internal sources independently from each other. In V2, most of internal sources will share the same code, so more sources (LinkMusic, Video, Photo...) will be controlled in exactly the same way. I am also achieving this with much less code, so it will be easier to maintain, enhance...

- Easier control of LinkPlayer with PUC or AppleRemote.

- Better handling of long presses on Beo4 arrow keys.

- etc...

---

Some of the features that this new architecture will eventually allow is the management of an external sound card. But this feature will not make it in V2.0. 

The problem with Beoport, is that is needs to be connected on the sound output of the Mac. So when you use your Mac, and do not have external speakers, you get no sound. I am planning to introduce a feature that will allow the distribution to use a second sound card, so that the mac sound output can remain free, allowing the Mac speakers to be active for the normal usage. In the future as well, it may be possible to listen to a source on your Mac, while streaming a different source to link rooms.

This weekend, I did work on reprogramming the Video source (while watching Eurovision). I am now going to reprogram the Photo source.

The main issue I am facing is with streaming sources, like LinkRadio and Spotify. Today, that's were I have spent the most time but was unable to achieve reliable results. Audio programming of streaming sources is considered the most difficult thing on a Mac, and not well documented, so I am blocking here a little bit. Will probably have to do a bit of reading...

Will post some screenshot sometime.

p.

Sounds an amazing amount of work

You are fantastic

And we all remain in your debt !

Phil, amazing work.  Thank you.

PhilLondon:

- Better handling of "sleep" mode.

[...] updated layout that shows larger CD pictures and is more balanced on large screens. Also the top row can appear in overlay over videos and photos for a few seconds. Looks elegant.

[...] Better handling of "sleep" mode.

[...] Oh and Dot Matrix font on iPad.

[...]- Better handling of long presses on Beo4 arrow keys.

The attention to detail is staggering.  Incredible, on this day and age.

Hi Phil, 

It sounds amazing that you building v2 from scratch. Can't wait to test it... :-) I use LinkPlayer every day and it's an amazing piece of work. Couldn't live without it...

I have my MacMini connected to a BV8-40. I use PC to activate LinkPlayer. 

There is a couple of things I would love in the new Player, if it's possible...!? :-)

1. Let's say I'm watching a movie in Plex. I pause it and go to DTV to watch the news. When I'm done and want to go back to Plex again, I press PC and is able to resume the movie without returning to the main menu. Is it possible to make this? Maybe assign another button to be the 'GO BACK TO MAIN MENU'-button for all programs under LinkPlayer!? For instance the Red button?

2. Is it possible for you to make an easy and quick "screen-refresh-rate' changer on the main menu, until Plex integrates an automatic-changer into their player???  :-)

It's an amazing job you are doing and I probably have a million questions more or so... if you ever need more beta-users to help test the system, I would love to help. :-)

Regards
Claus 

Dear Phil,

It is me again. After our last - unfortunately not successful - clarification session I had the suspicion that the Beoport is not working properly. So I bought a new one and unfortunately I still cannot control the Mac Mini (itunes, etc.).

My configuration:

Mainroom: Beovision 4 with Beosystem 2 (9416 Software 16.2), via ML junctionbox the Beoport is connected. Since I throw out my audiomaster Ouverture, the Beoport shall replace it, so I have set it to Option 0, TV is on 2. But absolutely no reaction on Beo4 commands. Linkplayer console says ...unmatched message...

Thx in advance for your help.

Separate issue not related to messages above:

I just wanted to report that it is my policy to never update our Mac Mini OS X/iTunes once I've set it up with Phil's latest version, whatever it may be.  What works, works, and shouldn't be messed up with.

Nonetheless, yesterday in a moment of rashness and motivated by a problem I was having on an iPad of my wife's, I updated the Mac Mini to all the latest updates, including iTunes 10.2.2 and OS X 10.6.7, and can report LinkPlayer and LinkRemote iPhone + LinkRemote iPhone (latest versions) work just as fine as always.

Let's hope Philippe manages to launch the new Linkplayer shortly after Lion OS X, it would be a shame to have Linkplayer fully operational for Snow Leopard just to re-work a few weeks later on bug fixes when Lion comes out.

Please, may anybody post his log file of Linkplayer?

Mine is:

Guys, 

I am on holidays, away from my B&O setup for another week. I'll have a look at all this when I am back to London.

p.

Some feedback on LinkPlayer with Lion.

I've been using LinkPlayer with Lion for the past two/three months,  for the most part it worked great no issues at all. Of late though I'm having a problem with LinkPlayer being non-responsive, requiring me to quit and restart LinkPlayer.

I've narrowed it down - when using the Mac with LinkPlayer and then switching off the Beovision with my remote (normal red dot button), the BV turns off as per normal but when I switch it back on LinkPlayer is not reacting to the remote commands anymore, requiring a restart of LinkPlayer. SO where one would expect the LinkPlayer menu screen to come up, the Mac desktop is showing with LinkPlayer running (and not indicating "Application not respondig") but it does not recognise remote commands.

Not a terribly big deal since it's a simple quit and restart to get up and running again (as opposed to restarting the entire machine) but clearly somehting not happy anymore. Not sure if this behaviour manifested already with Preview 3 or only the latest Preview 4 (current installation) but as of now there's a bug.

Philippe, happy to help test beta builds against Lion if you need.

berlin2010:

Some feedback on LinkPlayer with Lion.

Have you been using it in full screen MENU mode ?

I found LinkPlayer unstable in that mode ... so I would be interested in any changes you made in moving from Leopard to Lion !

elephant:

berlin2010:

Some feedback on LinkPlayer with Lion.

Have you been using it in full screen MENU mode ?

I found LinkPlayer unstable in that mode ... so I would be interested in any changes you made in moving from Leopard to Lion !

Yip, full screen.

Literally no changes though, simply installed Lion on top of my previous system (10.6.7 I think) and kept on going. Re unstable if you mean seeing the Mac menu bar on top and the Dock at the bottom while being in full screen mode, yeah that still happens every now and again. Only way to get to complete full screen is to click on LinkPlayer 'window' (feels a little silly to talk about a window for something that's supposed to be full screen) to bring it to front.

berlin2010:

elephant:

berlin2010:

Some feedback on LinkPlayer with Lion.

Have you been using it in full screen MENU mode ?

I found LinkPlayer unstable in that mode ... so I would be interested in any changes you made in moving from Leopard to Lion !

Yip, full screen.

Literally no changes though, simply installed Lion on top of my previous system (10.6.7 I think) and kept on going. Re unstable if you mean seeing the Mac menu bar on top and the Dock at the bottom while being in full screen mode, yeah that still happens every now and again. Only way to get to complete full screen is to click on LinkPlayer 'window' (feels a little silly to talk about a window for something that's supposed to be full screen) to bring it to front.

Interesting.

I created a dual boot system so I can flip-flop between Snow Leopard and Lion.

I have just flipped from LinkPlayer under Snow Leopard to Lion and I can scroll up and down the main menu with my Beo4.

And I can select the "iTunes" option via (GO) on the Beo4 ....... my recollection is that when I first tried this under Lion (a preview or two ago) then the main menu would disappear ....... I was able to use LinkPlayer to play via the mouse controls but not the Beo4 ........ now magical I have a fully working system ....... thank you for encouraging me to do another test

elephant:

Interesting.

I created a dual boot system so I can flip-flop between Snow Leopard and Lion.

I have just flipped from LinkPlayer under Snow Leopard to Lion and I can scroll up and down the main menu with my Beo4.

And I can select the "iTunes" option via (GO) on the Beo4 ....... my recollection is that when I first tried this under Lion (a preview or two ago) then the main menu would disappear ....... I was able to use LinkPlayer to play via the mouse controls but not the Beo4 ........ now magical I have a fully working system ....... thank you for encouraging me to do another test

Glad to hear. One thing that does give me a problem though is scrolling through a long list e.g. when i enter artist mode under itunes and I want to scroll down from the A's to M or something (likely 1,000 names later) it scrolls down on the screen and then the screen stops refreshing. If I keep the down key pressed and after some time let go it will refresh and I will find myself perhaps in the F's... press down again and guess how long to release before I get to M... a little annoying.

So no 'fast scrolling' or at least not very smooth. 

Can you try on your end?

Scrolling would be faster and easier if the Beo4 numbered keys could be used for alphabet letters, as we do on our cell phones when typing SMSs.

Another suggestion for the next version maybe?

berlin2010:

elephant:

Interesting.

I created a dual boot system so I can flip-flop between Snow Leopard and Lion.

I have just flipped from LinkPlayer under Snow Leopard to Lion and I can scroll up and down the main menu with my Beo4.

And I can select the "iTunes" option via (GO) on the Beo4 ....... my recollection is that when I first tried this under Lion (a preview or two ago) then the main menu would disappear ....... I was able to use LinkPlayer to play via the mouse controls but not the Beo4 ........ now magical I have a fully working system ....... thank you for encouraging me to do another test

Glad to hear. One thing that does give me a problem though is scrolling through a long list e.g. when i enter artist mode under itunes and I want to scroll down from the A's to M or something (likely 1,000 names later) it scrolls down on the screen and then the screen stops refreshing. If I keep the down key pressed and after some time let go it will refresh and I will find myself perhaps in the F's... press down again and guess how long to release before I get to M... a little annoying.

So no 'fast scrolling' or at least not very smooth. 

Can you try on your end?

There are some days I *hate* software ...

I tried the tests again (and I swear that "nothing" has changed) and I had all sorts of trouble:

• full screen menu is now fragile again and disappears if you wiggle the mouse
• significant lag at times between the Beo4 clicks and the responses
• at one point I had to power down (not reset, I mean yank out the power cord) to get the BV8 reset
• could not get any coloured kets other than Yellow and Blue to work

So I was unable to get a list of artists and so I was unable to do your scroll tests 

Sorry but I have gone back to Snow Leopard to calm down !

Hi Phil

Any news on the progress? I really look forward to this next version - sounds very interesting ;-)

Best regards

Jan

Yes, good progress recently. I had a week off work, so I could spend quite a lot of time of LinkPlayer 2.

I now have Lion and am testing the new version works with it fine.

Recently, I have been working on integrating RSS feeds in most sources.

In LinkPlayer's preferences, you'll be able to subscribe to RSS news feeds, Podcasts, Video Podcasts, Photostreams. And play them directly within LinkMusic (Now called Music), Video, Photo and Safari (Now called Web) sources.

That will make the Web source much more useable:

For example, if you like to use it to get the BBC news, you'd have to go to the BBC news page and then use cumbersome Beo4 key navigation to get to the different articles.

Now, you just subscribe to the BBC RSS feed in LinkPlayer's preferences. Then you can navigate through the headlines like you navigate through songs in a playlist and display each article's pages.

Today I have re-implementing EyeTV Recording playback in a way that will not require to launch EyeTV. It works directly from the Video source.

I have also re-implented the CD source is a way that does not require to launch iTunes.

Having sources that play internally like this allow a much consistent behaviour between all the sources.

Hi Phillippe - that all sounds really good !

The EyeTV recording improvement would be good.

Not sure I will make use of the CD source but using the MacMini's drive as a DVD source would be interesting !  

What is great about LinkPlayer is its flexibility that allows many different usage patterns.

Let me/us know if any of us can help with any Beta testing.

I'll re-try to implement the DVD source - But Apple's API for this is quite, well, bad. But it is really something I'd like to achieve.

Tonight I re-implemented the 'Line-In' source, now called 'Aux'.

Probably not a very used source, but you can use it to connect any device to you computer's line in and play it through your system. 

In this new implementation, you can choose between the Line-In, the Microphone, or any Sound Card Input using the navigation menus.

PhilLondon:

I'll re-try to implement the DVD source - But Apple's API for this is quite, well, bad. But it is really something I'd like to achieve.

Thank you !

Just a note, today, with the current LinkPlayer you can watch DVDs using FrontRow.

PhilLondon:

Just a note, today, with the current LinkPlayer you can watch DVDs using FrontRow.

Yes, thank you, I know

Just looking to a Lion future without FrontRow

I chose to buy a second-hand Mac Mini and use it only as a music server with Linkplayer.

I'll keep Snow Leopard to be able to use the built-in CD/DVD playback features..and the Apple Remote!

I removed all other apps like Office, Mail or Imovie, and this system is so great, that I don't need more at the moment. I only use RADIO/CD/A.MEM sources and have a setup with Linkplayer as the audio master. The BeoCenter 2 is now a stand-alone unit feeding Pentas.

The only thing I miss is scrolling metadata on my BeoLab 3500 in the bathroom