Industry News & Views
CMC v4.0 represents the 3rd anniversary of Chameleon MediaCenter. To celebrate our journey into year number 4, I knew CMC v4.0 needed to be very special…
Since the very first versions of Chameleon MediaCenter (back when it was known is MM Browser), users have wished for the capability to directly access the My Movies data with CMC, just like WMC did, instead of scanning media folders looking for metadata files to import.
For those users I say: Wish granted!
CMC v4.0 includes a brand new companion app, Chameleon CentralController (CCC), which directly sends your My Movies collection data to all of your CMC clients. No more will you have to export metadata to your media folders with CME, only to read it right back in with a Sync in CMC.
CCC works as an interface between My Movies and CMC, giving CMC direct access to your collection. This includes support for Offline Titles and (brand new in My Movies v5.30) Movie Collections. CCC allows you to see more ALL of your My Movies collection in CMC. But wait, there’s more!
CCC also introduces User Accounts to CMC. You can configure separate user accounts for family members, friends, guests, even renters, each with their own display preferences and parental restrictions. Also, each user account separately tracks watched title history (which you can review in CCC) and has their own personal WatchList.
Together, CMC + CCC is the My Movies on Windows Media Center solution you’ve been looking for.
You can still use CME to export metadata to files if you prefer. Metadata files work better for mobile users on the go who only take a portion of their gigantic movie collection with them. You can also use both solutions for the best of both worlds: CME for portable metadata files, and CCC for the best possible experience when you’re at home. Though CCC is such a huge improvement, we highly recommend it over CME for all users.
v4.0 also has a lot of bug fixes and new features in both CMC and CME, too many to list here, so head on over to the Download page for the full changelog.
CMC v4.0 is a free upgrade for all users. For current users, if you’ve granted firewall access then CMC will let you auto-update to the new version the next time you run CMC. Otherwise, you can manually download and install v4.0.
Time sure does fly when your busy programming. It’s hard to believe that CMC has now been in development for over 3 years. To mark the occasion, CMC v3.6 has just been released with the latest and greatest improvements.
As far as new releases go, v3.6 is on the smaller side. This is primarily a bug-fix release with a few new features, in prep for our planned v4.0 release which is coming very soon.
One of the most notable v3.6 changes is the ability to set unique default sorts for each Media Types. For example, now you can have your Movies sort by Year Descending, and TV Show sort Alphabetically Ascending, and still have All Media Types sort by most recently added. It only takes a minute to configure (Settings > Startup & Logging Options), and will save you a lot of time and frustration going forward.
Another notable change is CMC now has an official Privacy Policy. A new notification in CMC will appear upon first-time startup v3.6, and any time we change the policy (should be a fairly rare event). The main reason we added a Privacy Policy is to be compliant with the Google API, which let’s CMC connect to your Google Photos albums for use in CMC Slideshows. Though I do admit, now that I’ve published the Privacy Policy, I realize that CMC should have had one long ago. The new privacy policy covers both CMC and this website, including the Forum. You can access it directly here, or from the CMC menu above under “Support”.
There are also a couple new options that actually disable some of the advanced features of CMC. TV Series Season Banner Images can now be disabled if you prefer the more consistent look of CMC generated text buttons. And the Enhanced TV Series view can be disabled if you prefer the legacy Box Set view to browse TV Series as discs. While we personally love and enjoy these great features, we understand not everyone shares our viewpoint, so we strive to make customer requests come true.
CMC v3.6 also has 6 important bug fixes that make using CMC more trouble-free than ever.
We have also upgraded the CMC Metadata Exporter to v2.0. The big change for CME is actually under the covers, and you probably won’t notice unless you pull out your stopwatch. We have improved export speed by about 10% by replacing the default XML parser with a high-performance XML parsing library. This brings CME in line with CMC, which received the same enhancement back in v3.1 last December. This was an important development for us as we are releasing a new product soon that will merge some of the features of CMC and CME together, making it critical that we used the same toolset in both products.
To read up on all the new features, improvements and bug fixes, head over to the Download page for the full changelog.
CMC v3.6 is a free upgrade for all users. For current users, if you’ve granted firewall access then CMC will let you auto-update to the new version the next time you run your current copy. Otherwise, you can manually download and install v3.6.
Happy 4th of July! To celebrate Independence Day in the USA, CMC v3.5 is here to light some fireworks!
The big news for v3.5 are the new Photo Slideshows. Many of you love the photo slideshow feature in Windows Media Center, and this is our first step toward recreating this must have feature. While the CMC Photo Slideshows may not have the fancy WMC style scrolling photo animations (at least, not yet), CMC does have one capability that WMC never had: displaying your online photos from the cloud!
CMC v3.5 photo slideshows support both local photos as well as online Google Photo Albums. In the future, we will add more online services based on user feedback, so please let us know what services you want CMC to connect with for displaying photo slideshows.
Chameleon MediaCenter v3.5 also has a good number of bug fixes. At this point, most of these bug fixes just address minor cosmetic issues, as CMC is extremely solid.
The CMC Metadata Exporter also sees some important updates. CME v1.6 greatly improves the first-time new user experience, better handling My Movies API connectivity issues and providing informative feedback to help you get up and running quicker and easier.
To read up on all the new features, improvements and bug fixes, head over to the Downloads page for the full changelog.
CMC v3.5 is a free upgrade for all users. For current users, if you’ve granted firewall access then CMC will let you auto-update to the new version the next time you run your current version. Otherwise, you can manually download and install the new version.
To celebrate Memorial Day here in the USA, CMC v3.4 is ready to power your movie night.
The biggest change for v3.4 are the new Parental Rating / Movie Classification icons. Previous versions of CMC only used the US MPAA rating icons, and often showed [UNRATED] for non-US movies. These limitations have all be resolved in v3.4, which has hand-crafted parental rating icons for all countries that My Movies supports.
Another nice enhancement is that the Alpha-Jump (typing text to quickly jump to the first matching title) now works with all movie sorting options. Previously, you could only Alpha-Jump if your collection was sorted by Title, but v3.4 fixes this shortcoming.
If you use the “Personal Title” or “Personal Title Sort” override values in My Movies Collection Management, then CMC v3.4 will finally import and use those values. Note that you will need to do a Full Sync the first time to import this new data.
Recently a user asked if we could fix the FanArt backgrounds turning blue when launching a movie from the Movie Details screen. Not only did we fix it for v3.4, we’ve made launching movies from the main cover rows even better, as the FanArt for that movie will show as the movie is loaded for playback.
There’s also a handful of important but minor bug fixes to round out this great new release.
To read up on all the new features, improvements and bug fixes, head over to the Downloads page for the full changelog.
CMC v3.4 is a free upgrade for all users. For current users, if you’ve granted firewall access then CMC will let you auto-update to the new version the next time you run your current version. Otherwise, you can manually download the new version.