1/21 Progress Update

Happy Friday! Fridays are always a good time for progress updates so read on to see what we've been up to over the past few weeks.

Seas0nPass

We're working fervently to complete a Windows version of Seas0nPass. Assuming no unexpected issues come up this version will be available within the next 1-2 weeks in early February. Like its Mac based counterpart this will also be a freely available, open-source application.

XBMC

Thanks to some exceptional work from Scott Davilla and the XBMC Team a full version of XBMC is now available for the 2nd gen AppleTV. XBMC acts as a replacement for the AppleTV menus, though you can easily switch back and forth between XBMC and AppleTV whenever you please. With aTV Flash (black) installed, XBMC can be easily downloaded through the Maintenance --> Manage Extras menu.

Streaming internet video

Over the past few weeks we've spent a bit of time working towards enabling Adobe Flash and determining how usable it would be. Ultimately we did get it working (big thanks to Comex) however the end result was far less than ideal. Videos would load ok, but playback was limited to 1-3 frames per-second which by any standard is pretty awful.

Instead of pursuing Adobe Flash any further we've decided to work towards optimizing HTML5 streaming video, which many popular sites are already using. HTML5 streaming via Couch Surfer has been improved greatly in recent weeks, and we're working towards making it even better.

Additional codecs and NAS streaming

We're getting closer and closer to making native NAS streaming and video playback a reality. As of today the plan is to make the initial beta version of this feature available within the next 1-2 weeks in early February. Additional features such as cover art, metadata fetching, and full hardware video decoding will be available shortly thereafter.

A few new screenshots are below.

Comments, thoughts and suggestions are welcome below.