A new version of Media Browser was just released (2.0.90).  The biggest addition to this version is a new configuration utility which aids in getting your media locations and other general settings set before first run.  This is an external utility, so you have better control over adding locations outside the default settings (no more XML editing).  Support for all settings is reserved for future releases.  The ability to delete movie items has also been added.  More on that if you follow the link to the release notes below.  There has also been some additional bug fixes and minor enhancements to the overall functionality.  Read about all the new additions here as well as download.

In addition to Media Browser, a new release of Meta Browser was released a while back that I just recently had the joy in updating to.  This latest version adds the capability of assigning the ImagesByName folder which is used for custom images within Media Browser.  You can then fetch actor images for your titles (for those actors that have images anyway) and it will create the necessary entries for you.  Until this functionality is built into Media Browser, this is a terrific addition.  You can get the latest version of Meta<Browser /> here.

Finally, SecondRun.tv has really been ramping up and we have been promised a new release very soon with tons of new movie content added.  There has already been huge improvements to this plugin since I first blogged about it, so if you haven’t grabbed it already, check in often for the new release.

A new release of Salami’s Movie Organizer has been released (well, on the 18th) that fixes moviemeter.nl metadata fetching.  You can get it here.

I finished my movie of offices this weekend.  There is still some straightening up and organizing to do, but everything works now.  I also completely reorganized my server room and it looks much nicer now.  I’ll take some pics and put them up in a day or two along with the new office/playroom space.

I also reinstalled my C2Q primary system this weekend.  I tried to clone my 74GB Raptor to a Drive XPert RAID0 array, but the Paragon copy script that is supposed to execute on boot just hung, leaving me unable to get into my system.  I’m sure I could’ve fixed it with a little searching, but I didn’t care.  It had been a while since I did a fresh install and I wasn’t really going to be losing any data (I keep everything on unRAID and the other array on my C2Q box).

I also imaged over my NETSVR to a new 146GB Seagate 15K SAS drive on a Dell SAS 5/iR controller.  That sped things up a little.  I imaged over my VPNSVR to a new partition on the 250GB that was in it and removed the 320GB PATA drive.  That drive went into my unRAID server to take the place of the 500GB drive that used to be home to my file NAS drive.  I was only using 140GB of it and my kid’s movie drive was almost empty.  I still have one 500GB left, but I’m going to need that for my TV recordings soon.  Finally, I retired the old BKPSVR since I got a free PCI slot on VPNSVR to move the Adaptec SCSI card and Dell tape drive to.  A lot of drive musical chairs this weekend!  It all worked out well though.

I got the old 48″ Sony projection TV moved into the office/playroom and got HTPC3 hooked up to it.  It looks like the 11g network adapter will be enough.  I have an access point only about 10ft from it, but I was worried about latencies and how Media Browser would work with it.  I imagine it will be a little slow at first, but once it caches everything it will work just fine.  It will be good enough for the kids, for sure.

Well, I’m tired and my sinuses are killing me, so I don’t think I’m up for bringing anymore news for the day.  Tomorrow is a new day!

MyMoviesBrowser is an open-source MCML frontend for MyMovies.  It looks pretty good, but it was a bit buggy for me and I was no longer using MyMovies, so I didn’t give it a very good look.

Darick C., the developer, just released a new beta that adds the following features/bug fixes:

I don’t post much about hardware and I probably should.  Afterall, we wouldn’t have HTPCs without it, right?  So, I thought I would start posting more about interesting hardware that I come across that is HTPC-related.

Today, I came across some new cases from Luxa² – a division of Thermaltake.  Their cases appear to be somewhat cube-based with various types of VFDs built-in and some have LCD touchscreens.  They definitely have the Thermaltake ‘feel’ to them as they instantly reminded me of my old Mozart case.  Don’t worry, the Luxa² look much better.

LM300 Touch Pro

I keep seeing this crop up more and more as the popularity of Media Browser increases.  It has to do with those that have large movie collections, but do not have their individual movie files (in AVI, MKV, MP4, DIVX, WMV, etc.) in a folder of the same name – which Media Browser requires.

I faced this same issue also when I was wanting to get away from MyMovies.  I had all of my movies thrown into a couple of categorized directories, but that was it.  I couldn’t imagine manually creating 1500 folders for my movies, so I called upon my batch scripting abilities (I’m a systems administrator by trade) and came up with this little snippet of code that I still use to this day (I have a default folder that I convert all of my new DVD/BluRay discs to and then I run this once the output file is completed).

@echo off
for %%a in (*.*) do (
 	md "%%~na" 2>nul
 	move "%%a" "%%~na"
)

Just copy this into a text file and rename it to a .bat extension.  You will place the .bat file into the directory containing your movie files and then double-click it.  It will automatically create a new folder of the same name of each of your movie files and then move that file into it.  Voila!  If you have any subtitles that are named the same as your video files, they will get moved into the same folder as well (any file of the same name will, actually).  So if you have a movie called The Transporter.avi, a The Transporter.srt subtitle file, and a The Transporter.jpg image file inside your Movies directory, when you run the script all three files will be moved to Movies\The Transporter directory.

If you have multiple directories, you will need to do the same for each of them as this is not recursive code.  I’d rather it not be so that you have some level of control over it.  I also would not run this in any TV series folders as it will throw your individual episodes into their own folders.  Also, if you have any of your files marked as hidden or read-only, they will not get moved.

Warning!

Depending on where you have your movies stored and/or what is in your movies directory, this could be a very dangerous script.  Keep in mind that this script will move EVERYTHING within the directory it is run in except for hidden and read-only files.

Due to the number of issues, do not not run this against network locations unless the drive is mapped to a local drive letter.

End Warning!

Anyway, hope this helps some of you out!

Update:

I have not been able to reproduce this on at least a half-dozen systems using four different OSes (2008 Server x64, 2003 x86/x64, Vista Ultimate x86/x64 and XP x86, but I thought I should put it out since at least one person has commented on it.  Apparently this script created odd-named folders and did not move any files.  As I said, I have not ever had any issue with this script and it has moved over 2000 movies for me.  Anyway, if you plan to use this, please test it out with some dummy files first (you can use any kind of files, just make sure you do it within a safe folder).

Update 2:

It appears there may be an issue with copying the code off this post and inserting it into your own .bat file.  So, in order to reduce (or resolve) the issues with it, I’m including the exact .bat file that I use.  So far, there have been no reported issues with it.  You can get it here (RAR format).