I hope everyone had a nice holiday, even if that's not your bag of chips. We were trying to get a new version out the door before last year's end but December was just too eventful for us all. David broke his hand playing soccer. Antoine's company is busy (good for them, bad for CS). I got a baby goril that currently takes all my attention.

This is a list of things we're working on:
Neil and David is working on an update to the site, complete new design and a new structure. Antoine is implementing changes to support even more flexible skins and also fixing some issues reported with 0.5, as well as fullscreen slideshows.
Jan has been cranking out a new updated skin for 1280x720, alphablack, this will be our new default skin (no more green...)
I'm working on getting my daughter falling to sleep by herself.

But right now I'm looking forward to see the keynote at MWSF. We'll see what happens when Steve enters the CenterStage...

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Please delete your com.centerstageproject.centerstage.plist from ~/Library/Preferences. Antoine

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We are happy to announce CenterStage 0.5. The next development version of the Mac Media Center. There is a bunch of new features. We are very excited about this release since it gives skin developers as well as module developers a much better base to work from. And we have already started to see some third party skins (pifou, Jan_L) and modules (Aaron, Diggory) in the works. We are planning to add sections on the site for skins and modules in the near future.

Download the release here and try it out.

Here is the (incomplete) list of changes:

New features:
Photo module (with inline slideshow, see notes)
Music module
Module Transistions (Quartz Composer based)
On Screen Display (OSD)
Zoom in fullscreen playback
Resolution switching in the preferences

Enhancements:
Improved skin, optimized for 1280x720. In the future CS will pick the best skin for the current resolution. Feel free to customize the included skin for your screen if needed.
Much faster browsing of media.
Made the screen level "screensaver" and hides the menu instead of "shielded", this makes it play much nicer with other apps, like accepting Cmd+H. You could always have itbut switch to other apps just like FrontRow, and it lets you see Growl notifications.
Hides cursor after a while.
Sync movie between normal mode and fullscreen and back again.
More keyboard control during fullscreen playback (jump in time, etc)
A LOT of new features in the CSColumnBrowser Inspector in Interface Builder. Provides much more freedom when creating skins.
Added more meta data to the movie module.

Notes:
DVD Playback does not work. A dot release will re-enable this.
Fullscreen slideshows does not work in the photo module yet.
VIDEO_TS folder as well subtitle support is coming.
Shuffle playback of media is also in the works.
Scrollbar and knob is not yet skinnable
Only the General Preferences section has any settings
We choose to disable Diggory’s Radio Shark module since it is still a work in progress, you can check out the code from svn and compile if you want to try it.

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As I am sure you are all aware BackStage is designed to be used with CenterStage as it acts as a data provider, this is why it is combined with CenterStage in the SVN repository and both applications require each other to compile. BackStage was only released separately initially as it was developing quicker than CenterStage and we wanted to get it out the door to show you what we are doing.

Anyway to streamline our release process, and make it easier for new users to get what they need to be up and running we are bringing BackStage back in house so to speak, meaning the next release of CenterStage will include BackStage as it is integral to it's operation. This process was started when we aligned the version numbers with the last release, meaning there will be no more separate releases of BackStage.

A website redesign is also in the works, think sleek and Mac like.

So watch this space!

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As you may have noticed the forum database was down for the last 12 hours, this has now been resolved. Are far as I can see no data has been lost, if you find you cannot log in or posts are missing/corrupt let me know via the contact webmaster link.

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New Developers Three new developers have joined our crew. Let me present them:
Pucky Loucks (pucky) will be working on the server part. He's very excited (as we are) over this since he has professional experience with P2P applications and architecture. To get a feeling of the framework he's implementing a TV Guide module.
Jude Sutton (slowjud) is known for his MMC clone (see this thread). He has already built a MediaCenter, so isn't that just a given to join us? He will start looking into the photo or music module as soon as school is over in Australia.
The last guy is famous for his inofficial CS 0.45 release, where he managed to find "hidden" working versions of the photo and the music module in the SVN repository. His name is Aaron Fisher (sonicfish109) and is working on a browser module for CS. This will be a nice addition to CS.
You will recognize these (as well as the other staff members) in the forums by the CS badges in their signatures.
But we also have some more people working on their own on playing with skins and modules. Diggory is working on a module for controlling the RadioShark (very nice), and Pifou is experimenting with a new skin.
This is very good news but we would still want more help from developers, especially experienced Cocoa developers. So if you know anyone or you hang out in other tech/development forums point them to us and we will welcome them and see where they fit in.

Last, we are working on releasing a new CS release with working music and photo modules, as well as OnScreenDisplay (OSD) and zooming in fullscreen playback as well as some other small tweaks. Due to some resource allocation issues, this release has been delayed but should be released very soon.

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As Conny has indeed mentioned in the last News Item, it has been a very and possibly uncertain few weeks for our project. Ironically, now that Apple has released what appears to be their first tentative steps toward a full Media Center Application the forum has been flooded with interest and offers to help. This may well be the moment when this project stood up and emerged as both great and inspired.

For that to happen help is still needed...

Personally I have had a few e-mails from people wishing to help out on the project and offering advice. I am looking for talented designers of all ages and experience to help out on the project. The potential work done for this group is an excellent addition to any students portfolio (which I have personally found to be true) and I am offering the chance for others to help lead the project aesthetically and join a group of designers working on this project.

The first step is a slight remodification of the current UI. I have written a very short brief outlining what is required of a potential designer wanting to help us as well as what is required for a short period of visual mock-ups to determine the UI direction.

I will be releasing and letting potential designers access a large amount of artwork that will assist them in fullfilling the brief.

If you could download the PDF document (link below), review it and feel you are able to help then please contact me and we can take things from there.

Download the Brief > Click Me

E-Mail Me > CenterStage_Design

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Seems like the last two weeks have been kind of crazy around here. First we had the unofficial release of the Music and Photo modules by Aaron. Then Apple introduced FrontRow. The forums have been busier than in a long time. Some people declare this project dead, I would say that couldn't be more wrong. If nobody posted in the forums, and nobody cared, then I would be more concerned.

Apple's FrontRow is currently only iMac only and can't be purchased or downloaded. But it does give us a kick in the butt and also lets us highlight the differences between CS and FrontRow. It'source, it supports more media formats, it's extendable, it's skinnable, it's built for a client/server model.
But as you noticed we haven't released any new version in a while, this is part due to that our lead developer been very busy with his business. This is also why it's important to attract new developers to the project. One of these new developers I've already introduced above. Aaron is working on a browser module (very cool) and as he was compiling the source code from the repository he found out there were basic working photo and music modules. These were planned for the next release (that will also include some other nice extras). The only wrong thing Aaron did was to release it as a semi-offical CenterStage release (4.5?), otherwise everybody is welcome to download and build the source code and do whatever they want with it. So we are actively inviting new programmers to join the project so that we can show the potential of CS, but to do that effectively we need more man power. Contact me (Conny) or Antoine if you're interested.

David is also going to work on a simpler UI that would be easier to implement and that we can build on going forward. He is also looking for new graphic designers and UI designers to join him in his work to create the best looking and functioning Media Center UI.

On the downside we have banned out first user from the forums. I never thought we would have to do that.

Stay tuned for an update on what's going to be in the next release and what the timeframe for it is.

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