Sapphire Beta 4 Preview (1.0b4)
It has been awhile since we have released any updates to the Sapphire plug-in. As you might have noticed, when we do push releases, they aren’t sparse on new features. Beta 4 will be no exception. We are excited about the new features and thought it would be appropriate to put together a preview of what to expect from our next release.
Movie Support:
- Sapphire will now be supporting automated metadata fetching for movies. This is probably the most anticipated feature in beta 4, but maybe that is because nobody knew about the other goodies we have been working on. IMDB will be the primary source the movie data & we will be using IMPAwards to gather cover art (more like cover posters
). Additionally, if you’re still using XML files to store your movie meta data, Sapphire will collect it appropriately. I’m sorry I don’t have any screenshots to show for the movies yet - it is still being worked on.
Browser interface:
- Direct Volume Access:
- The first thing you will notice is the list of all the current mounts on your Apple TV. It is no longer necessary to mount or link remote drives through the frontrow movie folder (~/Movies/) in order to access them through Sapphire.
- Virtual Media Folders:
- Sapphire will now place all your identified TV shows into one virtual folder. Episodes and Seasons from the same show located in different folders are displayed together - there is no longer the need to manage your TV shows into specific folders to keep your Apple TV browsing clean.
Metadata Importing:
- Verbose Initialization:
- The import tools now have a more verbose initialization process. This is primarily to allow the user to see what is going on instead of wondering if Sapphire is doing anything.
- Updated:
- Sapphire’s import tools have been updated to better handle slow network connections. This should help a lot of users that were having issues getting the import tools to complete on their own.
On-demand Browser Switching:
- Sapphire now allows for switching between each browser view (Unwatched, Favorite, Browse) without needing to come back to the main menu. One click of the remote and the browser view will switch to the next.
Music:
- We’re not sure why you would like to play music through a third party plug-in - needless to say beta 4 will now be supporting music playback.
So, When is it going to be released?
- The conservative estimate is early October. Aside from code needing to be written, we have some rather important events coming up in the next couple of weeks that are straining the amount of time we (mainly I) can put into Sapphire. Unfortunately it’s been my code base that gotten the neglected consequently stalling the beta 4 release. On that note it is important to us that we release a solid build to the public. Hang in there, it will be worth it.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:47 am
[…] Beta 4 Preview September 17th, 2007 — professafresh Looks like the Sapphire crew is showing off the new version of their fantastic .frappliance, aptly named […]
September 17th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Sounds like some nice new features in the update. Is the use of that efficient plug in, Flip4Mac, essential?
September 17th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Antonio - You only need the Flip4Mac codec to play Windows Media files (WMV).
September 18th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Can’t wait to see it. We’ll definitely blog about it on AppleTVSource.com and AppleTVHacks.net.
Thanks for all your work, you guys.
September 19th, 2007 at 5:58 am
This is excellent news! Thanks a lot for the preview.
September 24th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Will it be able to access files on a shared itunes library? (From the sources menu, ferinstance?)
September 24th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
You have my love!
September 24th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Charley - No, Sapphire doesn’t connect to shared iTunes libraries. Network (volume) shares on the other hand is the primary reason Sapphire is used.
October 5th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Thank you for sharing!
October 15th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Wow — I can’t wait for the latest version to be released!!! Your work looks incredible! Way to go and get cracking on cleaning up that code, I can’t wait!
October 15th, 2007 at 4:54 am
The new feature to be able to store shows on any drive, rather than just Users/frontrow/Movies is brilliant, but I hope it won’t result in a cluttered browser? It would be perfect if the option to turn this view on/off were available *and* the user could just select the default directory to look in. If not, just let us change the default directory alone.
October 16th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
HackTit - We’re ahead of you.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:41 am
Praise be! I shall go back to frothing at my desk!
October 25th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I guess ‘early October’ is not gonna happen, is it?
Any estimates?
October 26th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Can’t wait for the new release (hopefully soon). The current version of Sapphire is very sluggish on my appletv. I hope the new version has some performance enhancements (along with the new eye candy).
October 27th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Thanks again for this great plugin! Do you maybe know whether the new Sapphire release would work with Leopard’s Front Row?
November 6th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I think there are a number of people really looking forward to this… any ideas on a new date - even if it’s weeks, we’d just like to know. I hope more people will hack their Apple TV with a beginner’s guide I’m writing…
http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide
November 14th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Please … any Information?
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:02 am
For those watching this RSS feed, beta 4 has been released.
December 15th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I have seen that Leopard Front Row now supports VOB files (dvd copy) and it would be very nice for this plugin to work with it also.