Legend :

"*"  = New
"+"  = Change
"-"  = Fix

What's new in Zoom Player v20 beta 4:

New :

  * In an effort to modernize Zoom Player's Home Theater look & feel, I've been
    working with Godwin on a new icon style. Simple, clean, subtle shading.
    With each beta, I'm including the latest icons, some of which are not in
    their final state.
    
    Another small tweak I made is to the Home Theater interfaces title area. It
    is now using a more standard font & color, reducing the number of different
    fonts used on-screen for a cleaner look.

    If you would like to comment on the new design, leave me a post on reddit:
    https://www.redit.com/r/zoomplayer

  * Since neither of the Subtitle components used by Zoom Player (DirectVobSub
    and xySubFilter) support VTT subtitles, I wrote code to dynamically convert
    ".VTT" files to ".SRT" files on the fly.

    The temporary ".SRT" files are saved to the windows temp folder and are
    erased as soon as the media closes. This feature only works on external
    subtitle files.

  * Added smart play profiles for Audiobooks in the ".M4B" and ".AAX" formats.

  * Added "AAX" as a default Audio file extension format. This change is not
    applied automatically to existing installation, you can apply it by
    clicking the "Default" button next to the audio extensions under "Advanced
    Options / File Format Association / File Extensions".

  * Added a button to the Media Server setup dialog (Adv. Options / Playback
    / Media Server) to apply the server's (Plex/Emby/Jellyfin) default local
    port to the specified URL.


Change :

  + If a Media Server URL is specified without an "http/https" prefix,
    "http" is now assumed by default.


Fixes :

  - When streaming media using libVLC, under some unknown condition, libVLC
    starts sending 1000's of time-changed events to Zoom Player every second,
    causing Zoom Player's user interface to freeze under the load. I wrote
    custom code to filter out all the duplicate events to work-around this
    issue.

  - The setting to go fullscreen on play was accidentally disabled in
    Zoom Player IPTV.

  - An authentication failure on a Media Server could have caused that media
    server's profile to disappear.

  - Fixed a bug in the previous beta where Zoom Player tried to automatically
    set local ports for media servers, preventing servers that work on the
    default http/https ports from connecting if you didn't specify the port.

  - Fixed TCP/IP Command & Control API message #1702 returning duplicate
    subtitle entries.



What's new in Zoom Player v20 beta 3:

New :

  * The default IPTV skin now includes new buttons to open the Home
    Theater Media Library and Media Server Browser interfaces. These
    buttons replace the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons which work on
    a technology that is not really practical with streaming content.

  * New (optional) color Hue adjustment control bar buttons, including
    Increase Hue, Decrease Hue and Reset Hue.

  * New (optional) control bar button to open the Media Server Browser.
  
  * New TCP/IP API command #3210 that returns information on whether
    the user accepted or canceled a file delete request.

  * When using the Media Server Browser window's right-click dialog
    to show information on the clicked entry, clicking the thumbnail
    shifts the image to cover the entire screen for a close up look.

  * The Media Server Browser window now includes a search feature that
    works on several levels. In the "Home" level, you can pick which
    server to search and the entire server is searched.
    
    When inside a category, only the contents of the category are searched.

    Search results are color-coded for clarity. You can customize the
    colors in the advanced options dialog (Playback / Media Server).

    Depending on the Media Server used, the returned result may differ.
    For example, when searching the entire server, Emby will return
    Movies, TV Series, Seasons and Episodes, including if the search
    term is only in the show name and not an episode's title.
    
    Plex and Jellyfin on the other hand, will only return Movies, TV
    Series and Episodes that the search term matches the entry's title.
    Episodes and Seasons that do not contain the Series name in the
    title, will not be listed.

    Plex is even worse when searching within a category, it does not such
    recursively so it's not working much better than the filtering feature.

  * The Media Server Browser window's right-click dialog now shows
    additional meta-data whenever the server returns such information:
    1. Duration
    2. Star Rating
    3. Average Bitrate (e.g. "4200kbps")
    4. Content Rating (e.g. "TV-MA").

  * You can now re-order the Media Server list (Adv. Options / Playback
    Media Server) to better control the default server entry on the Media
    Server Browser's search feature.

  * When adding a Media Server (Adv. Options / Playback / Media Server)
    without specifying a port, the default local port number is used
    automatically ("32400" for Plex and "8096" for Emby or Jellyfin).

  * Two new functions added to the XBOX controller Stick controls
    (Adv. Options / Interface / XInput) to control the volume using
    and seek forward/backward a number of seconds.

  * You can now assign any Zoom Player function to the XBOX controller
    trigger buttons. The default custom values are seeking backward/forward.


Change :

  + The IPTV setup window (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) now allows
    you to set an auto-update time that includes a fractional value,
    allowing the database to be updated more than once per day.
    The minimal automatic update value is approximately 30 minutes.

  + A message explaining libVLC was not installed on your computer
    accidentally displayed when libVLC was installed but failed to
    open a file or stream.

  + You can now select and play multiple items directly from the play history
    window (Alt+"H" keyboard shortcut).

  + Added ellipsis "..." symbols to Home Theater list interfaces where
    previously the text was simply cut off.

  + Added ellipsis "..." symbols to the playlist editor.

  + Added ellipsis "..." symbols to the meta-data display area when playing
    audio tracks.

  + The Options window's Search feature will now start showing results only
    from the second letter searched, typing that first character returned
    a lot of results which wasn't as snappy as I wanted and there's nothing
    to search for that is one letter long, so it didn't make sense either.


Fixes :

  - The IPTV's "Force http" Xtream Codes setting did not actually force "http"
    connections if the server reported it supports "https", but doesn't
    actually have a server listening on the https port.

  - Fixed a bug that prevented some channel icons from being displayed in the
    IPTV player window.

  - Fixed a bug that prevented the IPTV player window from being closed after
    playing a stream and then closing and re-opening the IPTV player window.

  - Fixed an issue that prevented the libVLC media engine from playing media
    files containing Emoji characters.

  - Fixed an issue that under some conditions caused the media library
    thumbnail text to render incorrectly, either not utilizing the
    available space or actually drawing over the thumbnail.

  - Fixed loading ".Cue" external chapter files not loading the correct
    chapter positions.

  - The Media Library's "Playlist" plugin did not display the media's title
    when listing ".M3U" playlists.

  - Opening the options dialog now resets the IPTV player cache to make
    sure changes are updated when re-opening the IPTV player window.

  - The XBOX controller functions were not being triggered at the correct
    speed and in the case of analog input (stick, triggers), the function
    did not repeat if the stick did not move.



What's new in Zoom Player v20 beta 2:

Change :

  + The Media Server Browser window now restores its previous size & position
    when re-opening.

  + The Media Server Browser will now remember the previous browsing path
    instead of resetting to the root folder each time you open the window.

  + Right clicking an entry in the Media Server Browser now pops up an
    information window displaying the media's description and art.

  + Added "cover" to the "Background image search mask" feature which is
    used to find album art images when playing audio files. So right now
    the search mask covers both "folder" and "cover" file names (in any
    support image format).

  + New (optional) control bar button to open the IPTV Player window added
    to Zoom Player MAX.


Fixes :

  - The previous beta tried to save some debug logs to "c:\log" and probably
    failed causing slow-downs in the Media Server Browser.



What's new in Zoom Player v20 beta 1:

New :

  * New Media Server Browser feature that allows you to stream media from
    a local or remote Media Server (Adv. Options / Playback / Media Server).
    
    Zoom Player currently supports the top-3 media servers:
    1. Plex
    2. Emby
    3. Jellyfin
    
    There is no limit to the number or types of servers you can add, you can
    mix and match as many servers as you want.
    
    Please note that depending on the media server type, load and connectivity,
    using libVLC to play content from a media server may offer faster seeking
    and audio/subtitle track switching.

  * New libVLC option ("Adv. Options / Playback / libVLC" or "Adv. Options /
    Playback / Media Server", this setting appears twice) to control whether
    the libVLC media engine should be used when playing content from media
    servers.

  * New Shift+"Y" keyboard shortcut to open the Media Server browsing client.


Change :

  + Re-opening the IPTV Player window should now be nearly instant.
    The only downside is that if you edit the files manually while Zoom Player
    is running, you will have to restart Zoom Player for the changes to
    take affect.

  + The default TCP/IP Control API port has been changed to 32999.

  + The default Web Server Control port has been changed to 32998.

  + I am disabling the "Display OSD through MadVR's OSD API" setting (Adv.
    Options / Playback / Video) on every install. This feature can have a 
    negative impact on the user experience, its only benefits is if you
    use MadVR in fullscreen exclusive mode, a mode that is no longer
    of much use when running Windows 10 or better.

    If you previously used this feature and would like to continue using
    it, it can be re-enabled in the options.

  + libVLC's default audio framework is now set by default to "DirectSound",
    otherwise using libVLC and changing the volume would affect the windows-
    level volume level for Zoom Player (which should always be set to 100%).


Fixes :

  - libVLC's framework selection was completely broken, selecting another
    device wouldn't work at all or would use the default audio device instead.

  - Fixed a bug in Zoom Player IPTV that partially broke translation of the
    options dialog left-pane tree view, causing some lines to remain in
    the original English.

  - Fixed a bug that caused some error message text to get truncated.

  - In some resolutions, the meta-data display for playing audio media did
    not use a round-rectangle background correctly, causing text to appear
    partially outside the background.

  - Some over-zealous code optimization broke the audio playback meta-data
    display area, showing tags for empty fields.

  - Selecting the libVLC section in the Advanced Options dialog a second time
    no longer tries to relist libVLC's audio devices, causing a slight delay.