Big Screen Blog

Hot on the heels of last week’s launch of Big Screen EPG (final version) – a new beta version of Big Screen ‘by Remote’ v0.6a (first in a new series) was released today and is now available for download on the bigscreenglobal.com website.

This update contains a bunch of new stuff – with the main changes being :

• Web/Desktop Client is now upgraded to use Silverlight v4 (which RTW’d since the previous By Remote release). The new client has a bit of a new look and feel to it (mainly the way the menu works) – and it’s a bit snappier/faster thanks to the goodness and joy that SLv4 brings to the table over v3.  The OOB (out of browser) experience is also quite a bit slicker as it uses borderless windows and allows for ‘trusted’ use (ie. keyboard support in fullscreen etc).

  

• New Beta Expiry Date set to 1-Oct-2010 (3 Months away) – and is now determined via server based activation. On this – By Remote now needs to be activated upon installation/use (and the activation/reverify wizard is provided via the Web Browser) – and Serial Numbers are being issued to those who sign up to the beta/trial on bigscreenglobal.com. 

  This is actually quite a good thing for beta users – as it means that like with the Big Screen EPG beta program (which ran for quite some time) – the trial expiry can now updated/extended for all users easily – without anyone needing to update their locally installed beta. (in by Remote v0.5x and earlier releases – all users had to keep installing new versions due to expiry dates being hardcoded into the product).

  NB: IF you’re running the v0.5x releases – the expiry date is hardcoded to be July-1 (that’s tomorrow) – so you will need to update to this version!
  
   

• Mobile Programme Search Added – meaning you can now do basic and advanced keyword based searches for programmes from the Mobile Browser UI’s (previously the search function was only on the SL Desktop version).

  

• *Experimental* Silverlight EPG Data Caching Feature has been added. This basically means that (when enabled) EPG data is cached on the local browser for later use – which substantially reduces the amount of round trips and data to download. The new Cache settings Dialog allows you to enable/disable the feature itself, configure the Expiry Time, view Cache Details, Wipe the Cache contents and also increase the actual local Cache Data size.

   

• There was also a bunch of other small updates/fixes on the Silverlight Client side of things (various time conversion problems etc) which had been in the v0.5 beta’s.

This release also includes all the new/experimental features added to the v0.5j release – which included quite a few optimizations to the way EPG data was scanned/extracted from Media Center itself.

Anyhow – if you’d like to try it out – please mosey on over to the product page at : http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproduct.aspx?PID=BSRV1