Legend : "*" = New "+" = Change "-" = Fix --- What's new in Zoom Player v21: * Introducing : Modern UI Zoom Player's user interface has remained more or less the same over many years and now it's finally time for a fresh new look. Gone is the skinned user interface, replaced by a simple frame. Hovering with the mouse cursor (or pressing the Ctrl+"Space" keyboard shortcut) now brings up a new Control Overlay, a semi-transparent user interface that appears over the video area. I tried to setup the default control overlay layout similar to the previous skinned layout to make the transition to a new interface as seamless as possible, but at the same time maintained the option to easily revert the user interface to the old design. Since the control overlay replaces both the skin and the control bar, some of the default settings related to the control bar have been reset in favor of control overlay features. If these changes are not suited to your setup, you can easily return to using the control bar instead. While designing the new Control Overlay interface, I took your feedback on Zoom Player's reddit forum and made sure the Control Overlay is the most customizable media interface ever created. You can customize nearly everything: + Button selection across 4 different button zones. + Button sizes for each button zone. + Text fonts, colors, sizes and transparency. + Volume and Timeline color, size and transparency. + Element visibility (button zones, volume bar, widgets, etc). + Lots and lots of settings to manage the Control Overlay behavior. The Control Overlay feature can be customized through the advanced options dialog under "Interface / Control Overlay". * When upgrading to a version previous to v21, a new dialog shows up to let you pick the user interface mode, either Classic UI or Modern UI. Please note that if you are using a non-default skin, your skin selection is reset to default in either case. You can pick your favorite skin again through the skin selection dialog ("N" keyboard shortcut). * The default skin modes have been updated. You can access the new modes from the right-click context menu or using these keyboard shortcuts: F3 = No user interface at all, just a floating video window. F4 = The new default, just a thin frame around the video area. F5 = Slightly larger frame with a title area and system buttons. F6 = Charcoal UI using small buttons. F7 = Full Charcoal UI (the previous default). F8 = Show bottom bar with more features. F9 = Show bottom bar with more features. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when hovering with the mouse (enabled by default). * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when hovering with the mouse even when Zoom Player is not the active application. This feature is not perfect and can cause a cosmetic issue where the overlay appears in between Zoom Player's video window and a window from another application. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when the mouse cursor reaches the screen's bottom in fullscreen mode. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when the mouse cursor reaches the screen's top in fullscreen mode. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when performing a forward/backward seek action. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when pausing. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically show the Control Overlay when using fast forward or rewind. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically hide the Control Overlay when idle (3 seconds by default). * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to automatically hide the Control Overlay when clicking the video area. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Control Overlay) to show the control overlay when opening a new media. * As part of the Modern UI overhaul, I created a new color control overlay interface. It is accessible through the same color color keyboard shortcut (Shift+"O") and the right-click context menu. The new color control overlay is fully compatible with remote control devices using the left/right/up/down/enter navigation style and provides a more intuitive and less obtrusive interface. The color control overlay is now the default option when picking the color controls from the main home theater interface. You can change this under "Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation". * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Video / Colors) that controls the size of the new color control overlay. * New snap zones feature that allows you to instantly snap Zoom Player's window to 10 predefined screen positions and sizes. The snap zones feature uses a similar interface to the video position presets used in fullscreen mode. In fact, they share the same Zoom Player function and keyboard shortcuts. There is no conflict as snap zones only work in windowed mode while video position presets only work in fullscreen mode. There are two ways to set snap zones. The advanced options dialog under "Interface / Position & Size" or by using keyboard shortcuts. To use keyboard shortcuts, first position and size Zoom Player's window and then use the Ctrl+"0-9" keyboard shortcut to set one of the desired zones. For example, Ctrl+"5" will set the current window size and position to snap zone #5. To snap Zoom Player's window back to snap zone #5, all you need to do is press the "5" key in Windowed mode. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Mouse / Settings) that prevents the first mouse click on the video area from triggering the assigned functions if Zoom Player was not the active application. This setting is enabled by default to allow you to switch to Zoom Player's window now that the user interface is embedded within the video area. This setting only ignores the first click in the video area. If you click the control overlay or other Zoom Player windows, the action is triggered as expected. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / libVLC) allowing you to control whether the libVLC media engine should be used to stream IPTV archived (catchup) programs. This setting does not affect VOD playback. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that controls whether the stream/program filtering works when pressing enter or when typing in each key stroke. The new default is to require pressing enter. On older PCs or some laptops the experience of filtering on every key stroke was not optimal. * Updated Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation) to allow the selection of the new Color Control Overlay interface as an option when opening the color controls from the main Home Theater interface. * New media library search feature that works by filtering the currently listed items. This feature will be expanded in future releases to make it accessible using a remote control. * The media library's Media Server (PLEX/Emby/Jellyfin) plugin now shows TV episode numbers next to the episode name. * You can now drag Zoom Player's window by dragging the title area of a Home Theater interface. If you are not using the default home theater skin, you may need a new version of the skin that supports this feature. * The default home theater interfaces have been slightly tweaked with the close button moved to the right side and the title/date/time appearing more vertically centered in the title area. * New feature to automatically resize the player window to hide aspect ratio black bars, showing only the video. By default, this feature is assigned to the Shift+"`" (~) keyboard shortcut. * New feature to add the currently playing media to the favorites list. By default, this feature is assigned to the Ctrl+Shift+"F" keyboard shortcut. * New keyboard shortcuts to switch between Classic & Modern user interfaces: Ctrl+Shift+"F10" - Switch to Classic mode Ctrl+Shift+"F11" - Switch to Modern mode Classic mode : - Fully skinned user interface with lots of buttons - Control overlay interface is disabled - Control bar appears when moving the mouse to screen-bottom (fullscreen) - The space key shows the control bar - Hot corners are enabled at 5% Modern mode : - Small frame user interface, no buttons whatsoever - Control overlay interface appears over video area on mouse movement - Control bar is disabled - The space key performs a pause/play action - Hot corners are disabled (feature conflict with control overlay) * New "Add to favorites" option on the Playlist Home Theater interface. * New "Add to favorites" option on the Play History Home Theater interface. * New feature to show a pop-up Stream Selection menu. By default this feature is assigned to the control overlay's stream selection button. * When using IPTV's Xtream Codes API, icons (Live, Movie, Series) are now displayed next to group names. * You can now show/hide the Control Overlay using the Ctrl+"Space" keyboard shortcut. * New "Control Overlay" entry added to the right-click context menu. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Mouse / Settings) that disables Zoom Player from activating any function assigned to a mouse click when Zoom Player's video area is clicked when Zoom Player is not the active application, allowing you to switch to Zoom Player without activating any mouse button assigned function by accident. This new setting is enabled by default, otherwise switching to Zoom Player using the modern UI could trigger undesired actions. * New IPTV Group Manager interface accessible from the IPTV menu button or through the right-click menu. The Group Manager allows you to create new groups and easily select and add multiple streams to the group with a single click. The group manager can then export the organized streams to an M3U format, allowing the groups to be viewed and streamed by other software or devices. * In the previous version, I've added a feature that when you Zoom in using the mouse wheel, it zooms toward the mouse cursor. I have since listened to your feedback and made this feature optional. You can now turn it off under "Advanced Options / Interface / Mouse / Settings". * New "Create Shortcut" IPTV context-menu option that creates a shortcut file for the stream you've right-clicked, allowing you to launch Zoom Player directly into the stream. * You can now add and stream Xtream Codes TV Shows from IPTV favorites. If you previously added a TV Show as favorite, you have to recreate the TV Show favorite for this to work. * New "/referrer:http://" command line parameter that specifies a referrer header when opening a URL from the command line, for example: zplayer.exe "/referrer:https://website.com" "https://website.com/v.m3u8" * New "/useragent:

Legend : "*" = New "+" = Change "-" = Fix --- What's new in Zoom Player v20.1: * The IPTV Player window's favorites system has been replaced by personal groups. This means that when you right-click a stream you are now presented with an option to pick which group to add the stream to or to add the stream to a "New Group". You can now right-click a personal group to rename, sort and remove the group along with additional controls to reposition the group (move up/down/top/bottom) within multiple personal groups. * The IPTV Player window's "Only show favorites" menu option is now saved when restarting Zoom Player. * Added support for IPTV Archive (catch-up) streams when using the Xtream Codes API. Archive channels allow you to play previously aired content on a live channel. * Added support for TV / Movie categories when using the IPTV Xtream Codes API login method (instead of listing them all under "TV" and "Movies"). * New setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) to fix IPTV Xtream Codes API server-side character encoding issues. If stream names appear to use incorrect characters for foreign languages, symbols or emoji, try enabling this setting. * I found the IPTV window's user experience with regards to groups somewhat annoying. It's way too easy to accidentally click a group and then it auto-opens which can be jarring. To improve the experience, I decided to require a double-click action to open/close a stream group. However, I left the door open to disable this behavior in the options (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) in case single click action is preferable to you. * The advanced options dialog window is now taller and a bit more spaced out to make it easier finding a particular setting. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / Smart Play / Settings) that allows you to specify LAV Splitter Source's (the DirectShow media engine streaming component) Stream Analysis Duration. The higher the value, the less chances of a partial stream detection (audio only playback) or a failed connection in exchange. A higher value may delay initial stream playback as the stream is analyzed. LAV Filter's default value is 1000, but from experimentation, I changed the default to 9500. If this causes streams to open slowly on your PC, you can reset this value back to 1000. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Mouse / Settings) to disable the custom mouse cursor used when hovering over the timeline and use the Windows default mouse cursor instead. * When the libVLC media engine is in use, you can now see a "libVLC" entry on the right-click menu under the "Filter Properties" sub-menu. + The Media Server Browser dialog (Shift+"Y" keyboard shortcut) should open slightly faster. + You can now dismiss a connection error message from the IPTV player window by clicking the stream list, EPG list or an empty region within the IPTV player window. You can also dismiss the error dialog using the keyboard by pressing the ESC key without the action closing the IPTV player window. - Closing and then re-opening the IPTV player window caused the EPG Grid button to become disabled until Zoom Player was restarted. - An IPTV Authentication error could result in the "Please Wait" window never disappearing. - The Pre-Configuration Wizard wizard that appears on a fresh install or when using the Alt+Shift+"F12" keyboard shortcut would enable MadVR's OSD for fullscreen exclusive mode, a feature that's actually problematic and on some PCs would break the control bar and other OSD elements. To work-around this issue, I had to reset this setting globally. If you are using MadVR in fullscreen exclusive mode, you will have to re-enable this setting manually. - Adding an IPTV stream with archive (catch-up) support as a favorite stream did not allow you to watch archived programs. - In some cases where the IPTV EPG is messed up, listing two entries for the same stream at the same air time, a "no information" entry was inserted between these entries entries. - Zoom Player now tries to remove duplicate IPTV EPG entries (as long as they are listed at the exact same air time).

Legend : "*" = New "+" = Change "-" = Fix --- What's new in Zoom Player v20: * 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. 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.reddit.com/r/zoomplayer * 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. With Zoom Player MAX, you can access the new Media Server Browser using the Shift+"Y" keyboard shortcut or using the right-click menu under the "Open Interface" sub-menu. With Zoom Player IPTV, there is an additional dedicated button to open the Media Server Browser window and it's the second option from the top on the right-click menu. Right-clicking a media entry to show information about the media along with any associated art (poster/cover image). Please note that depending on the media server type, load and connectivity, using libVLC to stream content from a media server may offer faster seeking and audio/subtitle track switching. Depending on the Media Server used, the returned search 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 search recursively so it's not working much better than the filtering feature. * New "Media Server" Media Library plugin. After specifying your media server credentials in Zoom Player's options dialog (Adv. Options / Playback / Media Server), Simply press Shift+"M" to open the media library category editor, select either the TV Shows or Movies category mode and click "Create Category". You will be presented with a choice of categories available on the specified media servers. Pick a category and you're done, full access to your Plex, Emby or Jellyfin library accessible directly from Zoom Player's media library. * New "Stream connection attempts" IPTV setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV). IPTV servers can be overloaded at times and may require more than one attempt to establish a connection. The default value is now "3" connection attempts before showing an error. * 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. * You can now edit a media library plug-in's memory cache duration by opening the category editor (Shift+"M") and pressing the "Configure Category" button (the default value is specified by the plugin itself). * New Shift+"Y" keyboard shortcut to open the Media Server browsing client. * 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 "Play History" button on the IPTV Player window next to the "Play Stream" button to quickly replay the last 10 (configurable, see below) viewed streams. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Playback / IPTV) that controls how many streams should be saved in the IPTV Player window's play history drop- down menu). The default value is "10" and you can set it to "0" to completely disable saving IPTV stream playback history. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / Fullscreen Navigation / Settings) to control whether the media library shows a media's duration next to the media's name in list view (enabled by default). * You can now define a Personal Rating and leave a Personal Note in the media library's meta-data editor. Setting a Personal Rating overrides the Star rating user interface display, but does not affect sorting or filtering by Star rating. * New "Sort by Personal Rating" media library sorting option. * New "Filter by Personal Rating" media library filtering option. * You can now set the DVD Video Renderer to MPC-VR. Please note that if LAV Filters is used with hardware accelerated video decoding in "D3D11" or "DXVA2 (native)" modes, subtitles will not be visible. * The Media Library's Plugin API has been enhanced to provide additional information to the plugin, opening access to new features (e.g. Media Server plugin). * New feature to reset Zoom Player to default settings. Accessible from the advanced options dialog by clicking the "Help / Export" button. * You can now change the skin magnification from 100% to 400% through the right-click menu within the "Controls" sub-menu. * New Setting (Adv. Options / Interface / On Screen Display) to only show the time when showing the clock (Alt+Ctrl+"D" keyboard shortcut). By default both the Time and Date are shown. * 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. * 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. * 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. * New "exSkinMagnify" extended function that lets you set the skin's magnification values. Valid values are 1 (100%) to 8 (800%). * 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". * The Media Library plug-in API has been extended to allow plugins to specify their own memory cache duration. The default value for most plugins is 1 hour. The default value for the media server plugin is 24 hours. Using the "Refresh" option clears the cache and retrieves fresh data. + 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. + New (optional) control bar button to open the IPTV Player window added to Zoom Player MAX. + 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. + The Zoom in functions (both standard and DirectShow) now try to Zoom in toward the mouse cursor when triggered using the mouse wheel. + The Playlist Editor's right-click context menu has been simplified with some of the items moved to an "Extras" sub-menu. + The IPTV Player window is now using skinned right-click context menus. + 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. + The default TCP/IP Control API port has been changed to 32999. + The default Web Server Control port has been changed to 32998. + Play history is used by many of the features, making the default value of storing history for 30 days no longer make sense. I have now changed the default value to 18262 days (approximately 50 years). + The mouse wheel should work better when scrolling through options in the advanced options dialog. + The Media Library Playlist plugin can now handle playlists that have x32 more entries compared to the previous version (over 24,000 entries). + The Media Library RSS plugin is now more compatible with Atom feeds. + The Media Library RSS plugin should be a little faster parsing feeds. + 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%). + 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). - 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 a crash when using the keyboard or remote in the confirmation home theater interface (used when resuming playback or to confirm erasing a file) to press Enter multiple times in quick succession. - Fixed a crash when opening the IPTV's or EPG Grid's 'customize' menus on a monitor with a DPI setting larger than 100%. - Fixed a crash when opening the play history window on a monitor with a DPI setting larger than 100%. - Setting "On Playlist Complete" to "Auto-Rewind" could have triggered a crash or unstable behavior under some conditions. - Fixed a crash when loading 4bit PNG images with transparency. This was especially nasty with the IPTV player window as some stream logos were using this format, causing the IPTV Player feature to become unstable (unable to close window or an outright crash). - Fixed a relatively rare crash when closing the confirmation home theater interface (used when resuming playback or to confirm erasing a file). - Fixed a relatively rare crash when closing the virtual keyboard interface (used when renaming files in the media library or trying to access a password protected category). - Fixed an infinite-loop freeze when using the media library with a network share path (e.g. "\\ServerName\Movies\") folder based category, entering a sub-folder within that category and later on renaming or deleting the folder server-side without updating Zoom Player's media library configuration. - Fixed a bug in the open-drive feature (which is also used when auto- mounting ISO files) that failed to properly load virtually mounted BluRay content. - Fixed a bug where re-opening the IPTV Player window with a previously selected stream highlighted didn't enable the "Play Stream" button. - Using the media library's Filter by Star Rating feature showed a value range, for example "6 - 7", but did not actually show any 7.0 entries, showing only up to 6.9. - Setting the DVD Video Renderer to MadMR did not work at all with only audio playing. Please note that if LAV Filters is used with hardware accelerated video decoding in "D3D11" or "DXVA2 (native)" modes, subtitles will not be visible. - Titles in the skinned right-click menu were not horizontally aligned. - The Shift+Arrow keys to accurately reposition the video image or player windows stopped functioning at some point and now works again. - The "Reset Brightness" feature when using the EVR or MadVR video renderers reset the brightness to "1" instead of "0". - Hiding IPTV Groups containing the quote character in the group's name did not work as intended. - The Media Library RSS Feed plug-in should be better at handling text that is not encoded in UTF8 or English (e.g. Russian). - libVLC's audio framework selection was completely broken, selecting another device wouldn't work at all or would use the default audio device instead. - 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. - 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. - The setting to go fullscreen on play was accidentally disabled in Zoom Player IPTV. - 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. - When loading TAG data from audio files and MP4 files containing unicode character using MediaInfo.dll, the media title appeared as a series of question marks. - 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. - 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/trigger did not move.