Next Hoster Release

[admin]

I want to forewarn you that the next release, 2.015, will not have VCD-DVD support. This is an "interim" release to fix several bugs related to accessing and regenerating the songs.mdb database.

Please note... when you are importing tracks where you enter the Song name and Artist names, please DO NOT ever use the " (double quote) character. We have to use that to delineate a ' (single quote) character, and when a " is encountered, it will lock up the system. This is a very bad problem that our programmer has so far not been able to program around. We have now removed all " characters from our bucket.mdb database (will be available with 2.015), but we can't yet prevent you from entering the " when you import custom songs or edit what our database displays. We hope to start beta testing 2.015 today.

As soon as KPro 5 is released, we will shift Thomas, who is our lead programmer, back onto Hoster. There are a number of display bugs we will first fix, then we will try to replace our audio players with the Microsoft Media Player. That will allow playing VCD, DVD, MP3, WMA, and potentially more.

Those of you who have followed my Admin posts over the years know my dislike for MP3+G. However... it is now clear that there are a number of legal users (who buy all their discs) who have lots of these songs on their hard drive. Thus, we will try to add MP3+G play support. Also, by adding WMA and MP3 play support, we will expand Hoster's flexibility tremendously. That is part of our focus.

Oh yes... since VCD and DVD songs are already compressed (MPEG1 for VCD, MPEG2 for DVD) and contain massive video imaging also, we can't reduce the file sizes any from what is already on the discs. We will first provide playing from VCD and DVD discs, then later address importing songs to the hard drive. When imported, they will consume LOTS of storage, unlike our KMA files.

Plextor has announced their new DVD-R drive that is supposed to read/write the CDG format also. We haven't received our ordered drive yet. We will support this drive as soon as we can.

That's all for now. Thanks for waiting!