The new Amulet Beta release 2.18.16 is now available, and download details have been emailed to all registered beta testers. The new release can be installed on top of your existing release; there is no need to uninstall first.

Here is a summary of changes since the previous 2.18.14 release:

TV CHANNEL ENHANCEMENTS

• TV channels can now be referred to by either callsign or service name. If several channels share the same name, the first channel will be selected by default
• If a hidef and standard version of a channel exist, the hidef channel will be selected by default; it is not necessary to say "HD" when speaking the channel name.
• The NEXT MATCH and PREVIOUS MATCH commands cycle through additional channels that matched the most recent WATCH CHANNEL or SHOW CHANNEL command.
• The TVChannels.txt file is generated automatically each time Media Center starts, and contains a full listing of channels recognized by Amulet, both by number and by name
• The TVChannelsMap.txt file can be used to change the priority of particular channels, adjust the default names, or add additional names.
• SKIP OVER COMMERCIALS / SKIP COMMERCIALS is now an alternative command to SKIP OVER ADS
• Settings UI now includes a dedicated TV guide configuration page
• Added new SearchPrograms parameter to TV guide settings, to limit the number of program titles indexed (by default, all titles are indexed). When a limit is in place, unique titles from the current day forward are indexed ntil the limit is reached.
• Large EPG grammars now load asynchronously after the main Amulet initialisation has been carried out; while they are loading, a dummy placeholder grammar responds to search queries with a "Still loading..." response. This allows Amulet to respond to most voice commands shortly after Media Center has loaded.

YOUTUBE ENHANCEMENTS

• YouTube search now works with the latest YouTube leanback application
• YouTube interface now maps Play/Pause/Stop buttons to directly pause playback; no more spurious space characters entered into the search box
• YouTube now starts playing the first search result immediately on entry, with no additional keystrokes needed
• When the YouTube search panel is visible, it can now be removed by pressing the STOP button on the remote
• New YouTube Amulet.ini configuration parameters provide better future-proofing against further changes to Leanback
• PLAY / PAUSE / STOP VIDEO commands all now work in the YouTube interface

OTHER CHANGES

• Amulet UI microphone icon now turns red when the microphone is active, to match the red light on the Amulet remote itself
• Amulet now says a warning message when started with a different default Microphone selected
• Amulet's welcome message can now be entirely suppressed (including warnings) by setting the custom welcome message to "*"
• Amulet UI now ignores a leading "A", "An" or "The" when sorting movie and TV titles, so items are listed in the same order as Media Center
• Events fetched from the system event log when reporting a bug now include ehshell.exe and Amulet application failure events
• New MyMoviesShowTimeout setting controls how long Amulet waits for the MyMovies gallery page to appear before giving up

BUG FIXES

• Selecting a TV channel by number now works when a lower-numbered channel shares the same callsign as the selected channel
• PAUSE / PLAY TV now works similarly to PAUSE / PLAY VIDEO
• CONTINUE / PLAY MUSIC / VIDEO / etc commands should now work reliably to resume interrupted playback
• Improvements in Movie / TV series online lookups and name cleanups
• Speech subsystem is now more robust about recovering from speech engine failures
• Several problematic characters in program names which were causing the Speech engine to crash are now filtered out
• Playing My Movies titles from within the Amulet UI using the remote control buttons now works correctly
• Amulet UI no longer has its own instance of the speech engine, fixing several obscure speech engine issues that could cause the microphone level to freeze and the application to crash
• Several general improvements to reduce/eliminate the instances of Media Center crashing with fatal exception code 0x046B.
• The USB subsystem now automatically resets if too many errors are detected (as sometimes happened during resume from sleep mode)
• Media Center can now enter sleep mode, even when the Amulet UI is running in the background
• When Amulet is fully charged but still connected to a charger, the constant cycling on/off of the radio link no longer eventually causes the speech engine to fail.
• CONTINUE, PLAY MUSIC/VIDEO/MOVIES/TV commands now always work correctly
• Guide voice navigation (SHOW CHANNEL xxx) has been improved in a number of ways to make it more reliable
• YouTube interface now filters out combination Play/Pause remote code to prevent Media Center responding to it as well as YouTube

Here are some of the things we'd like you to specifically check out in release 2.18.16:

Can you reliably select TV channels by name using WATCH CHANNEL name or SHOW CHANNEL name?
In particular, do you now automatically see the hidef version of the channel by default? Can you use NEXT MATCH to advance to other versions of a channel if the first channel found doesn't match what you expected?

For those of you with large channel lineups, does Amulet behave reliably now?
If you are still having problems, please visit the new TV Guide page in Amulet Settings, and set an upper limit for the number of programs indexed to 5000 or so -- does this resolve your problem?

Generally, does this release seem significantly more stable (or unstable!) than the previous release?
If you are seeing strange behaviour, please use the Report a Bug tool to send us a brief report, and if possible, include the media index files - they contain valuable information that make it much easier for us to recreate any problems you encounter.

If you have trouble sending a report using the tool, the folder C:\ProgramData\Amulet Devices\Bugs contains an archive of all submitted bug reports, you can email them by hand to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Thanks,

Eddy