Announcing Zoom Player MAX & IPTV version 20.1
Published January 15th, 2025
What's new in this release:
* The IPTV Player window's favorites system has been replaced by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).