Titan Goes Shopping at the Media Browser Store

The next version of Media Browser, codenamed “Titan”, is expected to be released on March 21st. Titan was expected to be relatively minor update, especially compared to the major overhaul that was the recent 3.0 “Draco” release, but now comes word of at least one big change in the form of the Media Browser Store. Ahead of the “Draco” launch, the Media Browser team switched from a pure donation model to a supporter model with a select set of plugins and themes only available to users who donated $10 or more. At the same time there was growing interest among plugin and theme developers looking for ways to charge at least a nominal fee for their work.

With Titan, it looks like the Media Browser team is going to be able to align the interests of the plugin community and Media Browser as a whole by offering a storefront where users can purchase premium plugins and themes and support the Media Browser development team through a single, unified interface and account system. The core Media Browser experience will continue to be free, but the Media Browser store will offer individual plugins and themes for sale with discounts on bundle collections. This app store approach to plugin consumption is something I have often thought that Microsoft should have pursued for Media Center as a whole. I look forward to seeing how it works out for the Media Browser team.

So, along with Titan (the next version of MB) we will be introducing the new Media Browser Store. This new approach will allow users to select the specific features they wish to have their contributions un-lock. It will also make it easy for 3rd-parties to provide their premium themes and plug-ins to the community in the same simple interface – allowing end users to just have a single supporter key that unlocks all the features they have selected.

Media Browser Community Tracker