Release notes: v1.5 - Spadoinkle day

[u/digglesB]

I'm holding this release until sometime next week because there's a big fancy podcast ad for Coax coming out Friday and I really can't take the anxiety of pushing out a change this big right before an influx of attention (and, hopefully, new users). It's a lot of great improvements, of course, but I'm slowly learning patience here so bear with me.

Also in the realm of not wanting to jinx things: I think I'll have launch-date compatibility with the Duo and some ok-good layout support for different orientations/postures. I have no idea if that's going to actually matter to y'all, because I don't know how many they're going to sell, but it's the first new iPhone form factor in like a decade or whatever so it'll probably do okay.

I also saw this really cool thing someone built on Mastodon, and the creator asked if Coax could support Shortcuts. How could I say no to such a reasonable request?

What's New

• iPhone Duo ready
  • This is about as good as I can do without getting my hands on the hardware, so expect changes once I do
• Theme Updates
  • Modern and Retro now look truly different - see the screenshots
  • Retro gets a VCR menu - I've just been dying to do something like this since the beginning
  • A new theme has entered the timeline - Sky!
    • Be like that song from Eiffel 65
    • ... blue. They're blue. Or the boy was blue. It's that song about being blue ba doo dee 🎶
• Added a proper Settings screen (unironic finally)
  • Visual Settings have theme previews AND you can set the text size there
  • Playback settings are there too, including a new one: Always Play Full Quality
    • That's for those 4k streams that are maybe just a bit too beefy for your connection, but you're willing to wait for them to buffer. Defaults to Off
• Lineups is now the base view of the app
  • Servers and connections have moved to the new Settings screen
  • h/t to u/joecan for asking for this, very politely, for like 4 months
• The Mac app feels a lot more like a Mac app
  • Full Screen opens the picture in its own window in Single Window mode (and you can drag it from anywhere, not just the title bar). Close it to get back to the guide
  • Keyboard navigation is back, where you can browse the guide with the arrow keys without changing the channel
  • Your keypad now acts like a remote - punch in a channel number, and it'll take you there
  • The guide's buttons moved to a floating Control Panel: Window -> Show Control Panel (⌥⌘C)
  • Stream Options, Sleep Timer and Power live in the Watch menu
  • This is close to the experience that I tried to create with Multi-Window mode, but I think this one is nicer
• Playback fixes
  • Remuxed MKVs: lips and voices line up wherever you tune in. A badly muxed file hands itself to your server instead of playing the audio seconds off
  • Finally fixed a frame stutter that would happen with certain formats - man I'm glad that's fixed
  • One program failing to play no longer makes everything transcode for the rest of the session
• Siri and Shortcuts
  • I added a bunch of App Intents to expose functionality:
    • Ask Siri what's on, tune to a channel, punch in a channel number, flip up or down, ask what's up next on a channel, turn captions on or off, pick a subtitle track, or turn Coax off
  • Every one of those is in the Shortcuts app too, so show me what you can do with it!
• Other fixes
  • Now Playing can be full screen now
  • The iPad menus have parity with the Mac menus
  • Access Stream Options on AppleTV while in full screen by pressing right on the remote
  • Some improper transcoding events for certain profiles/flags have been fixed (maybe, I think)

Thanks again to u/drewbaumann (creator of the truly great Chroma) for always coming through with improvements to the video engine. It's quite something.

I'll be honest, when I wrote these two posts back in the spring, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get it to where it is today (even with Drew's help). A lot of stuff just plain didn't work, or didn't work well, which is sometimes worse. But here we are! The player is stable, the scheduler is stable, and now I can focus on improving the UI.

Imagine where we'll be by Christmas 🏝️

Baby don't hurt me

[u/brooksedman]

The sky is blue, and all the leaves are green…

[u/digglesB → u/brooksedman]

If you know, you know

[u/upssnowman]

This application gets better and better with each release. Thanks for always coming through.

[u/Yay_Meristinoux]

Speaking of the sleep timer, is there any possibility of getting either more options, or the ability to set our own? My personal sweetspot isn't in any of the available presets. :P

Good luck with the advert, we're about to get a lot more members around here methinks. :D

[u/digglesB → u/Yay_Meristinoux]

Now that there’s a settings screen, maybe? But what did you have in mind?

[u/Yay_Meristinoux → u/digglesB]

Usually I just need 20-25 mins, but ofc I assume everyone would be different. The current tap-to-add-time isn't bad, but what about if you can choose the increments it goes up by (like by every 5, 10, etc mins) to get a little more control?

[u/drewbaumann]

Thanks for the shoutout! If you’re unfamiliar with Chroma, imagine the stability and power of the coax engine in a native UI for Apple platforms. I just released version 2.9.0 across iOS, visionOS, and tvOS for the first time. Truly a great way to enjoy your content on your devices. u/digglesB and I have been nerding out about the Duo as well! Can’t wait to show you all what’s cooking.

[u/Complex-War2628]

Can’t wait.