Afterglow 0.4.116

Android Auto: your music, audiobooks and podcasts on the car's screen, played by your phone, at home or away. Songs play back to back from 0:00; books and podcasts carry on where you left off and keep their place. Fixes: away from home, the next episode now starts by itself at the end of one (some files stopped at the end); no more stall or jump when the picture switches to or from AI enhancement, or climbs back to its best quality; older smart TVs' browsers. Also: import your watch history from Plex, faster artwork, playlist browsing over your whole library, and the remote keeping up as your library changes.

Afterglow 0.4.115

The Mac app now works like the phone app: it opens its own window with Afterglow in it, finds your server (or pair by typing its address, shown in Settings > Server), and macOS asks for Local Network access. Paired phones, computers and friends are never forgotten by accident any more (a busy file once unpaired everyone), and clients keep their pairing when a server says no for a moment. Home has a Recently added row. New files show up while something plays.

Afterglow 0.4.114

Macs find your server at home.

• The Mac app can now find and pair with your Afterglow server on your home network. macOS asks once for Local
  Network access and lists Afterglow under Privacy & Security > Local Network. Before, macOS blocked it without
  asking. To get this, reinstall the Mac app once with the one-line Terminal command from the download page.
• Looking up titles no longer fails when many arrive at once (phones and other devices saw errors while the library
  was being sorted).
• If a video ever steps down for a moment, it goes straight back to its best quality (AI 4K included) once a minute
  is buffered, without interrupting what's playing.
• Every release now checks there's no noticeable break between songs or episodes (each change takes about 0.2 s).

Afterglow 0.4.113

Cleaner, sharper pictures.

• Interlaced video (DVDs, TV recordings, older shows) is now deinterlaced, so there are no comb lines on movement,
  including before AI enhancement.
• Standard-definition video keeps its true colours (they used to come out slightly shifted).
• Sharper resizing everywhere (Lanczos instead of bicubic).
• Sharper 1080p and 720p streams on NVIDIA cards (a higher-quality encoder setting where the card has room).
• On Windows, a movie or show's File panel says when an HEVC film is being converted because the device can't play
  HEVC, with a link to Microsoft's free HEVC Video Extensions, which let it play the original untouched.
• On Windows with Google Chrome installed, Afterglow opens in its own Chrome app window. Chrome plays HEVC (most 4K
  films) itself, so the original file can play untouched without any extension. Without Chrome, Afterglow's own
  window is used as before.
• Watching together: joining is steadier and silent until in step, and keeping in step makes no clicks.
• The remote shows your whole library, with artwork loading as you scroll, and can manage playlists.
• No more stalling: subtitles being made in the background, and background 4K copies, no longer hold up the video
  you're watching; background copies pause while anything plays.
• AI-enhanced streams use the graphics card's fast route (about 2.6x faster than they play), and an AI picture that
  can't be made falls straight back to the ordinary picture instead of stalling.

Afterglow 0.4.111

Sharper video everywhere, and back to full quality by itself.

• Much sharper streams: when a video has to be converted to play, it now gets the bitrate needed to keep everything the
  file holds. A 4K HEVC film went out at 11 Mbps; now about 25 Mbps. 1080p, 720p and lower qualities are sharper too.
• 4K HEVC films are decoded on the graphics card again instead of the processor, so 4K streaming uses far less CPU.
• AI enhancement to 4K (720p and 1080p videos enlarged to 4K on an NVIDIA RTX card) now stays available after
  updates. Before, every update threw away the graphics card test, so videos were only ever enhanced to full HD.
• On the computer running Afterglow, if the graphics card hasn't been tested, Afterglow asks to test it. The test runs
  while you watch, about a minute, and shows what the card can do as soon as it's done.
• New: a Refresh library button on the Library page looks through your media folders again right away.
• If a film ever has to step down because the server was busy, it climbs straight back to full quality within seconds.
• A film's or show's page shows its artwork clean, with no title written over the poster.
• Watching together: a device that joins stays silent until it's in step, then is heard within a hundredth of a
  second of the others, about 4 seconds after pressing Join.
• The remote and a shared queue across devices: add to what's playing from your phone.
• Channels resume where you left off, playlists queue up, and a show can be reset to start again.
• Subtitle choices are remembered for each episode.
• Settings is a gear button on every device.
• High-quality sound all the time: when sound has to be converted, 5.1 and 7.1 now stay surround (they used to be
  folded into stereo), at 320 kbps for stereo, 640 kbps for 5.1 and 768 kbps for 7.1, at home and away.

Afterglow 0.4.110

4K plays at 4K, and media plays from beginning to end without interruption.

• 4K films play at 4K from the first second on your home network. Afterglow no longer starts at 720p and climbs,
  and no longer drops to 360p or 720p by guessing from how fast the stream arrives.
• A quality picked from the menu now applies only to what's playing. Before, a 720p choice made once capped every
  film after it.
• If the server is ever too busy for a moment, the picture steps down one level and climbs back to full quality by
  itself once the server keeps up.
• Videos no longer pause a few seconds in while the AI-enhanced picture is being prepared.
• Songs always start from the beginning and play straight into the next one, including with shuffle, repeat and
  playlists. The next song is loaded while the current one plays.
• Fixed a fault that, after a song ended, could leave songs and videos stuck buffering or jumping around.
• Open Afterglow windows pick up new versions by themselves, at the next change of page (never in the middle of a
  film).
• New: a File panel on every movie and show page. It shows the resolution measured from the file itself (for example
  "4K Ultra HD · 3840 × 2160"), plus codec, HDR, frame rate, bitrate, sound, size and format. On the computer running
  Afterglow it also shows where the file is, with a Show in folder button.
• New: while a video loads, Afterglow shows its own animated mark in your theme's colour instead of a black screen.
  On Android this also replaces the grey play sign.

Afterglow 0.4.109

• Away from home works again: phones and computers keep the server's outside address, even when they connect while the server is restarting after an update. Pairing saves it straight away. (If your phone can't reach Afterglow off Wi-Fi, open it once at home after this update.)
• Macs can install with one Terminal command, with no "can't verify" warning from macOS (see the download page).

Afterglow 0.4.108

• 4K films stay 4K: HDR films (most 4K ones) are now made for ordinary screens by the NVIDIA RTX card, fast enough to stream at full 4K instead of 1440p. HDR screens play them as they are.
• At home the player goes straight to the quality that fills your screen, instead of creeping up slowly; it only steps down if the server can't keep up.
• Music fills a few seconds of buffer before it plays, so it no longer stutters at the start of a track on a slower connection, and the next track is read early so there's no gap between tracks.
• The graphics card test runs once more after this update (it now also times HDR films); Settings > Playback shows what it found.

Afterglow 0.4.107

• 4K AI enhancement: on a fast enough NVIDIA RTX card, videos (full-HD ones too) are enlarged to 4K as you watch on a big screen, and "Enhance this show" makes 4K copies in the background.
• Afterglow tests your graphics card by itself (about a minute, while nothing plays) and uses what it finds: 4K only when the card keeps up, as many enhanced streams at once as it has room for, background copies side by side on cards with more than one video encoder, and carrying on while you watch when the card has plenty to spare.
• Settings > Playback shows what the test found, can test again, and lets you choose full HD at most instead.
• Jumping around in an enhanced video resumes faster.
• New media in watched folders is found by itself, and open libraries refresh to show it.
• Videos replaced by their enhanced versions keep playing, with their place, history and fixes kept.

Afterglow 0.4.104

• TVs get the AI-enhanced picture: casting an old, small video to a Chromecast, Roku or smart TV now sends the version your NVIDIA card makes better, not the file as it is.
• 720p videos are enhanced as they play too, not only DVD-quality ones.
• "Enhance this show" starts with the episode you're likely to watch next, and follows along as you watch.
• One card per artist: music found to be by the same artist in different folders is shown as one artist.
• Updates can no longer get stuck: Afterglow's helpers always end with it, and the installer clears any left behind.
• Enhancement is no longer turned off by mistake when Afterglow shuts down while its helper is starting.