yaVDR 0.2 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) i386 and uses the standard Ubuntu 10.04 Linux kernel packages based on kernel 2.6.32. Users of yaVDR 0.2 will profit from the updated V4L/DVB kernel modules in the Lucid kernel compared to yaVDR 0.1.1 (that uses kernel 2.6.31). Additionally, there is the option to install alternative V4L/DVB kernel modules:

With yaVDR 0.1, we were proud to be the first PVR Linux distribution to introduce easy-to-install packages with alternative V4L/DVB kernel modules. This means that there is no need for the end-user to compile source code manually any more. We managed to package the source code of those V4L/DVB branches as Ubuntu packages with DKMS support (including pre-compiled binaries for the current kernel version).

With yaVDR 0.2, we offer alternative DVB kernel modules from the s2-liplianin branch (20100518.14629) of Igor Liplianin and from the v4l/dvb branch (20100518.14849) from linuxtv.org.

Those packages now include another nice improvement: Steffen has spotted a bug in dkms that caused a very slow deinstallation of the driver packages (took about half an hour). This is now fixed and this will mean a much smoother deinstallation experience of the kernel modules during a package update.

yaVDR 0.2 uses ALSA 1.0.23 that was released in April 2010. If you own such a Nvidia GPU, please refer to this XBMC-Wiki tutorial for further information about some module settings that may be required for your card to work properly (for example, a Gainward GT210 card requires enable_msi=0 probe_mask=0xffff,0xfff2 in order to work.). Because ALSA contains kernel modules, we have packaged it as a DKMS package that will rebuild the necessary kernel modules automatically during a kernel update.

Version comparison: yaVDR 0.1.x used the upstream ALSA 1.0.20 provided by Ubuntu Karmic. Ubuntu Lucid ships with ALSA version 1.0.22.

yaVDR 0.1.x was shipped with VDR 1.7.10. If you want to study the in-depth changelog about what has changed between 1.7.10 and 1.7.14, please read this blog posting.

As of yaVDR 0.2, VDR core is patched using the "multipatch" method. (Many important VDR plugins don't work with the VDR "vanilla" version. They require the VDR core to be patched. There are two concurrent methods to patch VDR core: The "extensionpatch" method which we now regard as obsolete and the "multipatch" method which is borrowed from the Debian VDR packages created by Tobias Grimm and Thomas Günther.)

• Up-to-date libxine packages improve stability of VDR frontends (xine@vdr-plugin-xine, vdr-sxfe@vdr-plugin-xineliboutput)
• vdr-addon-lifeguard: Prevents shutdown of VDR if certain customizable rules are true (ssh-sessions, active users, etc.)
• vdr-skin-anthra: Additional VDR HD OSD skin "anthra" (an alternative to skin PearlHD)
• Support for external DVB streaming hardware
  
  • vdr-plugin-hdhomerun: Initial support for HDHomeRun European version (dual DVB-T/C tuner) as DVB device for VDR. More on the HDHomeRun device in the upcoming weeks.
  • vdr-plugin-mcli / vdr-addon-mcli-tools: Initial support for Reel Multimedias Netceiver (more infos in this German language thread)
• Additional new packages (please browse our package repositories)

The version of XBMC shipped with yaVDR 0.2  is still an experimental and unstable developer version of XBMC branch pvr-testing2 (@r30240). The new vdr-plugin-vnsiserver and the vnsi PVR-client are now the recommended way to connect VDR with XBMC. The connection via vdr-plugin-streamdev-server is deprecated.

Please keep in mind: Adding plugins (SVN repo installer) and skins to XBMC in the usual (= old fashioned) way doesn't work any more since the next XBMC release will feature a brand new addon framework.

• Auto-mounting and sharing
  • USB-storage (sticks and harddrives) will automatically be mounted when being plugged in and recordings on them will be accessible from the VDR frontend.
  • NFS shares on other machines can be mounted easily by yaVDR 0.2.
  • The default folder for recordings of yaVDR 0.2 is pre-configured to be shared via NFS. Recordings on a yaVDR 0.2 box are easily accessible on other machines via NFS.
• Improved Suspend/Wakeup experience
  • S3 Wakeup problems were reduced.
  • Support for the "Suspend to Disk" variant "Fake S4": During boot the image created during previous shutdown will not be used. This allows to wake-up the machine using usb-devices (for example Windows MCE infrared receivers)
  • Wake on Lan is enabled by default
• Better boot performance compared to yaVDR 0.1.1: yaVDR 0.2 should boot considerably quicker, but boot time is always depending on your hardware. Some DVB-hardware needs a long time to be initialized. VDR can only be started after the DVB hardware is available. This will slow down boot in some cases. (If your DVB hardware is recognized by the kernel but not available in VDR, VDR most likely starts to early. This can be fixed easily.)
• Optical drives are automatically slowed down to make them less noisy in case videos/media is played from them.

• New sound output configuration dialog for libxine-based VDR frontends via web-frontend (including applications like Firefox). You may choose between options like "Analog", "Digital (Toslink/SPDIF)", "HDMI Stereo", "HDMI Pass Through". The available output options that you can choose from on your machine are automatically determined.
• Display configuration via web-frontend: Configuration of multiple displays and their resolution/settings next to the option to use one of the displays for the VDR plugin graphtft
• "headless" mode was added to the list of possible VDR frontends. "headless" makes sense if you have a server machine in a room where no TV is being watched and want to (ab)use yaVDR as a headless PVR server.
• Extended configuration options for remote controls and infrared receivers within the web-frontend: Next to LIRC supported IR receivers you can alternatively choose devices supported by Inputlirc or IRServer.
• The Web frontend comes with a new configuration dialog for NFS.
• The list of shutdown methods was extended. Now available are: "suspend to RAM", "suspend to DISK", "shutdown", "reboot PowerOff-kernel" to work around bugs/problems with some mainboards/BIOS versions.

yaVDR uses the externalplayer plugin to make it easy for you to launch different applications like XBMC or Firefox from the VDR OSD. With yaVDR 0.2, we have extended this to offer you yaVDR addons. Right now there are two yaVDR addons available that you can install (on the command prompt) and easily launch from the VDR OSD:

• Performous: A free cross-platform music and rhythm game (to install, type: sudo apt-get install yavdr-addon-performous)
• Pidgin: The universal chat client (to install, type: sudo apt-get install yavdr-addon-pidgin)

• The default video directory where VDR stores the recordings has been changed from "/var/lib/video.00" to "/srv/vdr/video.00". This makes it easier to offer the local recordings as an NFS share for the internal network. You can fall back to the old location by adding VIDEO_DIR="/var/lib/vdr/video.00" to a self-created custom-template for the configuration file /etc/default/vdr.
• The vdr-sxfe configuration file is now in /etc/vdr-sxfe/config_xineliboutput
• The xine configuration files are now in /etc/xine/
• nodm is no longer required and is therefore not used any more. We directly start application from upstart or other sources referring to the display to start on.
• New Launchpad repositories - less chaos using a better structure (a detailed list of the PPAs will follow in a future blog posting)
• We now maintain our own LIRC package in our repository overriding the upstream Ubuntu LIRC package. This is necessary to prevent a messed up LIRC configuration after future upstream LIRC updates.

• It seems that on some setups it is possible that VDR crashes when it attempts to start a recording. Those crashes occur under the following circumstances: The selected VDR frontend is vdr-sxfe. An application like Firefox or XBMC is active and was launched from the VDR OSD menu (externalplayer). We are investigating this issue.
• For some users, Live-TV in XBMC doesn't work ("channel not available") if the selected VDR frontend is vdr-sxfe. With xine frontend it works.
• If you want to install further packages from our repositoriess, an initial "sudo apt-get update" is necessary. Otherwise the contents of our repositories are not known to apt.
• to be continued