This is a summary of the changes in VDR 1.4.0 since the last stable
version 1.2.6. It only contains things that are of actual importance
to the user and doesn't mention the many fixes and improvements that
have been made "behind the scenes".

See the file HISTORY for a detailed list of all changes.

Video Programming System (VPS):

- Implemented handling the VPS timestamps (aka "Programme Identification Label")
  for full VPS support for timers (provided the tv stations actually broadcast
  this information). The VPS time is displayed in the event info page if it exists
  and is different than the event's start time.
- Timers can now be set to use the VPS information to control recording a programme.
  The new setup options "Recording/Use VPS" and "Recording/VPS margin", as well as
  the "VPS" option in the individual timers, can be used to control this feature

Plugins:

- The new function cPlugin::Stop() shall be used to stop any background activities
  of a plugin. Previously this was done in the plugin's destructor, but it is
  better to do this in a dedicated function that can be called early when shutting
  down.
- Added 'Service' functions to the plugin interface.
  See PLUGINS.html, section "Custom services" for details.
- Plugins can now implement their own SVDRP commands.
  See PLUGINS.html, section "SVDRP commands" for details. The SVDRP commands
  of a plugin are accessed through the new SVDRP command PLUG.
- The main menu function of a plugin can now be activated through a key macro of
  the form "@plugin" even if that plugin doesn't have a main menu entry.
- The main menu function of a plugin can now be called programmatically through
  the static function cRemote::CallPlugin().
- The new function cPlugin::Active() can be used by a plugin to indicate that it
  is still busy and the system should not shut down or restart.
- The new APIVERSION (see config.h) now allows existing compiled plugins to be
  used with newer versions of VDR, as long as there have been no changes to the
  VDR header files since the last APIVERSION.
- The new function cPlugin::MainThreadHook() can be used by plugins to perform
  actions in the context of the main program thread.

Skins:

- The entire OSD display can now be implemented via "skins". See VDR/skins.[hc],
  VDR/skinclassic.[hc], VDR/skinsttng.[hc] and PLUGINS.html for information on how
  a plugin can implement its own skin. By default VDR comes with a "Classic" skin
  that implements the OSD display known from previous versions, and the new skin
  named "ST:TNG Panels", which is also the default skin now. The actual skin can
  be selected through "Setup/OSD/Skin".
- The colors used in a skin can now be configured using "themes". See PLUGINS.html
  for information on how a skin can make use of themes, and man vdr(5) for the
  structure of a theme file. The actual theme to use can be selected through
  "Setup/OSD/Theme".

Remote control:

- Pressing the "Play" key in live viewing mode now resumes a previous replay
  session (thanks to Mirko Dlle).
- The new "Info" key brings up information on the currently viewed programme
  or recording.
- In string entry fields (like, e.g., the file name of a recording) the characters
  can now be entered by pressing the numeric keys, the same way as on a
  telephone keypad.
- Key macros can now be defined for all non-modeless keys.
- Switching channels with the Up/Down or Channel+/Channel- keys now works a lot
  faster when the repeat function kicks in, by not actually switching the
  channel every time, but rather only displaying the channel info and doing
  the final switch when the key is released.
- The "Back" key now restores the original string when pressed while editing a
  string item.
- The "Ok" key in the "Jump" mode of the replay progress display now confirms the
  jump instead of closing the display.
- Implemented kNext and kPrev keys.
- Implemented kChanPrev.

Devices:

- Now waiting at startup until all DVB devices are ready. This includes having
  all CAMs initialized and ready to decrypt, so that no more "channel not
  available" happens if VDR is started with the current channel being an encrypted
  one, or a timer on such a channel hits right after starting VDR.
- The DVB devices now retune (and, if applicable, resend the DiSEqC data) if
  the lock is lost.

EPG:

- Added support for selecting preferred EPG languages.
- The "Red" button in the "Setup/EPG" menu can now be used to force an EPG
  scan on a single DVB card system.
- Implemented an "EPG linger time", which can be set to have older EPG information
  still displayed in the "Schedule" menu.
- The "Schedule" and "What's on now/next?" menus now have an additional column
  which displays information on whether there is a timer defined for an event,
  whether an event has a VPS time that's different than its start time, and
  whether an event is currently running.
- The format of the 'epg.data' files has been extended by the new tag 'X', which
  contains the stream components of an event.
- Modified the EPG scan so that it uses the primary device if it is
  replaying and is the only device that provides the given transponder, and that
  a forced EPG scan works even if EPG scan timeout is set to 0.
- Removed EPG bugfix #0, because it removed actually important data.
- No longer removing superfluous hyphens in EPG data - would become too
  language dependent to handle all kinds of exceptions.
- EPG events that are no longer in the currently broadcasted data stream are
  now automatically deleted.
- Schedules are now cleaned up once every hour (not only at 05:00).
- The "Red" button in the "Schedule", "What's on now/next?" and "Event" menus
  now immediately creates a timer for the selected event and marks it with 'T'.
  If the event is already marked with 'T', the "Red" button opens the "Edit
  timer" menu for that timer.
- Pressing '0' in the "Schedule" menu now rotates through displaying "This event on
  this channel", "This event on all channels" and "All events on all channels".
  This can be used to find reruns of a given show, or the episodes of a series.
  Note that if there are many channels in your channels.conf, displaying the
  "All events on all channels" page may take a while.
- The epg.data file is now written when VDR exits.
- The 'event id' in EPG data has been extended to 32 bit, so that external tools
  can generate ids that don't collide with those from the DVB data stream.
- The status changes of EPG events are now logged for all channels that have timers.

OSD:

- Changed font handling to allow language specific character sets.
- Adopted the small font character set from the "Elchi" patch
- Increased the maximum number of possible OSD colors to 256.
- Now using the 'running status' in the channel display, so that a programme
  that has an end time that is before the current time, but is still running,
  will still be shown in the display (provided the broadcasters handle the
  'running status' flag correctly). This also applies to programmes that have
  a start time that is in the future, but are already running.
- The new setup option "OSD/Use small font" can be used to control the use of
  the small font.
- The new OSD setup parameters "Left" and "Top" can be used to define the top left
  corner of the OSD.
- The OSD size parameters are now in pixel (as opposed to formerly characters).
  When reading a 'setup.conf' file from an older version of VDR, the OSDwidth
  and OSDheight values will be converted to pixel automatically.
- The OSD is now fully device independent. See the comments in VDR/osd.h and the
  description in PLUGINS.html for information on how a plugin can implement an OSD
  display on arbitrary hardware.
- The OSD (actually its cBitmap class) can now handle XPM files. There are several
  XPM files in the VDR/symbols directory which can be used by skins (some of these
  have been taken from the "elchi" patch).
- Due to the changes in the OSD handling the DEBUG_OSD option for a textual OSD
  has been dropped. A textual OSD can now be displayed with the "skincurses"
  plugin.
- Single shot timers and events now show the day of week.
- The new setup option "OSD/Channel info time" can be used to define the time after
  which the channel display is removed if no key has been pressed.
- The "Summary" button in the "Recordings" menu has been renamed to "Info", and
  the page it brings up now shows the recording's information, much like the EPG
  event page.
- The new setup option "OSD/Scroll wraps" can be used to activate wrapping around
  in menu lists.
- The main menu now dynamically updates its contents in case an instant
  recording or replay stops, etc.
- The new option "Setup/OSD/Timeout requested channel info" can be used to turn
  off the automatic timeout of the channel display in case it was invoked by
  a press of the "Ok" key.

Channels:

- Channel data is now automatically derived from the DVB data stream
- Channel names in 'channels.conf' can now have a short form, as provided
  by some tv stations.
- There can now be up to 32 audio and 16 Dolby PIDs.
- The audio and Dolby PIDs in 'channels.conf' now can have an optional language
  code.
- Fixed transponder handling to make it work with satellites that provide two
  transponders on the same frequency, with different polarization.
- Now storing the name of the service provider (aka "bouquet") in the channel
  name, separated by a semicolon.
- The "Channels" menu can now be sorted "by number" (default), "by name" and
  "by provider". While in the "Channels" menu, pressing the '0' key switches
  through these modes.
- Added support for circular polarization.
- When reading the channels.conf file, duplicate channels (i.e. ones that have
  the same channel ID) are now automatically deleted and only the first one is
  actually stored.
- In the "Channels" menu the numeric keys now position the cursor to the channel
  with the given number.
- The "Mark/Move" function in the "Channels" menu now also works in the non-numeric
  sort modes.
- The "Update channels" parameter in the "Setup/DVB" menu has been extended to
  allow updating only the PIDs.

Timers:

- The '0' key now toggles the "Day" item in the "Timers" menu between "single
  shot" and "repeating". The keys '1'...'7' can be used to toggle the individual
  days ('1' is Monday).
- The day of a timer is now stored as a full date in ISO notation ("YYYY-MM-DD") in
  'timers.conf' and for the result of the SVDRP command LSTT
- The timer status now has a new bit that is set when that timer is currently
  recording.
- The 'summary' field of a timer definition has been renamed to 'aux', and is now
  only used for external applications to store auxiliary information with a timer,
  which has no meaning whatsoever to VDR itself.
  The contents of the 'aux' field of a timer is copied into the recording's
  'info.vdr' file, using the tag character '@'.
- The description of a recording is now taken exclusively from its related EPG
  data. If an application wants to use a different description it needs to set
  it with SVDRP/PUTE and use table ID 0x00, so that it won't be overwritten (as
  a side effect, however, this also disables VPS for such an event).
- There is no more "Summary" menu when pressing "Ok" in the "Timers" menu.
  The "Ok" key now always opens the "Edit timer" menu.
- The upper 16 bit of a timer's "flags" are no longer treated specially when a timer
  is modified in the "Edit timer" menu. If an external application needs to know if
  a timer was modified, it has to keep a copy of the timer's data and compare that
  to the actual data.
- The option "Setup/OSD/Sort timers" has been removed. Timers are always sorted
  by their start time and priority.
- The "Blue" key in the "Timers" menu now displays the EPG info of the event the
  selected timer will record (if available). The "On/Off" function has been shifted
  to the "Red" button. Editing a timer is done by pressing "Ok".

Recording:

- Now preferring budget cards when selecting a DVB device for recording.
- The file 'summary.vdr' has been replaced with 'info.vdr' and now contains the
  information about a recording, in the same format as the events are stored in
  'epg.data'.
- Recordings are now only started if there is at least 300MB free disk space.
- No longer using characters 0x01 and 0x02 for mapping single quote and slash in
  recording names.
  The single quote is not mapped at all, and the slash is interchanged
  with the tilde. Existing recordings will be handled like before, so there is
  no need to actually rename them.

SVDRP:

- The new SVDRP command 'SCAN' can be used to force  an EPG scan on a single
  DVB card system.
- Extended the SVDRP command LSTE to allow limiting the listed data to a given
  channel, the present or following events, or events at a given time.
- The SVDRP command LSTR now lists the recording information in the same tagged
  format as the LSTE command lists the EPG data.
- The new SVDRP command PLAY can be used to start replaying a recording.
- The new SVDRP command EDIT can be used to start the editing process of a recording.
- The new SVDRP command PLUG can be used to call a plugin's main menu function.
- Implemented the SVDRP command MOVC.
- The SVDRP command GRAB now determines the image type (JPEG or PNM) from the
  extension (".jpg", ".jpeg" or ".pnm") of the given file name. The explicit
  'jpeg' or 'pnm' parameter is still accepted for backward compatibility, but
  has no meaning any more.
- The SVDRP command GRAB now writes the image data to the SVDRP connection
  (encoded in base64) if the given file name consists of only the file
  extension (".jpg", ".jpeg" or ".pnm"), or if only "-" is given as file
  name.
- The new command line option '-g' must be given if the SVDRP command GRAB
  shall be allowed to write image files to disk. The parameter to this option
  must be the full path name of an existing directory, without any "..", double
  '/' or symlinks. By default, or if "-g- is given, grabbing to files is
  not allowed any more because of potential security risks.
- The SVDRP command LSTT now accepts the new option 'id' to have the channels
  of the timers listed with their unique channel ids instead of their numbers.

Audio:

- AC3 audio can now be output directly over the full featured DVB cards.
- The new remote control button "Audio" can be used to switch between different
  audio tracks. The "Green" button in the "Main" menu has been changed from "Language"
  to "Audio", since it now also controls switching between normal and Dolby Digital
  audio tracks.
- The description of the audio tracks is now taken from the "component descriptors"
  that are broadcast in the EPG data. However (as no big surprise), not all channels
  actually provide useful data here, so there are now some additional EPG bugfixes,
  which can be activated by setting the "EPG bugfix level" to 3.
- The new setup option "DVB/Audio languages" can be used to control which audio
  language shall be selected in case a channel broadcasts in different languages.
- The "Left" and "Right" keys in the "Audio" menu can be used to switch between
  the left and right stereo channels in case there are different audio tracks
  in these channels.
- The setup option "Recording/Record Dolby Digital" has been renamed and moved to
  "DVB/Use Dolby Digital". It now controls whether Dolby Digital is recorded and
  whether an available DD audio track will appear in the "Audio" menu.
- Recording and Transfer Mode now handle more than 2 audio PIDs.

Conditional Access:

- Improved CAM handling.
- The file 'ca.conf' has been removed. VDR now automatically detects which
  device contains a CAM that can decode a channel.
- Removed the now obsolete CaCaps stuff. The Setup/CICAM menu now displays the
  actual CAM type as reported by the CAM.
- The Setup/CICAM menu now only contains the devices that actually have a CI and
  dynamically detects the number of slots a CI provides.
- The CAM menu now automatically updates itself in case of a progress display (as
  used, for instance, when updating the firmware via satellite).
- Improved the CAM enquiry menu.

Internationalization:

- Added Russian language texts.
- Added Croatian language texts.
- Added Estonian language texts.
- Added Danish language texts.
- Added Czech language texts.

Misc:

- Changed thread handling to make it work with NPTL ("Native Posix Thread Library").
- The list of recordings is now kept statically in memory to avoid long delays
  when opening the "Recordings" menu. As a side effect, external modifications to
  the video directory are no longer immediately reflected in the "Recordings" menu.
  If a plugin manipulates the video directory in any way, it can call the function
  Recordings.TriggerUpdate() to trigger an update of the list of recordings.
  If some external tool manipulates the video directory, it can touch the file
  '.update' in the video directory to trigger an update of the list of recordings.
- The new setup option "DVB/Video display format" can be used to define which display
  format to use for playing wide screen video on a 4:3 tv set.
- Added the command line options '--lirc', '--rcu' and '--no-kbd' to allow setting
  the remote control at runtime.
- Pressing Ok while entering a channel number now immediately switches to that
  channel, without waiting for further input.
- The new command line option '--vfat' can be used to make VDR encode special
  characters in recording file names, even if it wasn't compiled with VFAT=1
  The compile time option VFAT still exists and creates a VDR that always behaves
  as if it were called with '--vfat'.
- Replaced the ':' delimiter between hour and minute in recording file names with
  a '.' under Linux, too. Existing recordings with ':' as delimiter will still work.
- The list of recordings is now read in a separate thread, resulting in a faster
  startup if there are a great many of recordings, or the disk(s) have to spin up.
- When displaying the amount of free disk space, the space consumed by
  recordings that have been "deleted" but not yet actually "removed" is now
  taken into account.
- Removing deleted recordings is now done in a separate thread.
- When started as user 'root' VDR can now switch to a lesser privileged user id,
  keeping the capability to set the system time. The 'runvdr' script has been
  changed to use the new '-u' option.
- The Makefile now reports a summary of failed plugins.
- Removed the "buffer reserve" in Transfer Mode - it's no longer necessary with
  recent driver/firmware versions.
- The initial channel and volume can now be defined in the "Setup/Miscellaneous"
  menu.
- In order to make sure that plugins are compiled with the same DVB driver header
  files as VDR itself, the definition of DVBDIR has been removed from the VDR
  Makefile. It can now be defined, if necessary, in Make.config.