SichboPVR v4 progress.

Thanks to all of you marvellous supporters who have encouraged me to work on this over the past 12 months.

Sichbo Supporters will receive access to the v4 Alpha when it's ready. Any supporters who are interested in testing super dicey pre-alpha builds can do so by shooting me an email and asking. There are a small handful of testers currently helping to make sure everything goes smoothly for the up coming first alpha release, but any supporters are welcome to join in.

v4 Features

Finished so far.

• A brand new look and feel with a simpler interface, but still fun an exciting with animations and stuff.
• Optional background service integration making it a more suitable Windows Media Center replacement.
• Video now always “Just Works” with no way for 3rd party components to interfere with your shizz, thanks to a completely custom end-to-end media pipeline.
• A user system so that family members and friends can have their own channel lists and favourite things streamed to their Windows and Linux devices.
• Time of day and show rating restrictions for kid's accounts.
• It's now a lot easier to have multiple SichboPVR clients sharing your server.
• Multiple speaker output controls and audio channel up/down mixing.
• Remote Controls are now a first-class citizen with an on-screen keyboard, custom remote key mappings and everything.
• A cool waveform on the seek bar so you can see/skip where the ads are (mileage varies, but looks fun nonetheless.)
• Custom text scaling for those with limited vision, or if you simply want to cram more guide rows on screen.
• Adaptive layouts so things move around or shrink as the window size changes.
• Simpler colour scheme system with a bunch of nice default options, including high contrast for folks with limit eyesight.
• Set up multiple locations for when travelling with laptops and a TV dongle or access TV servers from friends and family.
• A Wish List feature so you can paste in a thousand movie titles or perhaps a complex Regular Expression query, and it'll automatically record them if they come up.
• Much easier to set up manual one-time recordings or recurring series that don't exist in the guide data.
• A better guide search including a full search as well as quick search and more intuitive scheduling.
• A unified Library system for managing shows, schedules, etc.
• Proper translations for a bunch of languages.
• Still fast and lightweight with a reasonably small footprint. Download is only 12MB, which is actually even bigger than strictly necessary because it contains both x86 and x64 editions.
• HTTP Live Streaming (live .m3u8) is SichboPVR 4's only mode of video playout from your TV tuner, which should mean easier compatibility for supporting mobiles and things.
• No more "hot keys" necessary. For example, the old v3 "F5 always on top" mode is now a simple pin icon.
• Automatic on-the-fly channel logo generator so that stuff always looks tidy and consistent, but without being boring or needing lame bitmaps.
• Simpler "you just click one button" setup for most over-the-air use cases
• OpenGL as well as DirectX 11 rendering modes.

Simon's "Get to alpha! " List.

• Auto-merge/remux of partial recording segments.
• Enforce parental control limit on content (currently only Time of Day rules work.)
• Solve missing/inconsistent UK parental rating data.
• Handle disconnection/dropped server tasks better.
• Search in library.
• Audio mixer fade-in.

The initial test release is going to be Windows only because it's been a marathon getting to this stage and I don't want to plow through another six months of work before people get to try it. Ubuntu Linux releases are coming, but after the Windows preview is out.

After the first general Alpha release to all supporters.

• Extend timeshift past margins for getting to other shows a bit easier.
• EPG grid rewrite (there's one already, but I have an idea for something a bit special, but it's a big job.)
• Look into Dolby ProLogic II mixing.
• Tag manager.
• Linux/GCC builds.

After beta release.

• Web front end for mobiles/browsers.
• Video editing.
• Transcoding.

Thank you so much to the supporters who are already contributing based on version 3 — I hope you'll enjoy your v4 builds as well.

The voluntary supporter programme which I had started a year ago has unfortunately not created a liveable wage yet. I really need to find around 2,000 people to kick in a tiny "1 local money" each month in order to be sustainable. To that end, v4 is going to require the small contribution from folks wanting to use it.

Rock on,

- Simon