Smart Home Blog

Finally I gathered oneself up to upgrade my LinuxMCE 0710 Beta 4 up to the latest stable version. The point to do that was VDR 1.6.0. It’s much better then 1.4.7. Especially because it supports UTF-8. So, Russian EPG is displayed now correctly on the on-screen menu. Another small but useful improvement in the integration with VDR is showing information about the currently played channel on the Orbiter.

The upgrade was performed perfectly. All my data and preferences were saved and transferred to the new system. I just installed a few packages such lcdproc and vdradmin-am. Next to build and configure stream-server and CI + CAM.

Yesterday the final version of LinuxMCE 0710 was released. Basically, it’s exactly the same as RC1 except just two thing. The first one is adding a few packages into debian cach to speedup installation. And the second one is updated version of ZWave interface. So, if you have installed RC1 there is no reason to upgrade it.

I have to find time to upgrade my 0710 Beta 4 and play with VDR 1.6. And waiting for the first version of 0804.

It seems that LinuxMCE development team is ready to release 0710. The first (and last) release candidate was announced today. I didn’t find the distribution anywhere yet. But when RC will be available for downloading I won’t be able to test it. Because tomorrow me and my wife Maria go to London for four days. So, I’ll install the stable version I hope when we return back.

You can see the full change log between 0704 and 0710 here. The most important things are support for amd64, support for 1080p, adding the latest MythTV packages, integration with VDR 1.6.0, Telecom refactoring, upgrading Xine and nVidia drivers.

To monitor the LinuxMCE 0710 RC news check that forum topic.

Today fourth beta of LinuxMCE 0710 was released. The ChangeLog includes support subtitles for DivX playback, improvements of Telecom plug-in, support for ELO and 3M touchscreen, latest fixes for MythTV and more.

Personally I’m interested to get fixed CM11A interface and better VDR integration. I’m afraid that Beta 4 doesn’t include CM11A fixes. Also there is no any word about VDR improvements in the ChangeLog. In any case I’m going to download, install and play with that version. Hope we’ll have the stable release very soon.

LinuxMCE 0710 Beta 4 can be downloaded via official Torrent. Both CD and DVD ISOs are available.

As you may know LinuxMCE in the version 0710 supports two personal video recorder systems: MythTV and VDR. This brief howto will help you setup VDR.

Installation

VDR can be chosen by two ways. The first one is initial configuration after installation. During setup the media center property you should choose VDR and not MythTV. The second way is to tick VDR and tick off MythTV on the Software modules page – Wizard –> Media Directors. In both cases VDR will be installed automatically and will start after installation.
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