MythTV 0.25 Is Still Being Baked With Many Changes

It's been quite a while since last talking about MythTV, since this popular open-source project for Home Theater PCs last had a major release more than one year ago. However, a lot is being baked for v0.25 -- the next major release.

MythTV 0.24 was released in November of 2010 as the last major release (though there was a point release in May of 2011), but MythTV 0.25 is still not on the horizon even after 14+ months in development. In comparison, between MythTV 0.23 and 0.24 only six months had passed and between 0.22 and 0.23 there was just about a half-year as well.

With the Christmas availability of XBMC 11.0 Eden Beta, I was wondering what's up with MythTV these days given their lack of a new release. Fortunately, development has not stalled on this popular HTPC project. The last commits to their Git repository was just earlier today and there's continued to be a stream of new development activity.

There's just a lot building up for MythTV 0.25. Below are some of the highlights that will be part of MythTV 0.25 when it's ultimately released -- as of right now there isn't any planned release schedule.

- VA-API video acceleration support. This will provide GPU-based video acceleration playback for modern Intel hardware, Gallium3D with the VA-API state tracker, and other select configurations. MythTV developers have dropped XvMC (X-Video Motion Compensation) support, but that video acceleration interface isn't too popular or useful for modern hardware. Microsoft Windows users of MythTV also now have DXVA2 (DirectX Video Acceleration 2) support. These video acceleration improvements come after MythTV has already supported VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) with NVIDIA hardware.

- A new MythTV Services API.

- 3D support for side-by-side and top-and-bottom 3D.

- IPv6 support. Also in network news is a web-based back-end setup utility for MythTV. There's also HTTP live streaming capabilities.

- Support for E-AC3, TrueHD, and DTS-HD digital pass-through.

- A re-written logging system.

- Improved meta-data look-up for videos and recordings.

- CEC HDMI capabilities for supported devices.

- Initial GLSL v1.0 video rendering support.

- Initial OpenGL ES 2.0 (GLES2.0) support.

- Many Blu-Ray improvements: initial still-frame support, playback loading progress bar, OSD menu support, meta-data parsing for disc library meta-data, and future support for mouse clicks.

- Support for SSA/ASS sub-titles.

- Support for BBCi MHEG streams.

- Many bug-fixes.

The tentative details can be found from the work-in-progress Wiki release notes.