I have answered alot of emails about this question, and I think it’s time to make a comment on it. Put simply, the code in the public SVN is from October and is from pre-pre release times. The stuff we are working on now, for R1, is in a separate Development SVN that will be moved over when R1 is released on December 23 (Note: this SVN is not public). The reason we are doing this is so that our users get a product that is stable enough for everyday use. From the start, we have had a strong opposition to releasing unstable code in order to ensure our users would not be inconvenienced in any way. After R1 is released, you should start seeing alot of commit activity, as bugs will be regularly fixed, and more features will be added. Thanks for your understanding. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

I thought that you would all like to know that iTheater development is well underway.

The DVD playback module has been committed to the development repository, and is working. Support for DVD menus and chapter navigation needs to be added, and we are waiting on the UI Design Team to produce some nice candy for the playback control overlay.

The code base underwent some major revisions last week, and a lot of the initial code has been refactored to provide a simpler, but more effective architecture. Plug-ins support is maturing quickly, and it is the intention to provide the core modules (music, pictures, movies, dvd, etc.) as plug-ins so that the user can disable those modules not required.

We still need help, and there are plenty of jobs that can be done. If you want to help out, mosey on over to the forums, and let us know.

The UI team have made the decision today to basically completley scrap what we have done so far and restart. The reason for this is mainly due to the lack of organization, and the stacks of mockups, partially made UI’s and so on.
Also, now that we have a realistic release date set for RC1, it means we have to get our skates on, and we figured starting over would be quicker than sorting through countless images and partial UI’s.

We have also decided to go in a more simple direction. Something that users both new and experienced with computers will be able to navigate with equal ease.

Some of what we had done was also pretty complicated and something we feel we wouldn’t be able to complete in time for the RC1 release.

iTheater will be released on 23 December 2005, with support for music, video, and DVD playback, as well as photo browsing. Check out the Project Status page for more details.

While you are there, why not take a look at the Development Home on the iTheater Wiki. There you will eventually find information about the development of the iTheater Project including documentation, tutorials, and how to get involved.