History

2002

Martin has analysed the TVgenial data format and put the specifications online, hoping that someone would write a client for the data, which would also run on Martin's Mac. Due to a lack of interest, Martin started to write a client on his own in January 2003, using the plaform independent language Java.

He offered this client to TVgenial, as they only have one client, that runs but on Windows systems.

April 2003

When TVgenial rejected the offered client, Martin decided to offer his client under the name "TV-Browser" as Open Source-project on SourceForge.

For legal reasons he removed the part which would load data from TVgenial. Instead, Martin designed the system in order to allow others to read own data (today known as TV-Data Services), which means that a TV-Browser existed, but did not contain any data.

March 2003

Til joined Martin and wrote the first public TV-Data Service. He got his TV data in XMLTV-format from an Austrian server.

September 2003

The host of the server that provided the XMLTV-data discontinued his service, hence TV-Browser didn't have any more data.

November 2003

The first version with its own TV data is online. Martin and Til had created an own TV-data format (... as Martin knew by now how to do this http://forum.tvbrowser.org/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif ). Both started with a rather meager choice of channels, but were nevertheless confident, that they soon would be able to stock up the number of available channels.

Since then, the data is directly drawn from the channels, exported into the TV-Browser format and provided on servers, which had been provided by volunteers specially for the TV-Browser project.

December 2003

Bodo joins the TV-Browser project. Firstly adds a few smaller plugins (Google.de_Suche, Imdb.com_Suche), later supplies the TV-Rater-plugin and finally joins the development team.

May 2004

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG refuses the use of their data by the TV-Browser-team - for legal reasons as they claim. Hence, the channels Pro7, Sat1, Kabel1 and N24 are not available. Forum

May 2004

The 1.0 Release Candidates are released despite the declining number of users due to the missing channels of the ProSieben-Group.

June 2004

Finally an own domain. The forum moves from Bodo's server and the homepage from Sourceforge to its new home: tvbrowser.org.

July 2004

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG grants the usage of their program preview in TV-Browser.

September 2004

Release of 1.0 Final.

April 2005

First introduction of a few new features, which TV-Browser version 2.0 would contain.

June 2005

First Alpha of TV-Browser 2.0 released.

August 2005

After alltogether 2 Alpha and 2 Beta versions, Version 2.0 is released at the end of August. René Mach (aka ds10) joins the team.

October 2005

The first Beta of version 2.1 is released. The main focus is on the improvement of the channel group management and the trapping of bugs caused by plugins.

November 2005

Joakim Arborelius (aka Inforama) joins the team. He is the first developer from abroad and works on the Swedish translations and the Swedb-plugin.

The Final of TV-Browser 2.1 is released.

December 2005

Björn Balazs joins the team via OpenUsability. He will be our consultant. His first job was helping us in carrying out and analysing our first usability-survey.

March 2006

Bodo takes over the project management from Martin. Martin will nevertheless stay with the TV-Browser-team and take over the release-management.

May 2006

The first Beta of TV-Browser 2.2 is released. Right after the release PCWelt.de reports about it, although the Beta had not been published but in our forum.

After another Beta in mid-May, the final version 2.2 is released on our renewed homepage.