• Operation entirely via On Screen Display (OSD) and remote control (LIRC) or keyboard
• Support for DVB-S, DVB-C and DVB-T
• Support for multiple DVB cards (up to eight, at least one "full featured" card with MPEG decoder, or a third party plugin for audio/video output, required)
• Support for "conditional access" (CICAM)
• Channel groups
• EPG display by channel or by time ("What's on now/next")
• Timer programming via EPG or manually, priority/lifetime model, single-shot or repeating timers which use EPG subtitle info as additional recording's title
• Support for multiple audio tracks and Dolby Digital
• Instant recording
• Playback modes normal, pause, fast forward/backward (multi speed), jump to specific location, jump 60 seconds
• Support for editing recordings (with I-frame accuracy: ~1/2 second)
• Multiple OSD language support
• Support for executing system commands and displaying output on screen
• Network support (SVDRP): Manage channels, timers and recordings via telnet
• Automatic shutdown/wakeup (with certain mainboards)
• Support for automatically executing commands upon recording start/end and editing recordings
• Instant Time Shift
• Plugin interface
• Macros can be assigned to remote control keys
• Multiple recordings on the same device (from the same transponder)
• Simultaneous recording and replay on the primary device (if this is a full featured device)

New in version 1.4

• Timers support VPS ("Video Programming System")
• The OSD appearance can be implemented via "skins" and "themes"
• Plugins can provide "services" for other plugins
• Plugins can implement their own SVDRP commands
• Automatic update of channel data
• Support for "multi channel audio" (for example different languages on left and right channel)

New in version 1.6

• DVB subtitles
• UTF-8 support
• The OSD now uses Freetype fonts and anti-aliasing
• Internationalization is now done with 'gettext'

New in version 2.0

• Full support for HDTV
• Support for DVB-S2 and DVB-T2
• Support for ATSC
• Support for DVB cards with multiple delivery systems per frontend
• SCR ("Satellite Channel Routing", aka "Unicable") according to EN50494
• "Device Bonding" (several DVB-S devices can be connected to the same sat cable)
• True Color OSD
• Recordings are stored in TS ("Transport Stream") format
• Support for languages that are written right-to-left

New in version 2.2

• Support for steerable satellite dishes
• Satellite Channel Routing (SCR) according to EN50607 ("JESS")
• Added support for PGS subtitles
• The "Select folder" menu now contains the folder names of all existing recordings
• Detection of obsolete channels
• Support for Logical Channel Numbers (LCN)
• Dropped the code for distributing recordings over several video directories
• Recordings and folders can now be renamed and moved
• A recording's priority and lifetime can now be edited
• Cutting jobs are now queued
• An incomplete index of a recording can now be updated
• A recording's name can now easily be replaced with the last element of its folder path name
• It is now possible to turn off pausing replay when jumping to an editing mark with the '9' key
• The edited parts of a recording can now be automatically skipped during replay, without the need to actually cut the recording
• Replay can now automatically go into Pause mode when it has reached the last "end" mark
• The keys '1' and '3' can now be used in replay mode to position an editing mark in "adaptive" mode
• The skip distance of the Green/Yellow keys can now be configured
• The Prev/Next keys can now be configured to do adaptive skipping instead of the default behavior of jump between editing marks during replay
• The number of steps and linearization of the audio volume control can now be configured
• VDR now reads command line options from *.conf files in /etc/vdr/conf.d

New in version 2.4

• Added support for Multiple Transponder Decryption (MTD)
• VDRs in the local network can now be connected
• Added support for remote timers
• Implemented unique ids for timers and recordings
• The EPG scanner no longer moves the dish if there is a positioner
• Recordings can now be sorted "by time" or "by name", and with "oldest first" or "newest first"
• The "Channels" menu now indicates whether a channel is encrypted ('X') or a radio channel ('R')
• The script that gets called for recordings is now also called right before a recording is edited, with the first parameter being "editing"
• Implemented a frame parser for H.265 (HEVC) recordings
• When moving a recording to a different folder, the cursor is no longer placed on the new location of the recording, but rather stays in the original folder
• The SVDRP port now accepts multiple concurrent connections, which can be held open permanently
• All timer related response strings from SVDRP commands now use the channel ID instead of channel numbers
• The SVDRP command DELT no longer checks whether the timer that shall be deleted is currently recording
• The SVDRP command DELC now refuses to delete the very last channel in the list, to avoid ending up with an empty channel list
• The SVDRP command LSTC can now list the channels with channel ids if the option ':ids' is given
• If 0 is given as the channel number in the SVDRP command LSTC, the data of the current channel is listed
• The new SVDRP commands 'LSTD' and 'PRIM' can be used to list all available devices and to switch the primary device
• The -u option now also accepts a numerical user id
• Added support for the systemd watchdog
• The Makefiles have been modified so that during the build process they no longer display the actual (lengthy) commands, but rather just the name of the file that is being built
• Added backtrace functions for debugging

New in version 2.6

• "Pattern Timers" allow recording all events with titles matching a given pattern.
• Recordings are checked for errors, and if errors occur, they are indicated in the Recordings menu and info.