Release Notes

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Welcome to iConsole for Home Theater PC (HTPC) Alpha 1. iConsole is a revolutionary new approach to using your Home Theater PC. By combining ease of use, with a complete operating environment, iConsole is the first Home Theater Operating System.

This is our first release, Alpha 1. As noted in the agreement terms on the download page, this software has bugs. Do not use this software on any machine or environment which is not fully backed up.

System Requirements

Please Note: iConsole is not designed to be installed in a virtual machine. While some virtual machines support things like 3D acceleration, performance will still be extremely poor. Please don't waste your time with a VM install.

iConsole will run on a broad range of hardware. It's designed to run on older systems that aren't really being used around your house. It also runs great on cutting-edge HTPC arrays.

You should have at least the following:

• 1 GHz Intel Pentium III processor or equivalent
• 512 MB RAM
• 20 GB Hard Drive
• DVD-ROM Drive
• Internet Connection (required for logging in initially)
• A Boxee Account (visit boxee.tv to sign up for one)

We also suggest the following:

• For H.264 HD VIdeo Acceleration, a VDPAU-compliant graphics card.
  • Most NVIDIA GeForce 8 Series and higher cards support VDPAU. S3 Chrome 430 GT, Chrome 440 GTX, Chrome 530 GT and Chrome 540 GTX also support VDPAU.

Note About Macintosh Systems

Alpha 1 versions of iConsole do not formally support Macintosh hardware. This is due to difficulties in uninstalling Linux-based operating systems on Intel-based Macs. Removing iConsole may require booting your machine from a Mac OS X Install Disc.

Will it run? Probably. Do we support it yet? No.

We plan to fully support iConsole on Mac in the future.

Based on user feedback, we have set up a iConsole Mac Center for assistance with unsupported Mac installations.

Note About RAID

RAID users are enthusiasts. We love RAID and use RAID hard drives at MechaWorks all the time.

However, because there are so many different types of RAID setups, we do not support RAID currently.

We have found that hardware and in-BIOS RAID arrays tend to work well with iConsole, and software-based RAID solutions do not work well. Again, that's simply from our observations... we cannot support RAID at this time.

Installation / How To Install

Installation for iConsole Alpha 1 is designed to be easier than installing a standard operating system. Boot your system from the iConsole CD/DVD, and follow the on-screen instructions.

If you have installed Ubuntu 9.10 previously, many menus will appear similar. If you've never installed Linux before, fear not! We designed iConsole to be easier to install than Linux, or any other operating system.

Since this is Alpha 1, we are not providing a detailed install description. You should be familiar with installing an operating system. If not, this may not be time for you to hop onboard the iConsole train.

If you are unfamiliar with installing an operating system, we strongly suggest you wait for a Beta or Final Candidate release.

You can install iConsole alongside Windows, or have it erase your hard drive and install in the entire disk space. Both options are now supported. You will be prompted during the install to chose if you want to install iConsole alongside Windows, if Windows is detected.

Setting Up iConsole

After installing iConsole to a hard drive, your machine will start in Boxee.

However, Alpha 1 does not install restricted drivers automatically. If you have an NVIDIA, ATI, or AMD-based graphics card, graphics may run slowly until you install necessary graphics drivers.

This will be fixed in a future release. Until then, visit iConsole.vg/support/wiki where instructions will be made available shortly on installing restricted drivers. If you are familiar with Linux, this should be easy for you to do. If not, those instructions will make it straightforward to set up.

We understand this isn't easy, and we are working to address it very quickly.

After graphics drivers are installed, you can then reboot and run iConsole normally.

Depending on your display/HDTV, you may need to manually adjust screen resolution in Settings.

Known Issues

Alpha 1 has several known issues, and we are working on them.

* NVIDIA and AMD/ATI graphics card/chipset owners must follow a few additional steps shown below.

• The UI is lame. We know, we're working on that.
• OpenSim may not run properly. A fix is currently in-testing.
• Netflix, iConsole Classics, and DVR are not yet added to iConsole. They will be available in a future release.
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controls require exiting to the Temporary Desktop.

Installing Restricted Drivers

If you have an NVIDIA or AMD/ATI graphics card/chipset, please see the article Installing Graphics Drivers to complete installation. This is one small step that should only take a couple of minutes to complete, and is a known Alpha 1 issue we are in the process of working around.