How often and why are these images released? Who is behind these releases?
Version increments are very infrequent. For example, V1.3 of the current "Guided Setup" way of configuring a TiVo (very similar to how you set one up "out of the box" in the USA) was released about February 2004. There was earlier V1.x versions of Guided Setup which were released a couple of months previous but these had some bugs that were ironed out and V1.3 came the standard.

From February 2004 until late January 2005 there were several advancements in both hardware and software tweaks which were released as individual patches and these were all brought together in the first release of R1.4 20050203. For those reading this that are running V1.3 GS thinking they are missing out on something by not "upgrading" to R1.4 you are not really so unless you want to start fresh then don't bother if your TiVo is happily running.

The other big important change in the new R1.4 releases is an automated hard disk imaging menu. You simply pop in the install CD and follow the menus, then remove the hard disk from your PC into the TiVo and boot to complete the installation. Compared to anything before R1.4 it's childs play now to set up a TiVo.

The new convention in releases is "R1.4" and the date in yyyymmdd format which is a departure from the old increment of the version number and when first implemented did cause some confusion but people seem to be coming to grips with it. There have been some hiccups with the new automated hard disk installer even though everyone thought things were stable. It seemed that one minor change to it to fix one simple bug has broken others but it has been ironed out now in the current release R1.4 20050524. Having said that there is one *minor* bug in the IP address reporting mail message but there is a workaround for currently installed TiVo's and I would expect another image release soon to fix this for anyone who is still yet to image a hard disk.

Stepping back in time (waaaay back in time!) we first had V2.5 of the USA software which you applied your own file patching and configuring to that *eventually* got you a PAL TiVo. After this came V3.0 version of the USA software which was configured for use in PAL areas the same fashion. The OzTiVo "Guided Setup" releases of today are still essentially built on V3.0 USA software. I set up two of my TiVo's on the old V3.0 non Guided Setup software and I really would not like to do it ever again! Sure they run pretty much like a TiVo running the current OzTiVo software but without the hours of manual configuring!

As for who is responsible for the images, that is a combined effort. Many people work behind the scenes to contribute their time in writing and refining software and others like myself who know not much about programming volunteer their time to test things. Most of the people behind the OzTiVo software do not frequent these forums but can be found on www.oztivo.com and the email group list discussion there.