Kodi

Kodi v17.1 “Krypton”

Martijn Kaijser — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 18:21:37 +0000

This is the bugfix release for v17.1 “Krypton” which contains our continuous effort to further improve the v17 release. Our team tried to tackle as much of the reported problems as possible with the limited resources we have. We do want to note that since we are just a small team some of the reported bugs might not get fixed due to lack of developers or time. As such we would certainly welcome any developer who has the ability to help us out to try and fix the bugs he or she encounters and submit it to our code base for review. We sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions.

Fixes done in this release:

Update Estuary and Estouchy with some bugfixes and improvements
Fix EDL skipping
Fix slow song smartplaylist
Several PVR fixes
Update Chorus webinterface
Fix addons not being marked broken when they are updated with broken flag
Add limiter on random songs which should prevent large memory usage on big libraries
Improve keyboard mapping during button mapping
Improve analog stick handling
Improve plugin performance when building the content list
Include RTMP inputstream add-on for Windows
Don’t close subtitle stream when switching audio
Fix replaygain for music files
Fix controllers buttons on Android
Fix music cleanup hanging on large MySQL music database
Fix use of SMB on Android on new installs
Fix possible Kodi upgrade migration hang during add-on update process
Add check in Windows installer for Service Packs and updates that Kodi needs to operate
Don’t try to read tags from internet audio streams
Add setting to disable controller rumble on notifications

A full list can be found here and here.

What’s new?

You can read up on all the v17 changes here: Kodi v17.0 “Krypton”

Krypton nightly builds

As you may have noticed we only release a new beta or release candidate once in a while that includes a list of fixes that were done since previous release. Additionally we also create these so called nightly builds specifically for Krypton that include the latest fixes that our developers have included and will end up in the next release candidate or final release. By providing these builds we hope that users who install these will help us confirm the problem was fixed or identify if we accidentally created a regression from previous builds made. These nightlies are safe to install on top of the Kodi v17 you already have installed on your device and can be found on the download page. Be sure to get these builds from the Krypton folder and not from any other.

Conclusion

Should you want to download and install this build please visit our download page. You can install these build just on top of your current Kodi installation without doing a reinstall or cleanup as we do a full migration if needed.

• Official Kodi 17 development downloads

Bug reports

Please report any problems on our forum http://forum.kodi.tv and not on the release announcement as it is not a reporting or help section. Don’t forget we also have some official tablet/phone remote controls for both Android and iOS. You can find the links to them on the download page.

Donations or getting involved

Getting involved is quite easy. Simply take the plunge and start using these 17.0 Krypton builds. If you use these builds, we encourage you to report problems with these builds on our forum first and after that, if asked, submit bugs on Trac (following this guide: How to submit a bug report). Do note that we need detailed information so we can investigate the issue. We also appreciate providing support in our Forums where you can. You can of course also follow or help promote Kodi on all available social networks. Read more on the get involved page. We are always happy to receive a donation by which you show your support and appreciation, and t-shirts and Raspberry Pi cases may still be found on the sidebar for purchase. All donations and other income goes towards the XBMC foundation and are typically used for travel to attend conferences, any necessary paperwork and legal fees, purchasing necessary hardware and licenses for developers and hopefully the yearly XBMC Foundation Developers Conference.

We are a Google Summer of Code 2017 Organization!

Nathan Betzen — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 22:10:08 +0000

We are excited to announce that Kodi has been accepted as a Google Summer of Code 2017 project! Students, as of the time of this publication, you have about 2 or 3 weeks to start thinking about project ideas.

If you are a student interested in applying, please head over to our project Ideas page and begin thinking about what you might like to hack on. Also, visit our GSOC 2017 subforum and feel free to submit ideas or just introduce yourself.

We’re ready to get going this summer and to see what ideas you come up with!

Kodi v17.1 “Krypton” Release Candidate 1

Martijn Kaijser — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 19:40:42 +0000

This is the Release Candidate for our upcoming bugfix release v17.1 “Krypton” which contains our continuous effort to further improve the v17 release. Our team will certainly try to tackle as much of the reported problems as possible with the limited resources we have. We do want to note that since we are just a small team some of the reported bugs might not get fixed due to lack of developers or time. As such we would certainly welcome any developer who has the ability to help us out to try and fix the bugs he or she encounters and submit it to our code base for review. We sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions.

Fixes done in this release candidate:

• Update Estuary and Estouchy with some bugfixes and improvements
• Fix EDL skipping
• Fix slow song smartplaylist
• Several PVR fixes
• Update Chorus webinterface
• Fix addons not being marked broken when they are updated with broken flag
• Add limiter on random songs which should prevent large memory usage on big libraries
• Improve keyboard mapping during button mapping
• Improve analog stick handling
• Improve plugin performance when building the content list
• Include RTMP inputstream add-on for Windows

A full list can be found here

What’s new?

You can read up on all the v17 changes here: Kodi v17.0 “Krypton”

Krypton nightly builds

Conclusion

• Official Kodi 17 development downloads

Bug reports

Donations or getting involved

Kodi 17.0

Kib — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 19:00:10 +0000

Team Kodi are very happy to announce the immediate availability of Kodi 17.0 (Krypton) for Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS. Krypton brings updated default user interfaces, better organisation of settings, and many under-the-hood changes on VideoPlayer, Music Library, PVR, audio on Android, and thousands of small bugfixes and improvements to stability.

The source code for Kodi 17.0 can be downloaded from our mirrors, and we expect it will not take very long before the maintainers of various Linux distributions release updated binaries. Binaries for Ubuntu can be found in our own Ubuntu PPA.

New look

Kodi’s user interfaces receive a major revision in Kodi 17.0. The new default skin Estuary has been specially designed as a 10-foot interface, while touchscreen devices have a new touch-enabled skin called Estouchy. To complete the overhaul we are now shipping Chorus2 as the default web interface. For those of you who like the previous skin, it is now available as an optional download through the add-on repository.

Audio and Video

Our video engine is undergoing a multi-phase rewrite and Kodi 17.0 delivers the next wave of changes with improvements to stability, audio/video synchronisation, refresh rate switching and decoding/encoding of video on all platforms. New inputstream add-ons extend support for streaming protocols like RTMP, MPEG-DASH, SmoothStream and NXMSL. Other new additions include hardware-accelerated DVD playback and OpenGL dithering when performing colour conversion, and Kodi on Linux can now use 3DLUT and simple ICC profiles to colour-correct displays. Audio sinks on most platforms have also been refined.

Music

Changes to the music library bring improved performance for tag scraping, support for mood and artist role tags, and increased browsing speed for larger libraries.

Live TV and PVR

Kodi 17.0 has numerous improvements to Live TV and PVR functionality. Changes start in the user interface with widgets for Recent Recordings and Last Played Channels on the home screen, and the ability to choose showing the PVR guide or Channel window when Kodi starts. The PVR user interface has seen much love. Channels can be sorted by Last Played. TV and Radio recordings are now shown in separate windows. There is a huge performance increase when browsing the guide window. Scheduling of recordings had a complete rewrite with both timers and timer rules now displayed in separate windows, and instant recording options can be customised. There are now 15+ PVR add-ons and most have been updated, including VDR VNSI, Tvheadend, HDHomeRun, Enigma2 and MythTV. Kodi now comes with support in the back-end for Digital Devices Octopus Net and asynchronous connections to back-ends which helps with connection stability.

Android

Kodi 17.0 is now standards-compliant with Android’s official Audio API and requires Android 5.0 or higher as the minimum version. DTS-HD, DTS-X, Dolby TrueHD, and Dolby ATMOS passthrough are now supported on devices that implement AudioTrack v23 or higher. Devices with firmware that does not follow this standard will not support passthrough. Support for 4K video and output and improvements to refresh rate switching and HEVC, VC-1 / WMV 9, and VP9 playback on supported hardware are the icing on the cake.

Windows

Kodi 17.0 is the first version available through the Windows Store and is now one of the most popular downloads in the store. The version in the Store wraps our normal x86 application in a UWP wrapper for installing on Windows 10. The normal installer from the download section of the website can be used on Windows 7 and 8 (and 10).

Changelog

The Kodi 17 changelog page in the wiki hosts a human-readable list of changes in Kodi 17.0 while those seeking a more technical listing can view the merged pull requests on our project’s GitHub repository.

Thanks

Thanks go out to all the developers who submitted code; whether thousands of lines to add new features or a couple of lines to fix a small bug. Thanks go out to the ecosystem of add-on and skin developers who updated or created new add-ons to use new functionality in Kodi 17.0. Thanks go out to the many beta and release candidate testers who took time to file bug reports, test fixes and assist the team with resolving issues. Finally.. Special thanks go our to our tireless team of forum moderators, and all those who spend time in our forum and enjoy being part of our community to share tips and tricks and help others.

Help!

If you experience issues please post in the General Support section of our forum. (Please be mindful of our forum rules when posting!). If you have fixes for issues please submit a pull-request with your changes to our master branch on GitHub. We also welcome users who want to help answer questions in the forum or write articles for the wiki.

Donate

To show support and appreciation for Kodi please consider making a donation or purchasing t-shirts and Raspberry Pi Flirc cases. All donations or profits go to the XBMC Foundation and are typically used for team travel to attend conferences, operating expenses, hardware and software licenses for developers, legal fees, and the annual developer conference.

Comment

Comments have been disabled to make sure the site can handle the traffic. If you’d like to comment, feel free to do so in our forum release announcement thread.

Kodi v17.0 “Krypton” Release Candidate 4

Martijn Kaijser — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 11:00:22 +0000

This is the fourth Release Candidate for our upcoming v17.0 “Krypton” which contains our continuous effort to further improve v17.0 before we make it final. Our team will certainly try to tackle as much of the reported problems as possible with the limited resources we have. We do want to note that since we are just a small team some of the reported bugs might not get fixed due to lack of developers or time. As such we would certainly welcome any developer who has the ability to help us out to try and fix the bugs he or she encounters and submit it to our code base for review. We sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions.

Fixes done in this release candidate:

• Update Estuary and Estouchy with some bugfixes and improvements
• Fix Kodi not starting on some phones running Android 7
• Revert changes that disabled plugin listing cache that which caused reduced browsing speed
• Fix the cause of favourites not refreshing
• Fix add-ons not being added to favourites if done through add-on manager
• Update our default webinterface Chorus2 with several fixes and features
• Fix possible deadlock when installing/uninstalling PVR add-ons
• Fix possible failed add-on installs on Windows with a retry
• Fix changing song ratings
• Make sure to stop playback before uninstalling a PVR add-on
• Try to handle graphics failures due to bad graphics driver on Windows
• Fix long timeout for certain audio streams

A full list can be found here

What’s new?

In our first Release Candidate announcement we’ve already covered most of the new features. Should you have missed this you can of course still read up on it here: Kodi v17.0 “Krypton” Release Candidate

Krypton nightly builds

As you may have noticed we only release a new beta or release candidate once in a while that includes a list of fixes that were done since previous release. Additionally we also create these so called nightly builds specifically for Krypton that include the latest fixes that our developers have included and will end up in the next beta, release candidate or final release. By providing these builds we hope that users who install these will help us confirm the problem was fixed or identify if we accidentally created a regression from previous builds made. These nightlies are safe to install on top of the Kodi v17 you already have installed on your device and can be found on the download page. Be sure to get these builds from the Krypton folder and not from any other.

Conclusion

• Official Kodi 17.0 development downloads

Of course we have also updated Windows Store with this latest version which will be updated in due time so please have some patience.

Bug reports

Donations or getting involved

Kodi v17.0 “Krypton” Release Candidate 3

Martijn Kaijser — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 20:41:09 +0000

Just before New Years’s day we released our first official Release Candidate which marks the final step towards the final release of v17.0. These Release Candidate builds are dedicated to gain further feedback from users who are willing to take the jump towards v17 and we sure are grateful if they do as that provides valuable information on general stability and usability. Our team will certainly try to tackle as much of the reported problems as possible with the limited resources we have. We do want to note that since we are just a small team some of the reported bugs might not get fixed due to lack of developers or time. As such we would certainly welcome any developer who has the ability to help us out to try and fix the bugs he or she encounters and submit it to our code base for review. We sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions.

Fixes done in this release candidate:

• Update Estuary with some bugfixes and improvements
• Revert change that cause video playback problems on some files
• Fix mouse not reaching right side of the screen on OSX
• Several fixes regarding general video playback
• Several fixes regarding EPG/PVR
• Several fixes and improvements regarding cmake build system
• Update to CEC 4.0.1

A full list can be found here

What’s new?

Krypton nightly builds

As you may have noticed we only release a new beta or release candidate once in a while that includes a list of fixes that were done since previous release. Additionally we also create these so called nightly builds specifically for Krypton that include the latest fixes that our developers have included and will end up in the next beta, release candidate or final release. By providing these builds we hope that users who install these will help us confirm the problem was fixed or identify if we accidentally created a regression from previous builds made. These nightlies are safe to install on top of the Kodi v17 you already have installed on your device and can be found on the download page. Be sure to get these builds from the Krypton folder and not from any other.

Conclusion

• Official Kodi 17.0 development downloads

Of course we have also updated Windows Store with this latest version which will be updated in due time so please have some patience.

Bug reports

Donations or getting involved

Kodi 18 – “Leia”

Nathan Betzen — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 04:09:35 +0000

When deciding on a code name for the release of Kodi 18, we determined to do things just a little differently this time around. Normally, when we pick a new code name, we go through the suggestion threads, gather together the top 5 or top 10 suggestions, and vote on them. We did something similar this year, compiled a huge list of names, including quite a lot of excellent ones… and then 2016 happened.

We’ve lost many important people this year, but possibly none quite so near and dear to the hearts of our team as the woman who portrayed a princess from Alderaan, a member of the Imperial Senate, a general, and a traitor. Leia wasn’t a top choice in the user suggestion threads. She wasn’t even a top ten choice. But, on the week it came time to vote, we learned of the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher, and thought there could not be a more fitting tribute than to name a version of Kodi after one of the most butt-kicking princesses in cinematic history.

As we dug deeper into this option, we considered the history of that galaxy far, far away, and realized that 2017 was to be a special year in the Star Wars universe. The 25th of May marks the 40th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope, a movie that entered theaters and changed the world. Kodi has a history of naming its releases after figures and places from sci-fi and fantasy, and Star Wars is a major… well, perhaps THE major reason why. For us, Star Wars is not just some sci-fi movie. It is one of those iconic events where everyone on the team knows either where they were when it first came out or cannot remember a time without the adventures of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and a couple of ridiculous droids.

It hurts our hearts to have lost a great woman and actress and, with her, the character she portrayed, the princess we grew up with. It feels fitting, then, to announce that Kodi 18 will be named “Leia” in honor of the late Carrie Fisher, as a tribute to one of the characters that defined an industry, and as a celebration of the whole Star Wars universe.

May the force be with you, always.

Kodi v17.0 “Krypton” Release Candidate

Martijn Kaijser — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 15:22:31 +0000

UPDATE: Due to some packaging problems for Android and initial response we had to do quick bump to RC2 to solve this. If you had downloaded and installed RC1 before 31 December (available from system information) please upgrade to the newer version.

We want to close the year 2016 with a blast and as such we are happy to announce this Release Candidate of Kodi v17.0 Krypton. This final Kodi v17.0 will be action packed with a lot of features, changes and bug fixes and we left no stone unturned. Nearly every section had at least some maintenance done to make Kodi better than it already was.

First and foremost we sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions. Now that is done lets look at the biggest changes that were done.

What’s new?

Estuary and Estouchy: next generation

Past March we announced that we had replaced the aging Confluence skin which did it’s job since 2009 as default skin. V17 will mark the new arrival of Estuary and Estouchy (touch enabled) skin as the new default skins. Many months have been put in getting these skins build from the ground up by phil65 and utilise all of the new features Kodi has to offer. During this period we also rethought on what was actually needed for skins and with this we also added features we only came up with by rebuilding this skin as we wondered why it never was able to do it in the first place. The home screen has been revamped and now utilises a smartplaylists implementation to automatically show you what probably interests you the most. We suggest you just give it a try and see for yourself. If you still prefer Confluence skin then you don’t need to worry as it’s still available from the official Kodi repository. With some help from ryanmah for the mockups, ichabod-fletchman for helping out this final version of Estuary.

At same time the touch skin Estouchy also got matched by our senior skin developer ronie to match the Estuary look.

For some more screenshots you can visit the release announcement here: Default skin: Next Gen. Regardless you’ll see when you install this new update.

Setting section has been more clear

One of the things probably most of us hate the most is going through settings and see what they do. Often are not clear what they do or just not obvious. We felt the same and we have now made a big shuffle of certain settings to group them in a better way and improve the text and help description. I’m sure it’s not perfect and things still need changing however it’s already a big step forward. Additionally we’ve put a central button in settings screen for adding new media sources that you can add to your library. To make a long story short here are some screenshots to give you an idea on how it looks. Other than that I guess you’ll just have to try for yourself. Remember to look at the bottom of the screen as that often contains hints on what a settings actually does.

PVR made easier and better

With v17 the way we handle PVR add-ons has been given a makeover as well. With these changes we hope that the threshold of getting PVR running inside Kodi has been greatly reduced. Once you configured and enabled the PVR add-on you are ready. No more additional options to enable to get going. Of course you will still need to set up a PVR backend/server first however that is outside of our scope of work. Additionally a lof work has been done to improve stability and usability to this section. Switching channels, EPG (electronic program guide) as well as setting and changing recording timers have all been greatly improved. From the user interface little has changed besides the new default skin and some settings that are moved or are now a bit more clear what they do.

Privacy policy

Your privacy is an important factor that the XBMC Foundation and Team Kodi considers in the development of all of our software and services. We are committed to being transparent and open. This Privacy Policy explains generally how we receive information about you, and what we do with that information once we have it. As such we have added this privacy policy to our website and also made it available from within Kodi itself to read.

WARNING: This of course does not mean your privacy is totally protected. In the end you are still responsible yourself for whatever you install or share. For the official Kodi repository we have a set of strict rules in place for any add-on that is added or updated and strive towards protecting the users from any harm that might come from using them. However once you decide to install any other repository or add-ons from outside our official repository you must make sure you are informed of any consequences. Do not blindly install any add-on but make sure to read up on what it does and what it might share with others. If you are not sure then take the safe route and don’t install it.

You might want to read this: Be aware what additional add-ons you install

Add-on manager changes and features

Since v10 the add-on repository has been an integral part of Kodi and has made it a breeze for expanding the capabilities and receiving updates for these add-ons and skins. Together with the skin changes we did in Estuary we certainly hope to make the experience a bit better.

Unknown sources….

First of all we added an option to warn new users that installing add-ons outside of Kodi repository could potentially bring harmful add-ons to their system. A more extensive write up (read here) explains these hazards they might get their selves into. Of course this doesn’t mean all are bad however we do feel that users should at least be warned. From now on if a user wants to install any add-on from .zip they need to acknowledge they understood the risk and enable the option to allow installation. This is a one time warning so you do not need to do this each time.

Recently installed or update

From now on you are able to see which add-ons recently updated. It might come in handy should some problems arise as you not always noticed the popup telling you an update was installed. At least now you are able to track down which one(s).

Music library

Over the years our music library handling wasn’t always the best and luckily a while ago some developers stepped up and started improving the lacking functionality and added new features. Some improvements are better tag reading and scraping. Handling of albums and artist has also been improved with the addition of adding artist role handling for music (composer, conductor, djmixer). Certain files or websites also support mood and this has now also been added so you can now select music based on certain type of mood instead of genre. With all these changes in regards to the music library and part and better tag scanning and usage a mandatory music files re-scan has to be done to extract all this information. After you upgrade and enter the music library a choice will be giving to re-scan now or later. As this re-scan can take up quite some time and resources you can answer NO and continue browsing your library. Once you exit library and re-enter you will be prompted again asking to re-scan. Once you answer YES Kodi will start scanning all your music files and extract the tag data they contain to a certain degree. As mentioned this process takes quite some time depending on the size. During this time Kodi might be somewhat slower than normal. Do note that this will not reset your library to a new state or that you will loose data. It will simply update what is available and will leave all play counts and the rest as they were.

Video Player

Since the beginning of XBMC back in the days while it was running on the XBOX there was something like DVDPlayer. As the name probably implies it was used to playback DVD discs/files. During the years this DVDPlayer was improved and patched up to stay within modern day standards of video playback expectancy. However it became clear that for the future a major overhaul and rewrite was needed to keep up and be future proof. As such the developers who did the AudioEngine in v12 picked up this job and have now transformed it into VideoPlayer. Together with some platform developers they ripped out the old DVDPlayer code, chopped it in pieces, put it in the blender, picked the needed pieces and put it back in without breaking the rest of Kodi (hopefully). This certainly wasn’t an easy job as DVDPlayer was like the bottom block of Jenga tower that needed to be replaced while still being entangled throughout the whole tower. It had it’s tentacles in parts of the code where it shouldn’t have been in the first place. Probably over a year ago work started on getting this untangled and made ready to be replaced by the new implementation.

Well now you might wonder what does this all mean? Well a whole lot and it will probably not be as clear when using Kodi as a normal user. From a developers side it means a lot as the code is now more contained in it’s own section which makes maintenance a whole lot easier. As for the users here are some things they will notice already or in the future.

Video stream selection

You might already know of the possibility where you can select the audio track of a movie like different languages or quality. With video stream selection you are now able to select a different video stream should that be available. Although not widely used concert DVDs are certainly a good example where you are able to select a different camera angle for watching the concert. Although this sounds like a niche feature it’s certainly important for the next feature we will bring up.

Input stream add-ons

The work done with VideoPlayer has already gained one of the most exciting new features we can think of which is Input Stream add-ons. This enables possibility of native written add-ons can now handle part of the video playback selection and just hand over the video stream to Kodi. A perfect example of this is DASH (Dynamic Adaptive STreaming over HTTP) which is something YouTube uses to give you the different video qualities depending on network speed. With Input Stream add-ons we can now have this capability as separate add-on instead of having this in the Kodi core. Here comes the video stream selection into play as you might want to select a different quality or language if made available. We’re happy to say that by default we ship the MPD add-on that handles the DASH audio/video stream selection standard and hands over the results to Kodi. The available YouTube add-on in Kodi repository doesn’t handle this feature as of yet however I’m sure it will be updated somewhere in the future.

More features will come from this complete VideoPlayer rework and we will be sure to inform you once they have been added. For now we will try to make current features work to their fullest potential.

Android

Android 5.0 Lollipop (or later) as minimum

Over the years the Android platform started to mature and catch up to the other platforms regarding capabilities. This also means that we can drop all the custom code we had to add in the beginning to get Kodi running at all as that’s now becoming obsolete. One of those from back in the days was libStageFright which we dropped in a previous release and was replaced by the standard MediaCodec from Android. With v17 we have started to clean up all the old implementations which sadly also means we had to set the minimum Android version to at least 5.0 Lollipop. Don’t worry you can keep using Kodi v16 on all previous Android versions however you just can upgrade to a newer Kodi version. Certain devices will now also support switching the Kodi interface resolution itself so you could potentially set Kodi in 4K skin resolution.

Improved audio support

As you may have read several times is that the Android part of Kodi is currently low on development. It’s the platform with the largest user base but somehow there don’t seem to be a lot of developers around that can work on Kodi for that platform. Since Kodi isn’t the standard JAVA app like the million other out there working on it is certainly a challenge. One of the improvements we did manage to get added is what most of you have been waiting for and that is HD audio passthrough capabilities. Although we had a proof of concept for v16 it wasn’t in a state where the team was comfortable adding it that late in release cycle. However for v17 we can now tell you that passthrough for DTS, DTS-HD, DTS-X, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby ATMOS should all be working if your device and attached TV/AVR supports this. During the past months however we did find some limitations in the way Google had implemented audio passthrough. After contacting Google and explaining the problems we worked together towards a good alternative which was adding IEC61937 as passthrough option. This standard is something we already used on other platforms like Windows, Linux, OSX and iOS and has proven to be exactly what was needed for good audio support. As such we are happy to say that starting with Android Nougat we will fully use this standard. Devices running Lollipop or Marshmallow will use the older standard method.

Welcome to Android MediaCodec standards only

One of the last custom implementation we had was Amlogic related code which was the device were it all started with Kodi on Android. We had to resolve to this custom implementation back then to acces certain hardware parts which Android officially couldn’t yet. Due to this legacy and how we had things implemented we couldn’t switch this off just yet in past releases. Over the past months with the help of MINIX we have been working closely with the Amlogic to get everything in order and we can say Android Marshmallow and onward will have the best experience possible for devices containing these chipsets. Amlogic even went as far as adding the IEC61937 audio passthrough back into Android Marshmallow which normally is only available since Android Nougat. We would certainly like to thank Amlogic and MINIX for going to this extend of cooperation making the experience and support of Kodi on Android a bit better. Now Amlogic has done their part on proving a good bases it’s up to manufacturers and vendors to supply updates for their devices over coming months. We are certain that manufacturers with good support will send out these updates as soon as they are ready. What does this mean for you regular users? Mostly we kept the proper support for devices running Android 5 Lollipop and you shouldn’t notice any real difference. Should your device receive the newer Android 6 Marshmallow you will gain these improvements mentioned above. For devices using other chipsets we don’t really know but we are hoping they will follow.

Windows Store

In case you missed the big news some time ago, Kodi got added to the Windows Store as a Desktop Bridge UWP app. It is still the same Kodi version you are used to use, without any limitations. Although it is still possible (and always will be) to download and install Kodi from our website, it is now also possible for Windows 10 users to download and install Kodi from the Windows Store. This brings a few benefits, such as automatic updating. The Windows Store application uses the same userdata as the version from our website so you can switch between the two versions without issues.

NOTE: This also means that if you are currently running Kodi v16 and want to try out the Windows Store version, your Kodi databases and add-ons will be upgraded to the v17 versions. You might want to make a backup of the userdata before! You can read the full announcement here: Kodi goes Windows Store

Game controller add-on

In the past it has always been a pain to configure game controllers within Kodi. There were some XML files people could download and copy to a certain location. This has now been solved by making them add-ons (like almost everything else) which you can install with a click of a button. This rework of the controllers was needed for retro gaming feature which may land somewhere in the future. No sadly that doesn’t mean retro gaming will be available in v17 but we keep our hopes up for the future.

3dlut and simple ICC linking support for color correction

Developer laurimyllari added a ColorManager class that supports loading madVR 3DLUT files, and loading ICC display profiles, creating source profiles and linking them. Users can use this to correct their display response with a 3DLUT file, or emulate other displays (with whitepoint, primaries and gamma selectable at runtime) with an ICC profile of their own display. The ICC profile linking is still work in progress, but is functional and shows what can be done with it.

A new default web interface called Chorus2

Kodi has many hidden secrets and even team members don’t know the full potential it packs. One of those features you might not know is that Kodi also has a web-interface from which you can browse your library and start playback directly on your Kodi device. It’s something we’ve never really promoted that it was available and I’m not really sure why. However the past few years not much was changed to to it and it kinda fell into decay with only minor fixes done to keep it kind of functional. For Kodi v17 this has been radically changed as we have packaged up a brand new default web-interface called Chorus2.

For some screenshot you can visit the release announcement here: A new webinterface called Chorus2. Regardless you’ll see when you install this new update.

Krypton nightly builds

As you may have noticed we only release a new release candidate once in a while that includes a list of fixes that were done since previous release. Additionally we also create these so called nightly builds specifically for Krypton that include the latest fixes that our developers have included and will end up in the next release candidate, final release or possible bug fix releases. By providing these builds we hope that users who install these will help us confirm the problem was fixed or identify if we accidentally created a regression from previous builds made. These nightlies are safe to install on top of any Kodi v17 you already have installed on your device and can be found on the download page. Be sure to get these builds from the Krypton folder and not from any other.

Conclusion

As previously noted, this is only a small summary of all the improvements in Kodi 17. For more, see the Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 posts. Should you want to download and install this build please visit our download page. You can install these build just on top of your current Kodi installation without doing a reinstall or cleanup as we do a full migration if needed.

• Official Kodi 17.0 development downloads

Of course we have also updated Windows Store with this latest version.

Bug reports

Donations or getting involved

Kodi v17 “Krypton” The last Beta 7

Martijn Kaijser — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 10:19:51 +0000

It’s almost Christmas and as such we wanted to bring you the last Beta version of Kodi 17. This means we have good hopes we have squashed the biggest and known issues and up next we will go to Release Candidates which in the end will result in the final release. However let’s not get ahead of ourselves and first gather some more feedback on testing this Beta 7 version. The changes for this seventh an last beta are the result of the continuous effort from the developers, either from inside the team or outside to get v17 into final release shape. We sure would like to thank every one involved with either development, testing or simply helping out others with answering their questions.

Fixes done in this Beta 7:

• Update Estuary and Estouchy skin with some bugfixes
• Enable IEC61937 audio passthrough support on Android for DTS-HD, TrueHD, DTS:X and ATMOS in case the Android version supports this
• Fix PVR channel OSD display conditions
• Fix possible crash in PVR EPG
• Fix multiple selection in file browser
• Fix duplicate context menu for PVR recordings
• Fix wrong window size on OSX
• Fix problem on Windows that currently in use skins couldn’t be updated
• Further improvement of cmake build system
• Various other improvements and fixes

A full list can be found here

What’s new?

In general nothing really as this was just about bugfixing and further finalising our new buildsystem.

Estuary and Estouchy: next generation

Past March we announced that v17 would feature a brand new default skin called Estuary and since then it has been included in every build we have released. During this period our developers kept improving on how it looked, behaved and made use of the latest features that got included from what is shaping up to be the final release of v17. Since more and more users also started to use these development builds we started to receive a lot of feedback, where most was positive there was also some negative or at least constructive comments. As we are not deaf to these comments and try to create the best experience, our skin developer phil65 went back to the drawing board and rethought on how to incorporate this feedback into wat should become the final skin. With some help from ryanmah for the mockups, ichabod-fletchman for helping out this didn’t resulted in a total rewrite but simply reworking some parts of how the skin looks and behaves. The underlying skin code still remains the same for a very large part except for the parts where a smarter way of doing this magic was found. The visual top layer what you will see should still feel quite familiar if you have used any past v17 builds as not everything was redone.

At same time the touch skin Estouchy also got matched by our senior skin developer ronie to match the Estuary look.

For some screenshot you can visit the release announcement here: Default skin: Next Gen. Regardless you’ll see when you install this new update.

A new default web interface called Chorus2

For some screenshot you can visit the release announcement here: A new webinterface called Chorus2. Regardless you’ll see when you install this new update.

Krypton nightly builds

As you may have noticed we only release a new beta or release candidate once in a while that includes a list of fixes that were done since previous release. Additionally we also create these so called nightly builds specifically for Krypton that include the latest fixes that our developers have included and will end up in the next beta, release candidate or final release. By providing these builds we hope that users who install these will help us confirm the problem was fixed or identify if we accidentally created a regression from previous builds made. These nightlies are safe to install on top of the Kodi v17 you already have installed on your device and can be found on the download page. Be sure to get these builds from the Krypton folder and not from any other.

Conclusion

• Official Kodi 17.0 development downloads

Of course we have also updated Windows Store with this latest version.

Bug reports

Donations or getting involved

Plex Add-on for Kodi

Keith Herrington — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 20:00:06 +0000

By now, you’ve probably heard that Plex has brought their experience to the Kodi platform, and now it’s finally in the repo!

In case you didn’t know, Plex is a great way to organize and consume media on nearly any smart device you already have. Plex Media Server walks you through how to setup Plex easily. Once you are set up, you can also share your server with friends and they can share with you as well. Full media togetherness!

Check them out at: plex.tv and here’s a quick start guide.

Plex is the leader in this space, so we were excited when we met them at CES last year. They immediately mentioned the possibility of bringing the Plex experience to Kodi since they considered this something both of our communities could benefit from and were willing to dedicate some resources to bring this opportunity to life.

This add-on leverages Kodi’s immense work in getting the most possible out of the hardware with the ease of use of Plex. It allows the user to access Plex from a fully configured Kodi setup, with the exact same experience across all Kodi supported devices.

When building this add-on, one of the major components discussed was to bring the Plex UI to Kodi. Everyone worked at making the experience as fluid as possible to make sure every type of user can feel comfortable, if they’ve used any other Plex apps before.

Plex for Kodi brings a truly best-in-class Plex experience to our open source platform. While very functional, this is a beta release and there is still work to do, namely bringing Plex Companion (which allows casting and the remote on the mobile app to work) and adding some other features that are highlighted here.

Note: It could take up to 24 hours for the add-on to be available to everyone. If you don’t see it immediately, you can try a force refresh on the repo, or just download the .zip file before in the forum for the time being.

Currently in Plex Pass for testing and bug fixing, the intention is for the Plex for Kodi add-on to be available to everyone as soon as we run out of planned features and don’t see any major bugs. The code is on GitHub and we encourage others to take a look and please send a Pull Request if what you’ve added is beneficial to everyone. Can’t promise it will get into the add-on, but we’re excited to see what the community can come up with and we appreciate the contribution.

Please share your feedback on their forum, which is accessible for Plex Pass users:

https://forums.plex.tv/categories/plex-for-kodi

This project truly showcases the power of the Kodi add-on ecosystem and how far you can take customizability to make the experience as close to native as possible. ruuk did a truly amazing job building this for Plex and the Kodi Team is proud of this collaboration.

If you’re a commercial entity who is interested in having an add-on built, please reach out to us at interest-at-kodi-dot-tv and we can help connect you to the right people to help bring your idea to life.