Tech Shakes: #kodi

Showing posts with label #kodi. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - Beta 4

We hereby present you the forth Beta build of Kodi v18 as we are heading towards the final release. Since we are now in Beta stage our focus will be on solving bugs and possible usability problems. So far it has been proven to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it's not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

Currently included

A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be update along the way. From now on all v18 releases will not contain any big new features as we are focussed on bug fixing only.

Most notable changes to mention in Beta 4:

Finally implemented binary repository for Android, OSX and Windows
Further improve controller handling
Fix playback of files in playlists that have mixed content of audio and video
Fix possible crash on exit
Bump NFS library to 3.0
Various other code improvements and cleanups

Of course there are several more changes which are listed on our github repository found here: Beta4 changes.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

In general the whole stability has been improved quite a lot. The times you still get glitches or occasional crashes haven been reduced due to just ripping out not so well coded parts and replaced with a more structured design and standard. Not that the old code was bad however over time new insights were gained and having newer code standards just make it better. Untangling all parts or components and make them behave better next to each other has been one of the biggest efforts done so far.

Current available skins

Due to changes in how Kodi works skins need to be updated for each release. As of this moment we have the following ones have been update by their developers and are readily available from our repository.

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

Python 2 & 3 compatibility will be enforced

Currently, Kodi includes the Python 2.7 interpreter to run addons written in Python programming language. However, Python 3 was released almost 10 years ago and the matter of implementing the Python 3 interpreter in Kodi has been brought up on the Kodi forum several times. Now, thanks to a successful GSOC 2017 project, we have a working Python 3.6 interpreter for Kodi, and on the latest DevCon 2017 in Prague Team Kodi decided that it’s time to move on and migrate Python addon subsystem to Python 3. There are several reasons for that:

Python 2 End of Life is planned for 2020.
Python 3 is mature enough and more and more Python libraries either convert their codebase to Python 3-compatible or drop Python 2 support completely (Django is the most notable example).
Most current Python books, tutorials and courses are focused on Python 3.
Python 2 is not actively developed. It receives only security patches while Python 3 gets all the cool new features with every minor version.

However, Python 3 is not backward-compatible with the 2nd version so some transition process is required. Currently the plan is the following:

Kodi 19 (M*) will be released with Python 3 interpreter for running Python-based addons.
After the release of Kodi 18 (Leia) only addons that are compatible with both Python 2 and 3 will be accepted to the official addon repository. Also, Python 3-only addons will be accepted to the repositories for Kodi 19 (M*) and above.
Addon developers are highly encouraged to convert their addons to Python 2/3-compatible so that after the release of Kodi 19 (M*) we will have enough addons that work with the new version.
Test builds based on Kodi 18 with the Python 3 interpreter will be provided continuously so addon developers can test their addons for compatibility with Python 3. Test builds for Windows are already available for downloading from here and test builds for Ubuntu can be obtained from this PPA.
One the v18 version has been branched off for final release the nightlies will become Python 3 only while the release builds will still be Python 2.

Writing Python code that is compatible with both 2 and 3 versions is totally possible and the “big” Python world has been doing it for years since the release of Python 3.0. There are a number of tools and best practices developed to simplify this process. Please read this Kodi Wiki article for more information and technical details about the migration process. Also a special Wiki section has been created that will be updated with new information. You can post questions about converting your addon code to Python 3-compatible or share your experience in “Python 3 migration” subforum on the official Kodi forum.

Binary repository

We can now finally say binary repostory has been finalised for Android, OSX and Windows and are happy to say we can finally split off the binary add-ons from our main Kodi installer which reduces it to half the normal size. For users this means that as already mentioned the installer is much smaller and the Kodi version they get is just enough to get started. Once they decide to get extra functionality like a using PVR they simply go to the repository and only install what they need unlike now where we preinstall them all. Next is the fact that for example a PVR add-on received some fixes you don't have to wait till we release a new Kodi version. Just like Python and Skin add-ons you will just received the updated PVR add-on and can enjoy the improvement straight away.

Read more here Kodi v18 - Binary add-ons repository

The story continues

Although we don’t really have a clear future plan or clear cut goals (except making a great media center) we would welcome any developer who wants to spend time on getting Kodi better in every way. Either improving the core code to newer standards, fixing bugs or implementing a new feature we haven’t thought of. Compared to years ago the code has become better to understand and follow for newcomers to get started. Once we get something written down of certain to reach goals we will certainly share them.

A great improvement has been made on the documentation that explains how to compile and work on the core code for Kodi. We highly recommend to read the article Kodi's GitHub codebase new face and better documentation.

Release time

Since we now started the Beta cycle a final release will be on the near horizon. When the final release will actually be is yet unknown as it all depends on the stability now more people will start using the v18 builds.

That’s about it for now and we’ll go back at improving this upcoming v18 release. Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day as well as nightly version. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several tens of thousands users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “pre release” tab. For Android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.

Go to the Official download page and choose the platform of choice and you will find these builds under the pre release tab.

If you do appreciate our work feel free to give a small donation so we can continue our effort. Just find the big "Donate" button at the top of the website.

May the force be with you…..

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Kodi v18 - Binary add-ons repository

For many years our developers have been working getting the Kodi code in component specific parts. In that effort some components have been split off in such a way they are actually separate from Kodi itself and can be installed at any point in time. We have already been using such components for years and we call these add-ons and the ones using Python programming language have been inside a repositoryy for quite some time. Also the skins you can install to give Kodi a different looks and feel are add-ons. Now the big difference is that the Python and Skin add-ons usually don't really care what operating system they run and install on as they are platform agnostic. With the binary add-ons however one of the biggest problems is we have to pre compile these for a specific operating system and some cases also the OS version. They usually consist of C++ code and you cannot simply compile it for one platform and use it on another platform. Added to the fact is that they are tied to a specific Kodi version because of certain functions used as well which make it quite the logistical nightmare how to distribute them for each Kodi version per platform.

For the past years you of course have already been using them as most screensavers and visualizations and all PVR clients are in fact binary add-ons. To not halt the work on splitting them off from our code because we simply compiled them and then put them in the same installer package as Kodi itself. The logistic part something we put on hold would worry about in the future however was always considered to when work progressed. For the past years this was not an issue cause the ones we included were quite small in size and there was no real pressure to get the logistic part working. However with Kodi v18 a completely new feature was finally merged after years of work that made the binary repository a high priority. For RetroPlayer which is a feature that lets you play old gameroms using emulators the size of the installer package would grow considerably and double in size. To play a gamerom you need emulators and each game console has one if not multiple emulators. Counting them up there would be more than 80 emulators to compile each time we created an installer package and that takes quite some compile time for something that might not always change. Now again add the fact that say these 80 emulators (plus the 70 or so we already had) need to be compiled for all the platforms we support and then for each Kodi version you can imagine this needs some clever thinking to prevent clashes and prevent the add-on to be installed on the wrong platform. We always had a certain idea how we should solve this but it never really was time to get that done until now. Not only the compiling had to be sorted however there's also the part of putting them on our server(s) and letting each Kodi client know there's a new version available for that specific platform it is installed on.

We can now finally say all this has been finalised and are happy to say we can finally split off the binary add-ons from our main Kodi installer which reduces it to half the normal size. For users this means that as already mentioned the installer is much smaller and the Kodi version they get is just enough to get started. Once they decide to get extra functionality like a using PVR they simply go to the repository and only install what they need unlike now where we preinstall them all. Next is the fact that for example a PVR add-on received some fixes you don't have to wait till we release a new Kodi version. Just like Python and Skin add-ons you will just received the updated PVR add-on and can enjoy the improvement straight away.

Binary repositort is currently available for Android, OSX and Windows. For Linux you still have to use the PPA and iOS and UWP will continue to include the binary add-ons in the installer because of platform limitations and for now nothing changes.

Installing

Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day as well as nightly version. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several tens of thousands users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “pre release” tab. For Android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.

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Saturday, October 13, 2018

Kodi 19 M***** - Code name suggestion

Since the dawn of time, or at least since 2008 each released version has received a code name next to the version number. Giving each development iteration a code name in a certain category is kind of a tradition that is not only applicable for software but also for hardware. Google does so for Android and Intel also names their chips. Who are we to break this tradition and as such we follow in their steps with a theme that started out with mythical places or names.

With Kodi v18 Leia heading towards final release (currently in Beta stage) we’ll need a new code name that will be added to v19 which our developers will be working on in due time. Don’t worry we’ll still look after any bug that might pop up in Leia and try to fix it first.

History

Below are the code names we have used in the past to give you an idea.

Atlantis
8.10 (15 November 2008)

Babylon
9.04 Babylon (6 May 2009)

Camelot
9.11 Camelot (24 December 2009)

Dharma
10.0 (18 December 2010)
10.1 (10 March 2011)

Eden
11.0 Eden (24 March 2012)

Frodo
12.0 (9 January 2013)
12.1 (18 March 2013)
12.2 (3 May 2013)
12.3 (24 December 2013)

Gotham
13.0 (4 May 2014)
13.1 (5 June 2014)
13.2 (17 August 2014)

Helix
14.0 (23 December 2014)
14.1 (1 February 2015)
14.2 (28 March 2015)

Isengard
15.0 (21 July 2015)
15.1 (16 August 2015)
15.2 (19 October 2015)

Jarvis
16.0 (21 February 2016)
16.1 (24 April 2016)

Krypton
17.0 (4 February 2017)
17.1 (23 March 2017)
17.2 (21 May 2017)
17.3 (24 May 2017)
17.4 (22 August 2017)
17.5 (24 October 2017)
17.6 (15 November 2017)

Leia
18.0 (Soon)

M******
19.0 (In a far distant future….)

As you can see we now arrived at the next version that will start with the letter M. We thought it might be a good idea to ask the users to send in suggestions on what the next code name should be. You can post your suggestions on our forum: Kodi v19 Name Suggestion. So up to you to suggest a great code name that will be added to Kodi v19. The team will take all suggestions in consideration and picks the most appropriate.

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Thursday, October 4, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - Beta 3

We hereby present you the third Beta build of Kodi v18 as we are heading towards the final release. Since we are now in Beta stage our focus will be on solving bugs and possible usability problems. So far it has been proven to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it's not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

Currently included

Most notable fixes to mention in Beta 3:

Fix slow browsing in library that was a regression added in Beta 2
Updated button maps for controllers that changed Beta 2
Improved playback on Android regarding video and DTS-HD audio
Revert changes for smooth video on Windows that caused issues
Various other fixes regarding video playback

Of course there are several more changes which are listed on our github repository found here: Beta3 changes.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

Current available skins

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

Python 2 & 3 compatibility will be enforced

Python 2 End of Life is planned for 2020.
Python 3 is mature enough and more and more Python libraries either convert their codebase to Python 3-compatible or drop Python 2 support completely (Django is the most notable example).
Most current Python books, tutorials and courses are focused on Python 3.
Python 2 is not actively developed. It receives only security patches while Python 3 gets all the cool new features with every minor version.

However, Python 3 is not backward-compatible with the 2nd version so some transition process is required. Currently the plan is the following:

Kodi 19 (M*) will be released with Python 3 interpreter for running Python-based addons.
After the release of Kodi 18 (Leia) only addons that are compatible with both Python 2 and 3 will be accepted to the official addon repository. Also, Python 3-only addons will be accepted to the repositories for Kodi 19 (M*) and above.
Addon developers are highly encouraged to convert their addons to Python 2/3-compatible so that after the release of Kodi 19 (M*) we will have enough addons that work with the new version.
Test builds based on Kodi 18 with the Python 3 interpreter will be provided continuously so addon developers can test their addons for compatibility with Python 3. Test builds for Windows are already available for downloading from here and test builds for Ubuntu can be obtained from this PPA.
One the v18 version has been branched off for final release the nightlies will become Python 3 only while the release builds will still be Python 2.

A new main menu item

As some of you have seen a new menu item has appeared on the main menu. We will expand more on what this means in a future article.

The story continues

Release time

May the force be with you…..

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Monday, October 1, 2018

Devcon 2018 - Sofia - Part III

One more day, with enough content to warrant a separate blog post - partly because people are still here for the most part, partly because of new stuff that's been added to the agenda as we've gone along, and partly because of the topics that, despite our best efforts, managed to escape from previous days.

We began the day with a broad retrospective of the past year: for each person, what went well in the past twelve months, what could have been improved. As you might expect, we covered far too many topics to cover here, spanning as they did nearly every aspect of people, process and technology. However, it was a useful conversation that gave time to both be proud of the positive while reflecting on where we still need to focus more effort. We'll work through and digest everything that was said and perhaps come back to it as a separate, future post, as the conversation will help shape where we go next.

Next up, lrusak took us through his experiences and presentation at both FOSDEM (Brussels) and Linaro Connect (Vancouver) this year. His talk was mainly aimed at shifting from vendor-specific or closed code (kernel and blob dependencies) to more universal, open source methods, specifically around windowing and rendering on embedded Linux (SoC) platforms such as Allwinner, Broadcom and Qualcomm. As well as simplifying our core code and removing the need for maintenance and use of platform-specific patches, this also has the potential to deliver performance advantages and broader platform coverage. Overall, there are some real benefits once we can tap into specific libraries via standardised kernel calls rather than depend on userspace code that's in turn reliant on monolithic, all-purpose blobs that may include a whole load of code that simply isn't needed for Kodi.

We discussed Kodi "remixes" - forks, feature branches, JeOS distributions, and similar variations - and how they link back to our trademark policy and support overheads: what's allowed, what can we tolerate, what can we manage, how does it appear to our users. This is an area full of opinion and interpretation, rapidly wandering into genuine legal implications. While this is something we really don't want to have to worry about, it's something we must keep aware of, as historical experience has demonstrated. As such, we'll be revisiting aspects of our practices to ensure that we protect Kodi while, at the same time, embracing the broader community where we can see that there's positive intent and genuine common benefit.

lrusak then returned to the stage to give an update on LibreELEC. That team continues to streamline everything, reducing the maintenance overhead, slimming down the underlying OS overhead, and aligning the user experience more and more closely with core Kodi. He discussed some potential architectural changes that flow out of this goal: future platform support, what libraries could be removed and why (no longer supported or just not needed), what could perhaps be moved upstream so that it becomes part of Kodi and thus not some separate facet of LibreELEC.

And that's it for day three. Thanks to everyone for their participation, and thanks to the entire community for making Kodi what it is.

One final comment as we close: we really need to offer very many thanks to Roza Zdravkova, who's been invaluable as our local eyes throughout this DevCon. From helping with transport to pointing out where to go and what to do, she was fundamental to the event's success. So, "thank you" from the team!

So... that's it for DevCon 2018. Time to turn to a bit of hacking and development before all going our separate ways once more.

Tags:

DevCon

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Sunday, September 30, 2018

Devcon 2018 - Sofia - Part II

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night (delete as appropriate - we're a global community). The world has turned once more, the sun has crawled into the sky, and we're back in the room.

Nate began the day with an update on the Foundation's financial status: income, expenditure, bank balance, sponsorships and revenue sources. The good news is that we're financially stable, but the bad is that we're never going to be rich. Damn this volunteering thing, it's almost like everyone does this for free. Oh, wait...

Next up, garbear took to the stage to talk about the upcoming (and long-anticipated!) RetroPlayer. This is already available in the 18.x "Leia" builds, so you can try it now if you like. As well as a demo to the team, the presentation covered how we're addressing controller topology (including hubbing and mapping), user interface options, configuration, potential for user profiles, binary add-on repository structure, and some potential future features.

Martijn next took us through our current user statistics. Because we do no user tracking, it's always been difficult to get any real numbers, so we're reliant on partial data: Play Store active user counts, Microsoft app store figures, what we see hitting our repos for e.g. scraper or other add-on downloads. We probably have c. 80 million downloads and c. 30 million recently-active users across all platforms and versions - including some active installations on every release since 13.x "Gotham". This presentation also led into a conversation about release management, specifically, the intended schedule for the upcoming 18.x "Leia" release plus very early timing plans for 19.x "M*".

The next presentation was by kib, giving us an update on all things related to the Kodi infrastructure - build servers, download servers, web hosting, caching. He took us through upgrades to the Windows build system, wiki software upgrade, https implementation, the Kodi paste site, LXD containerisation, OS reinstallation and upgrades, changes to mirror up/down detection, CloudFlare, and more.

Finally, a1rwulf rounded out the day by talking about the Kodi databases: the basic architecture, current limitations, and potential changes that we need to consider as new features are introduced.

A shortened day today, with a couple of topics kicked into Sunday for a variety of reasons. Watch this space for an update on those, as we'll add them in due course, either as an update to this post or as a separate one, depending on content.

Tags:

DevCon

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Saturday, September 29, 2018

Devcon 2018 - Sofia - Part I

What, a year already? Yup, twelve months have passed, we're all a year older, the world is still mad, and we're once again sitting in an overly-warm, windowless, anonymous conference room, discussing everyone's favourite media software while wondering where the coffee is. Welcome to DevCon 2018, coming to you this year from Sofia/Со́фия, the capital city of the beautiful Balkan nation of Bulgaria.

So: Team Kodi Assemble!

We hit the ground running this morning. Mixed in with initial logistics, introductions, and the annual battle with AV and hotel wifi, keith led a conversation about github, and how we could perhaps better use it to track code and project issues. We currently use trac for bugs, which presents more than a few challenges to both casual users and the team; we could also potentially use github for bug reporting/allocation instead, and also use the associated project tracking to also keep better notes of e.g. press conversations, Foundation issues, and similar.

We continued into a conversation about conferences - which are most appropriate, how do we best cover them, what and where, how do we get most benefit. More later on this year's conference experiences.

Martijn then talked about the move from Python 2 to Python 3: approach, milestones, timeline. Python 2 is EOL in 2020, so this is becoming a more urgent task. The intention is to combine this into the normal Kodi rolling release schedule, so expect a significant focus on Python 3 readiness and enforcement as we move past 18 (Leia) and on to 19 (M). If you're an addon developer, specifically, then it's time to pay attention to this as "later" is rapidly becoming "now" - everyone has had ten years to think about this, after all!

The big challenge is how we encourage developers to migrate while not inconveniencing or irritating users. This is a significant change, and some things are likely to break. Blog post here.

We next moved to conduct and standards - not because we believe there are specific problems, but more because it's generally good practice to have some expectations regarding behaviour of team members and contributors: if you follow the news, you won't have missed some of the headlines around what can happen when people go beyond constructive disagreement and move into personal attacks, particularly when social media or public discourse is involved. As such, we're putting in place some clearer ground rules and management policies around our own behaviour, just as we have done around the standards we expect from our forum contributors.

The conversation then moved on to engagement and communication - how we keep people informed, updated, involved. Kodi is a big project, with very many moving parts, and nearly as many ways to interact. That's not just about the code, but it's Foundation stuff, user support, strategy, wiki, external conversations, release management: keeping on top of all of these is undoubtedly a challenge. This is very much an internal Team conversation, but one that we'll continue to progress, as even orientation to the project can potentially be a barrier to new contributors.

Moving on, Martijn led a conversation around issue tracking - trac vs github. While we currently use an internal trac system, and it has some genuine benefits, it's neither the most usable nor maintanable of systems. By contrast, hosting and managing the issues on (public) github means they're more closely linked with code and commits, so we'd get some significant advantages there that should more than offset what we'd be missing. If we do make this change, which is likely, it won't happen overnight, as we've much to decide: what to do with old (and maybe no-longer-valid) bug reports, what labelling/tagging structure we'd need, what systems we'd need to have in place to ensure that we receive "complete" reports going forward, and so on. More to come.

Related to this - because github is, in general, a more public platform than trac - we had a conversation about embracing this as a benefit and how we become more open. Again, Kodi is a hugely-complex project and is very daunting to a potential contributor: where to start? Who to talk to? How to get help? Who are all these people, anyway?? So, many thoughts: github conversations, GSoC experiences, public discussion channels, updated build/"getting started" documentation, code documentation/architecture. If you're a potential developer and feel like you don't know where to begin, please, contact a member of the team to help us address any concerns you have. We can always use some more help, particularly on the features and multiple platform support that everyone values so much.

Returning to a topic introduced earlier in the day, garbear, Razze and yol took the floor to report back on their attendance at VDD (Video Dev Days) earlier this month (also attended by Martijn and RomanVM). This was also touched on in a previous blog post. Sessions included AV1 CODEC development, including the dav1d decoder and rav1e encoder; the x265 HEVC encoder; VLC 4.0 plans and features; a series of short "lightning talks" on various AV-related topics; and, of course, many networking opportunities across a common community of interest (website hosting and load balancing, request handling/download management, breakouts on FFMpeg, programming languages...). Useful bridges built with like-minded people, which is ultimately good for the whole open source multimedia landscape.

As the day started to draw to a close, mohit-0212, one of our 2018 GSoC students, gave a presentation on his project around episode intro/outro detection. The goal of this project is to improve the user experience by editing out the endless theme tunes and credits you get, particularly when binge-watching a box set. This involves searching for common scene transition points across multiple episodes of a series, and using hashing algorithms on the video stream to work out when the likely sections begin and end. In the first implementation, then, the detection is run and then the user is presented with a "skip" button as a the section begins. Fully-automated skipping would perhaps be a later addition, but more work is needed yet on the code, detection of "edge cases", and UI, and similar.

Finally, natethomas and the other Foundation board members spent some time talking about the board responsibilities: who, what, how, why. The XBMC Foundation has a legal status, and thus there are ongoing administrative, legal and financial activities around our overall direction as a project, non-profit status, trademarks, incorporation status, revenues from sponsorship and donations, approval of expenditure, taxes, PR/press, GSoC admin, Foundation membership and bylaws, internal policies, and any formal legal communications as required.

And that's it for day one. Time to head out into the fading evening light before reconvening in the morning.

Tags:

DevCon

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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Attending VDD 2018 - The 10th Videolan developer days

Since the opensource commity is open as the name implies we as Team Kodi at times also attend other conferences. One of those is VDD which is hosted by the Videolan team which you might know from the VLC player. During the conference many developers related to their software projects are invited to attend and join in on presentation and techincal discussions. The Kodi project is in that regards related we are also in the multimedia "business" and share a similar vision. Next to that we use the same undelying opensource projects like FFMpeg and code libraries made by Vidolan which you use for DVD and Bluray.

For us it started on Thursday 20 September 2018 when we arrrived in Paris where their 10th conference took place. During the day we walked a bit throuw Paris and in the evening we enjoyed some beers and prepared for the next day which was the community bonding day.

So during Friday we gathered in the morning to be given the assignement to from small groups and start a sort of scavenger hunt throughout Paris. The goal was to find the answer which would form an URL and in the mean time you would encouraged to make awesome pictures using the VLC hats and in the end the best team received some nice price. Although it was quite an exhausting day it was for sure great fun and a good way to see Paris. Saturday there were several very interesting talks on a variety of topics.

and after that we went to have a boat tour on the Seine to have some more drinks and food and the winners of the scavenger hunt were announced. Sadly our groups didn't win :(

Sunday was day of short lightning talks in the morning and in the afternoon you were free to meet up and have small discussion on whatever topic.Although this is just a very short summary of the past days it had quite a lot of content and was great to meet up with other developers. We would to thank the Videolan organisation for making this possible.

Next up is our own Kodi Devcon in the city Sofia (Bulgaria).

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Monday, September 10, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - Beta 2

We hereby present you the second Beta build of Kodi v18 as we are heading towards the final release. Since we are now in Beta stage our focus will be on solving bugs and possible usability problems. So far it has been proven to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it's not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

Currently included

Most notable fixes to mention in Beta 2 are EPG and PVR interface optimisations and Live TV related fixes. Further more there are some improvements regarding Bluray playback and menus. Of course there are several more changes which are listed on our github reposity found here: Beta2 changes.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

Current available skins

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

The wiki pages

One of the best sources of information next to our forum for asking question and finding answers is the Kodi wiki pages. With each release certain aspects of the software change and this of course needs to be reflected on the official wiki pages. Several team members and regular users spend quite some time updating and tweaking these pages to become a helpfull one stop place for all information.

The V18 Leia t-shirt

Inspired by the galaxy far, far away theme, our resident artist Sam went above and beyond and designed perhaps the coolest Kodi announce video of all time.

We loved his work so much that we're modeling the Kodi 18 shirt after it along with more art to come. Here it is, our newest, coolest shirt: K-18L
(Available in several shirt colours and not just black or white)

The story continues

Release time

May the force be with you…..

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Monday, August 27, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - Beta 1

We hereby present you the first Beta build of Kodi v18 as we are heading towards the final release. Since we are now in Beta stage our focus will be on solving bugs and possible usability problems. So far it has been proven to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it's not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

Currently included

A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be update along the way. This third alpha release contain no big new features as we are focus on bugfixing only.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

Current available skins

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

The wiki pages

The V18 Lei t-shirt

Inspired by the galaxy far, far away theme, our resident artist Sam went above and beyond and designed perhaps the coolest Kodi announce video of all time.

We loved his work so much that we're modeling the Kodi 18 shirt after it along with more art to come. Here it is, our newest, coolest shirt: K-18L

The story continues

Release time

May the force be with you…..

Galleries:

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Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - Alpha 3

We hereby present you the third and last alpha build of Kodi v18 as we are going forward entering beta stage. This release is a continuation of the previous two with our continous focus on solving bugs and usability problems. So far it has proved to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it's not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.

Currently included

A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be update along the way. This third alpha release contain no big new features as we are focus on bugfixing only.

Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.

Stability and usability is key

Current available skins

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

The story continues

Release time

You might also wonder when we will actually release this as a final version? Currently we don't really have a set time however it should at least be somewhere this year so. There's still enough room left for improvements however we could change our minds at any point in time and just call it ready enough to start the release cycle. In short we can't say or promise anything. For now we will start doing the Alpa release on a regular bases to bring further balance to the force.

May the force be with you…..

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Friday, July 27, 2018

Kodi's GitHub codebase new face and better documentation

Every software developer knows that keeping code documentation up-to-date is difficult and time consuming, specially if code in need of said documentation is changing fast. Like, Flash fast. Among code documentation, the process of compiling the code is probably the poorest of cousins. After all, developers do know how to compile the software they write and writing documentation is not as glamorous as writing code. Given a choice, developers will always choose the latter over the former.

Though that was not Kodi's case, for years our build guides were spread between Kodi's Wiki and GitHub, generating confusion. To make matters worse, guides were often contradicting, not kept up-to-date and generally lacking in detail. To solve this predicament, we decided that Kodi's build guides should be kept alongside the code, where developers can easily update them when code changes.

Writing build guides might seem simple. It isn't. On one hand, people writing the guides are usually very comfortable with the process and tend to forget small but crucial steps. On the other hand, guides must be written taking the average user into account, not the seasoned developer. Let's not forget that the word "compiling" intimidates a lot of users, novice and seasoned alike and, as with many things in life, they seem utterly scary until you try. Once you know how to do them, they become an extremely easy and fun process. Most times, anyway.

That led to a conclusion: guides must not contain any ambiguity or room for interpretation. Plain spoon-fed copy and paste was the target. The result is a bunch of build guides for most common platforms and OSes Kodi runs on. Those include Android, FreeBSD, iOS, macOS, RaspberryPi, Windows and a general Linux guide. Popular Linux distributions among Kodi users, like Fedora, Ubuntu and openSUSE also have dedicated guides.

Starting with Kodi v18 Leia, our build guides are kept up-to-date against the current code base. Hopefully, up-to-date against a single pull request or code commit. This might seem of little importance but consider this: if, in two years time, you decide that you want to compile Kodi Leia for whatever reason, you won't need to dig through the Wiki, forum guides, old HOW-TOs, etc, to achieve what should be a simple task. The correct build instructions are right there, alongside the code. Of course, there are things we can't control and in two years a lot can change. Your shiny new OS or hardware might not be compatible with an older Kodi version. That's not our fault, by the way. ;)

Producing nice build guides wasn't the only thing we did. We also decided to overhaul Kodi's GitHub face, making it a little nicer to look at and a bit more informative about the project. It now links to Kodi's most important resources (downloads, site, forum, wiki, etc.), and has a section dedicated to those wanting to contribute to Kodi.

Since GitHub is a developer space, we couldn't complete the task without providing a few guides for code contributors. This includes a contributing guide, code guidelines, and a simple git-fu reference guide for those not familiar with git.

The full list of new documents and guides can be seen here. We hope you like them and help us improve them and Kodi.

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Sunday, April 1, 2018

Kodi No More!

As many of you may have noticed, Google has decided to remove autocomplete support for the word Kodi. While the team finds this move disappointing, we've determined a real solution for the problem. While Kodi no longer autocompletes, XBMC still does! As such, starting today, we are officially changing our name back to XBMC.

But we're not stopping there. We've had a good long run being a multi-platform system, but at the end of the day covering six or more platforms has become far too much of a stress. Android support alone taxes our resources in a way no volunteer development team can ever reasonably be expected to handle. And all the other platforms just makes this worse. So, in an executive decision that we believe the entire community will support, we at Team XBMC have decided to fully embrace our roots.

Starting today, we would like to announce that we are exclusively supporting only the Xbox One. We will be disabling support for all other platforms in the forum starting immediately and will begin shifting our website to reflect this change in the very near future. The work to make Kodi for Xbox a premier platform has finally paid off!

Making this decision was not easy. For example, there was a lot of debate about whether to fully embrace the name XBMC, or to change to XBOMC (Xbox One Media Center), but at the end of the day, we thought tradition should win out. Also, the current numbering scheme was developed for multiplatform support, so we decided that our upcoming release should be renamed AND RENUMBERED from Kodi 18.0 to XBMC 3.0.0. It just makes sense!

We will be reskinning XBMC 3.0.0 to something a bit more appropriate ASAP. But we’re excited to say that because we are only supporting a single platform, we anticipate full release this April, or at the latest early May!

In addition, we're excited to announce a limited 3 day sale for this rename featuring XBMC shirts, mugs, and stickers!

Thanks for sticking with us all these years! And Android, OSX, iOS, and Linux... see ya later!

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Monday, March 5, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - Alpha 1

A new hope dawns and it is finally time to start heading towards a final release. Today we are happy to announce that we are bringing you the first official pre-release Alpha build to a galaxy near you.

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Monday, February 12, 2018

We have been accepted to GSOC 2018!

We are excited to announce that Kodi has been accepted as a Google Summer of Code 2018 project! Students, as of the time of this publication, you have about 2 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. We’re excited to see what ideas you come up with! This page covers several idea we feel would fit the project however it is not an extensive list so new ideas are also welcome. We even made a special forum section to further discuss your ideas and if they would fit the project. You can find it here.

Tags:

Community Updates

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Saturday, February 10, 2018

Kodi v18 Leia - The story so far

Around November 2017 the team decided that v17 Krypton was mature enough to start with the release steps and as such it was branched off from our main development tree. This basically means it received its own place in our development repository and would only receive bug fixes and small improvements. This is also the moment that frees up the possibility for several core developers to start another cleanup and improvement spree that was also done when just starting with v17. This usually entails to take a more evasive steps on cleaning up code and less taking in account that certain parts will be broken for a certain time. Having a good foundation to build on is key in anything and that also includes a software application.

It’s hard to renovate a home while people are constantly using it and it’s easier to just move them to a neighbouring home while parts are being torn down and being rebuild.
Maybe this is a simple analogy however it kinda fits. Another one is replacing the wheels and engine of a car while you’re doing 120km/h on the freeway. Better pull it aside and do it properly and give the driver a spare car that still works fine although it's not so fancy driving yet.

In the past we mentioned doing RERO (Release Early Release Often) at times and to be honest we didn’t really got to that part so far. Only the bugfix versions of the final builds followed this to just make fixes available as soon as we saw fit. For a massive application like Kodi with many platforms and components a RERO approach is quite demanding on all people involved and perhaps it wouldn’t really make sense to do so in current state we are in. We do see this improving by the day so we are on the right track. At current time v17 is already a year old (with 17.6 bugfix past november) however it really just works fine across the board and should keep working for a long time. As we continued the work with current v18 Leia it kind of became apparent that the current workflow we are in works very very well. A healthy balance (at least that’s what i personally feel) is currently active between cleanup, features and fixing regressions. A lot of Team members and also regular users are running these nightlies builds and it’s getting rock solid to use. Of course you should still keep in mind that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Having a semi recent backup is certainly always a good idea.

Currently included

Now we got that part covered here’s what actually happened over the past year.

To this point in time we’ve done

More than 5900 (code chunks changed)
More than 1830 pull-requests (collection of commits that were included in one go)
More than 7580 changed files
More than 350.000 code lines removed
More than 397.000 code lines added
Over 35 opensource developers
A lot of free time developing and testing these changes
Quite likely several cases of beer or wine

So that’s quite a lot of work done by these volunteer developers and people these changes. Hopefully once you start upgrading the experience you have will be great and appreciate the work being done.

Stability and usability is key

Music library

Music section also gained lots of improvement for those who cares a lot about having a clean music library. Going through the code and scanning options a better understanding was gained on the past intentions and redone in a more structured way. The same accounts in a smaller part for video library although that was in a better maintained state. What is new however in v18 is that similar to music we can now also use the embedded tags and fill the library based on that instead of using file names. For now this has been disabled by default as there’s simply a lack of really well defined standard and proper easy to use video tagging software. We hope with Kodi now gaining this ability a gained interest will make these available.

Live TV

Next part is the great feature of Kodi to use it as your Live TV and recording front-end. It’s one of the less well known features as it requires certain knowledge and thinkering to set this up however once it works you’ll love it. To be able to use this you’ll need some extra hardware like a USB tuner or a network tuner like HDHomerun to get the cable or ether signal converted to a video stream. This in combination with one of the PVR server software options like VNSI or TVHeadend (more options are available) you instantly gain a very pleasant TV experience. What has been done over time is improving the usability and stability of this component and trying to make it a great replacement for your normal cable/ether set top box. A starting guide can be found here: Live TV and PVR/DVR Setup Guide

Windows and UWP

For Windows specific several big things happened. First of all we got added as 32-bit Bridge application to Windows store which makes it easier for new users to install Kodi and receive updates. A simultaneous action was converting Kodi to a full 64-bit application which took quite some effort. A more detailed story can be read here: Windows 64-bit is here

Now that was out of the way a long lived dream of quite a few became an option again. Getting Kodi running back on a XBOX like where it all started more than 15 years ago. Since 27 December 2017 we released Kodi once again for the XBOX (One) and is available from the Store. A more detailed story can be read here: Kodi for XBOX One

Android

Regarding Android we just continued to do what we started some years ago and that was stripping all custom written code and simply following the official Android standards. When XBMC back then became available for Android a lot of specific code was written to get it running on those low powered devices and we had more capabilities than any other application back then. Over time stock Android improved a lot and basically all what we had custom made was becoming readily available to be used. At that point we started dropping old stuff and just applied the standards which reduced support burden for the developers. Now all that was done we could start looking at new features and from that we gained the Leanback search integration on Android TV that shows Kodi content on Android TV itself. We now also include Google Assistant out of the box so theoretically you don’t have to pick up the remote anymore. To be honest it’s still uncomfortable and weird talking to your TV giving it commands. For Android TV Oreo there’s a whole new interface which includes the option to fill so called Channels that shows specific content from your app. We can proudly say that Kodi is actually one of the first applications that actually has this integrated. With the great hidden Kodi feature called Smartplaylists you can now populate the Android TV screen with content you want. For the touch enabled devices we can also say this has improved quite a lot as well make it feel more natural.

Linux

Linux gained some great things as well which might not mean a lot for regular users though. For our Google Summer of Code we had a project integrating Wayland display server protocol (again) to our code base which is meant to be the successor of X11 Window System. Since Linux is also quite divided on display drivers we had quite a lot of code implementations getting Kodi running on the variety of devices out there. To reduce the maintenance burden of this code a general path was chosen and for GBM (Generic Buffer Manager) and V4L2 (Video for Linux). With this only a small part of the initial code is needed to get devices running and from this newer devices would just run out-of-the-box once the Linux kernel supports these.

Retroplayer and input manager

Retroplayer together with input manager makes controlling Kodi using various remotes or controllers much better and a plug and play experience. Not having to thinker finding the correct configurations is something that we all would like and hopefully this achieves this.

Video Player

Now comes on of the biggest changes over past year. The video playback which is of course where Kodi shines. Once designed for the old XBOX and old video standards there wasn’t really taken lot in account with future standards and the massive increasement of video resolution and new codecs. With future in mind work started to redesign this section and to split it from into its own component to not be hindered with whatever happens in the user interface or other parts. Making the sure video gets the highest CPU/GPU priority over anything else happening makes sure you don’t get stuttering video or audio when navigating. This sounds so obvious to do however this wasn’t done or even possible in the past. Parallel to that, parts are reworked to be a lot more efficient and need way less CPU while gaining quality. Higher resolutions like 4K and 8K are also kept in mind next to HDR and new video codecs once they become available.

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

With the work above being done in the video player a possibility came up to also allow something that opens Kodi up for using it in combination with DRM protected content. These days it’s quite common for content owners and providers to protect their content with encryption. With v18 we added the ability to also play this content as it was actually intended by the DRM system. Depending on the used hardware and included license you can now playback this content which usually also comes with a subscription service. Instead of the sometimes clunky apps a possibility would be to just use the trusted Kodi environment to watch what they have to offer. There are already several add-ons available from our repository that already use this capability and we certainly hope more will follow and that content providers will make their service available as official add-on.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to mention however the list would become quite huge and maybe not that clear for the regular user. A more extensive overview can be found at Kodi v18 (Leia) changelog which is updated when changes are made.

The story continues

Although we don’t rely have a clear future plan or clear cut goals we would welcome any developer who wants to spend time on getting Kodi better in every way. Either improving the core code to newer standards, fixing bugs or implementing a new feature we haven’t thought of. Compared to years ago the code has become better to understand and follow for newcomers to get started. Once we get something written down of certain to reach goals we will certainly share them.

Release time

That’s about it for now and we’ll go back at improving this upcoming v18 release. Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several hundreds of thousands users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “Development builds” tab. For Android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.

Go to the Official download page

May the force be with you…..

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