Category: Kodi News

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Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ Stable Release now available for download and install for both iOS and tvOS

It’s Time! We are pleased to present the latest release of Kodi, v20 “Nexus”.

With over 4,600 commits since v19 “Matrix” was released on February 19th, 2021, this has been a huge effort. Thanks go out to our team members, and everyone in our community who sent a pull request, tested and gave feedback, or provided support to users on the forum. We appreciate your contribution to making Kodi better.

Let’s review some of the changes you can expect:

Major Features

Multiple Instances of Binary Add-ons

This allows Kodi to load multiple instances of a binary add-on. For example: TVHeadend users can now run more than one instance of the add-on to connect to multiple back-end TVHeadend servers, with individual settings like channel groups and hidden channels maintained per add-on instance. @AlwinEsch was the developer behind a lot of this, with support from @ksooo. Your favourite binary add-on may not support this capability yet, but we hope add-on developers introduce this into their projects soon.

AV1 Video Support

Several Kodi platforms now allow hardware decoding of AV1 media. The Inputstream API has been updated to support AV1 and this allows add-ons using inputsream.adaptive to play AV1 streams.

Subtitles Rework

Massive rework of the subtitle system was undertaken by @CastagnaIT making subtitle formats more consistent for development and maintenance, and enabling features that were previously not possible. Kodi now supports dynamic positioning of fonts, changing of border and background colours, subtitle positioning, improved multi-language support, and more. If you are a regular user of subtitles, jump on in and check it all out.

Game (libretro) Savestate Support

The GSOC 2020 project of @NikosSiak received some polishing touches before finally (!) being merged. With mentoring from @VelocityRa and @gusandrianos, and the assistance of @garbear, this has been a long time coming. This feature allows you to save game state at any time, even if games do not provide native savestate features themselves. Great for gamers, and times when you aren’t watching Videos with Kodi 😉

NFSv4 Support

Changes to allow NFSv4 support were implemented by @lrusak as previously we only supported NFSv3. There are some caveats with this (you must explicitly select either NFSv4 or NFSv3 for a source). Give it a try!

Context Menu Consistency

Improvements to right-click/long-press context menu handling were made by @ksooo in numerous areas. This makes the function of the context menu much more consistent over different windows, and enabled some new capabilities like the playback of albums directly from widgets, series resume, etc. to be added.

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Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ Beta 1 now available for download and install for both iOS and tvOS

Kodi ‘Nexus’ Beta 1 is the first beta release, and the most stable to date. The Kodi Foundation says of it: “This is the first Beta release of Nexus, and we are quite confident in its stability.

Here’s everything that’s new.

Addons

  • Assorted binary addon fixes/updates — imagedecoder, screensaver, vis. Thanks to @AlwinEsch as always for the huge amount of work supporting Kodi’s addon interfaces.
  • Fix/refactor “multi instance” GUI settings for addons. This work carries on from the PVR binary addons being able to have multiple backend instances.
  • New id3 tag metadata stream support for PVR Radio addons.
  • Add new SetVideoResolution with max resolution.

Database

  • Clean DB was previously broken in earlier Nexus builds. This has now been fixed by @enen92.

Disc

  • Update libbluray to 1.3.2 for all platforms.
  • Fix a “double free” issue when ejecting a disk .- Sidenote: thank you @prahal for your first contribution to Kodi core.
  • Handle BD_EVENT_DISCONTINUITY.

Filesystem

  • UPNP fixes for picture handling .
  • First time contributor @ihipop improved support for subtitle formats when accessed via UPNP DLNA.

General

  • Fix bookmark resume for .strm files.
  • Fix jsonrpc Player.GetProperties response when playback from a widget is done.
  • Fix race condition in CJobmanager causing crashes – Sidenote: @neo1973 is our newest team member, welcome to the team!
  • Application refactors. A large effort by @notspiff refactoring some very old code into more manageable chunks.
  • Assorted improvements found by static analysis tools. Thanks @Rechi.
  • Write correct duration to tracks in M3U playlists.
  • Improvements to the header inclusions for a lot of areas of Kodi. This is a step to improve build times in general that mostly aims to reduce the number of components rebuilt when changes were made in a few extremely common objects. Thanks @notspiff, @ksooo.
  • @rubpa has diagnosed and fixed a race condition in picture thumbnail loading.

Input

  • Mouse cleanup.

network

  • Another first time contributor @jjlin added support for HTTPS proxies.

Platform Specific

  • Unix based platforms
  • Android and Apple platforms now ship with Python 3.11 built in. Python 3.11 is a very notable release due to considerable improvements in CPython regarding speed. Checkout the python release notes for more info.
  • TVOS

    • Sensitivity on the Remote has been reduced, and the tooltip and setting has been made more intuitive by @sy6sy2.

    PVR

    • Assorted EPG search fixes.

    • Added possibility to browse available PVR client add-ons from PVR settings.

    • Channels and Recordings now can be sorted by provider.

    • Various fixes and performance improvements.

    • Large refactoring improvements.

    Favourites

    • Replace favorites dialog with new favorites window, providing different views and other enhancements.

    Skinning

    • Added a new infobool System.Setting(hideunwatchedepisodethumbs).

    • Estuary specifics

    • PVR Channel Manager redesign.

    • Click on PVR Home screen section icon now opens Channels window again.

    • Some smaller changes to the PVR OSD.

    • Extend music context menu functionality, add ability to play albums directly from home screen.

    • Extend video context menu functionality.

    Subtitles

    • Fix for 3D MVC subtitles not appearing correct when frame packed.

    Video

    • Inputstream support for AV1 codec.

    • Don’t attempt to use hardware AV1 decode if forcing software decoding. This fixes AV1 thumbnail generation on devices that don’t support AV1 hardware decoding.

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    Kodi 19.4 “Matrix” Final now available for download and install for both iOS and tvOS.

    Today we have available for download and install the new version Kodi 19.4 “Matrix“ for Apple TV 4k and IPhone & IPad, the forth update of this controversial version that incorporates improvements and corrections.

    Changelog

    Estuary

    Fix: Home screen context menu fix for when there are more than 10 items in menu.
    Fix: Seekbar wouldn’t disappear after 5 sec when using remote app e.g. Kore or JSON to pause Kodi.

    Input

    Fix: English keyboard missing semi-colon.
    Fix: Chinese keyboard character now displaying correctly.

    Music

    Fix: Artist discography export to NFO.

    PVR

    New: Sort method for recordings based on season and episode.
    Fix: Crash when navigating an empty guide.
    Fix: Hiding/deleting channel group now working correctly.

    UI

    Fix: Any Favourites for a restricted/locked media source are now hidden.
    Fix: Blu-ray ISO title and watched status now displayed correctly.
    Fix: Wrong language identified from subtitle name corrected.

    Video

    Fix: EDL mute now working.
    Fix: ASS subtitles display now working correctly.

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    Kodi 19.3 “Matrix” Final now available for download and install for both iOS and tvOS.

    Available for download and install the new version Kodi 19.3 “Matrix“, the third update of this controversial version that incorporates improvements and corrections, undoubtedly the most popular content manager today.

    CHANGELOG

    We’ve had some challenges getting the Xbox version released because of some specific platform requirements needed for 4k/HEVC playback. With the help of @CelesAtXbox (thanks so much!) we think we’ve now genuinely got those covered to Microsoft’s satisfaction, and can finally get this into the Windows Store.

    There’s also an issue with an expired certificate for 18.9 on Xbox, which effectively takes that version off that platform for new installations, so timing is opportune to fix that.

    There’s been a long-standing Atmos audio issue on all platforms that support TrueHD passthrough – we know that this this has been irritating people for some time, and we’ve now been able to fix this.

    We unintentionally introduced a bug in 19.2 that broke Airplay, so we’ve fixed that one.

    A couple of gaming-related fixes, notably a controller fix and some shader issues on Retroplayer.

    We’ve fixed a bug that affected thumbnails for watched episodes when hiding episode spoilers.

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    Kodi 19.2 “Matrix” Final now available for download and install for both iOS and tvOS.

    Kodi 19.2

    New version available for download and install Kodi 19.2 “Matrix“, the second update of this controversial version that incorporates improvements and corrections, undoubtedly the most popular content manager today.

    The following article shows the new features, updates, and changes within Kodi 19.2 which have been pulled directly from the official Kodi Website.

    Kodi 19.2 New Features, Fixes, and Updates
    PVR
    Fixed: crash when accessing invalid PVR channel from favourites
    Fixed: crash on startup while searching for missing channel icons
    Fixed: crash on startup caused by missing timer type
    Fixed: “Delete permanently” of recordings from trash
    Other, more minor bug fixes
    Video Library
    Fixed a bug that deleted UniqueID’s when scraping the library, which caused unexpected behavior for addons relying on those ID’s
    Games
    Added translations for emulators and game controller add-ons
    JSON-RPC
    Expose icon path of EPG tags as ‘thumbnail’ property
    Expose series number of EPG tags as ‘seasonnum’ property.
    Network
    Websocket: handles partial messages
    Add-ons
    Fixed: display logic for official and third-party modules

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    Kodi 19 “Matrix” Final now available for download and install

    The first final version of Kodi 19 “Matrix”, the first stable build of the new generation of this popular player and content manager, is now available for download and installation.

    The most important change in this version is on the add-ons aspect, now are based in Phyton 3 and this will block all add-ons that are not updated, something that will certainly generate many problems. On the other hand there is more control over add-ons that will block the ability to overwrite official repositories. We will also have improvements to play contents based on the AV1 codec, now it is possible to decode this format by software. You have in this same article the complete list of changes of this new version that represents the future of KODI for the next years.

    Kodi 19 “Matrix” Final Features

    Playback

    For audio and music lovers, there are significant improvements across the board to metadata handling: library improvements, new tags, new displays, improvements to how Kodi handles release dates, album durations, multi-disc sets, and more. There’s a new, Matrix-inspired visualisation, there are improvements to display when fetching files from a web server, and several changes to how audio decoder addons can pass information through to the Kodi player.

    For video, most of the changes are more technical, and may depend on your hardware: AV1 software decoding, HLG HDR and static HDR10 playback on Windows 10, static HDR10 and dynamic Dolby Vision HDR support on Android, and more OpenGL bicubic scalers.

    For those who combine the two, and have libraries of music videos, you get some goodies as well: database and metadata display improvements mean that Kodi will now fetch and display related album and artist information from the music library, where appropriate. There are also new features around grouping videos by artist (not just album), support for .NFO files that list all performers instead of just the main artist, plus better search links to return related albums and videos by the same director director.

    And, finally, if your definition of “play” is more game-related, we’ve implemented integer scaling to improve the viewing quality of Pixel Art games across the board, while iOS get support for Xbox, PlayStation and other supported Bluetooth game controllers.

    Skin/Look-and-Feel

    For many people, the interface is Kodi – it’s how you find your way around, it’s how you interact with the application and your media. As such, it’s always getting some attention, and this release is no different: screen redesign, especially for music; new metadata displays; changes to playlist views; a new “now playing” view; artwork and image file improvements; both new and updated GUI controls. Some changes may be subtle, but all are designed to improve your experience.

    Subtitles

    An often-overlooked feature, but immensely useful to so many people, subtitles get some attention in this release: timestamp overlays get fixed, plus you can now select a dark grey colour and set an opacity for the captions (particularly useful in HDR – protect your eyes, kids, you’ll miss them when they’re gone).

    Addons and Scrapers

    Python comes in for some major changes in Kodi 19. Because the old Python 2.7 has gone out of support, we’ve finally made the wholesale move to Python 3 and ported our addons across. Much of the community has come with us, so, hopefully, your favourite addons will still function, but we’re at the mercy of third-party contributors to update their work.

    Kodi 19 replaces the old XML metadata scrapers with new default Python for movies and TV shows; there are also new Python scrapers for music, Generic Album Scraper and Generic Artist Scraper. Binary addons in general get improvements to system documentation, cleaned up settings dialogs, and better help text.

    PVR and Live Television

    Another significant part of Kodi that’s had a lot of attention in this release. Most new features here revolve around usability: PVR reminders, home screen widgets, group/channel manager enhancements, navigation and dialog controls, context menus, New/Live/Finale/Premiere tags, channel numbering and sorting, performance improvements, API improvements.

    Security

    There are a few new security features implemented now in Kodi, to help keep you safe from intentional or unintentional problems. Kodi will now enforce the origin of installed addons and their dependencies, which prevents third-party repositories from overwriting code of unrelated add-ons; broken or deprecated add-ons are now highlighted in the add-on list, so you have to actively agree to activate one; the binary addon system now has higher security around data exchange between Kodi and an addons. In addition, we’ve added a default requirement to password-protect Kodi’s web interface, plus give better information around the security implications of enabling external interfaces if you do choose to enable them.

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    Kodi 19 “Matrix” RC1 now available for download and install

    New version Kodi 19 “Matrix” RC1 available for download and install from KTB Store, a new compilation that brings us closer to a stable version of the new generation of this popular player and content manager.

    Version history / Release notes / Change-log

    Kodi 19.x “Matrix” – Release Candidate

    And, off we go again. The dust settles on the festive season, so it’s time for another pre-release to hit the streets… we’re getting close to final release now, so we’re moving out of Beta and into RC.

    If you want to know the main features in this release series, please refer back to previous blog posts: this is an iteration of previous Beta releases, not a feature release, remember.

    This is stable, reliable code, suitable for daily use. Please, then: install, test, and give us clear feedback on any remaining issues, either with the new features or perhaps with a regression in existing code. As this is a release candidate, we think it’s basically ready to go, but let’s aim to make sure.

    https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/compare/19.0b2-Matrix…19.0RC1-Matrix

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    Kodi 19 “Matrix” Beta 2 available for download and install

    New version Kodi 19 “Matrix” Beta 2 available for download and install from KTB Store, a new compilation that brings us closer to a stable version of the new generation of this popular player and content manager.

    The most profound change in the field of add-ons where it jumps to Python 3 and this will block all add-ons that are not updated, something that will certainly generate many problems. On the other hand there is more control over add-ons that will block the ability to overwrite official repositories. We will also have improvements to play contents based on the AV1 codec, now it is possible to decode this format by software.