XBMC 12.2/13 Beta

XBMC 12.2 - Even More Frodo!
May 3rd, 2013

About a month and a half after the release of XBMC 12.1, we are happy to announce XBMC 12.2 with substantial fixes for 12.1 and 12.0 across all platforms. Fixes include:

Fixed infinite loop on addon dependencies, resolves crashing problem that arrose immediately post 12.1 launch
Numerous UPnP fixes
Memory leak fixed when XBMC is minimized
Various Raspberry Pi playback fixes and software codec support
Fixed OSX audio mixing
Fixed some audio-related crashes in Linux builds
AirPlay fixes
Bluray folder resume-bookmarks now work
Ability to scan for new content on file folders has been reimplemented
Language updates from Transifex
Fixes from 12.1 included:

XBMC now supports using OSX’s default output device for audio as well as hardware decoding with Intel GPUs in OSX
XBMC no longer hogs audio for Linux and on resume audio will continue to work in Linux
Full iPhone 5 resolution is now enabled
Volume buttons on Android devices now control Android volume, rather than XBMC volume
Volume buttons on OSX devices once again control OSX volume, rather than XBMC volume
Player optimization on the Raspberry Pi, including more efficient playback, better subtitle support, and many crash fixes
iOS 6 support on the AppleTV 2.
XBMC does not crash when listed on the AppleTV top shelf
Added support for additional Xbox 360 controller types
Broader and more intelligent support for CEC devices
Fixed problems with several addons due to broken binary read/write in our python interface
Language fixes, including 7 new languages: Albanian, Burmese, Malay, Persian (Iran), Tamil (India), Uzbek, Vietnamese
AirPlay fixes, including making discovery of XBMC more reliable on OSX
Numerous crashing and stability fixes across all platforms
For all users interested in maximum stability, we highly recommend that you update from 12.1 to 12.2. This is the XBMC you were looking for.


XBMC 13 - Gotham - March Cycle
April 3rd, 2013natethomas

We are now finished with month #2 of our monthly development cycle for XBMC 13 – Gotham. This month we see new features for iOS, Android, and PVR, as well as a new notification system, a new method for sorting images, and much more.

iOS
Dev ulion has added a boatload of new items to XBMC for iOS this month, including speed and stability fixes, along with a few major new features. XBMC is now able to continue playing audio in the background on iOS, with support for the native media controller bar as well as headphone controls on the lock screen and multi-task bar. In order to continue playing music, the user will need to press play again in the multi-task bar or lock screen or with the headphone controls.

Music will also resume after an interruption such as a phone call. Additionally, thumbnail art and other info about the audio currently playing will be available on the lock screen, though this feature requires iOS 5+. Keeping video running in the background is not yet supported.

This provides for yet another means of controlling media around the house. Now, you can send the media from XBMC on your iOS device to other uPnP devices with Play Using and actually control that media from your iOS device while XBMC is running in the background. While video running in the background is not controllable on your iOS device, video IS controllable in the background if it has been sent to other devices using Play Using.

Android
While very few features visible to the user have been included this cycle, a number of major under-the-hood features have been included by TheUni which will allow XBMC to better communicate with Android and other Android applications in the future. The specific future actions this will allow remain to be seen. Additionally, starting XBMC as the launcher should no longer result in a crashes and black screens.

PVR
In PVR news, there an Electronic Program Guide (or EPG) button has been added to the Home Screen as a submenu item for Live TV, so that users can now have easy access to a list of all upcoming content. Additionally, when tuning a channel that isn’t currently working, XBMC will now be able to show what channel you’ve landed on.

System-wide
Many users turn off their RSS feed in XBMC and rarely visit the front page of XBMC.org, which means they may find themselves unaware that a major release has just occurred. With this cycle a pop-up has now been incorporated by Martijn that will occasionally check to see if a new version of XBMC is available. If it is, the user will be prompted to visit XBMC.org and download. The pop-up can be easily dismissed. Upon the release of XBMC 13, the pop-up will only show for final releases and bug fixes.

This pop-up is especially noteworthy at it is one of the first issues posted in our public Team Member discussion area in the forum that’s been resolved. With luck, that will become more and more useful as an area for open, public discussion.

The bug that was causing all the crashing early last month, due to two conflicting addons, has been resolve. The issue at the time was that both addons depended on each other, creating an ugly infinite loop. That particular infinite loop is no longer possible.

User rubpa has added a new sort method for images. Now, users can sort by the date the pictures were taken, data that is stored in the EXIF timestamps of every image.

Finally, theuni and Montellese are working on two projects that seek to unify things.

Theuni has unified dependencies. This massive project has provided the Team and other developers a much cleaner, simpler, faster, and easier building process. From this point forward, there should be significantly fewer problems as we release each monthly development cycle alpha.

Montellese, meanwhile, is unifying the touch input system. Theoretically, this should make a single change to the touch input system result in correct solutions across all the touch platforms, as well as making it much easier to add touch input to additional platforms as they arrise. At present, Android and iOS have been included with this cycle. Soon, Windows and Linux touch input systems should also be included.


XBMC 12.1
March 18th, 2013natethomas18 comments

About a month and a half after the release of XBMC 12.0, we are happy to announce XBMC 12.1 with substantial fixes for 12.0 across all platforms. Fixes include:

XBMC now supports using OSX’s default output device for audio as well as hardware decoding with Intel GPUs in OSX
XBMC no longer hogs audio for Linux and on resume audio will continue to work in Linux
Full iPhone 5 resolution is now enabled
Volume buttons on Android devices now control Android volume, rather than XBMC volume
Volume buttons on OSX devices once again control OSX volume, rather than XBMC volume
Player optimization on the Raspberry Pi, including more efficient playback, better subtitle support, and many crash fixes
iOS 6 support on the AppleTV 2.
XBMC does not crash when listed on the AppleTV top shelf
Added support for additional Xbox 360 controller types
Broader and more intelligent support for CEC devices
Fixed problems with several addons due to broken binary read/write in our python interface
Language fixes, including 7 new languages: Albanian, Burmese, Malay, Persian (Iran), Tamil (India), Uzbek, Vietnamese
AirPlay fixes, including making discovery of XBMC more reliable on OSX
Numerous crashing and stability fixes across all platforms


XBMC 12.0 - Frodo
January 29th, 2013natethomasLeave a comment

Everyone at Team XBMC is proud and excited to announce the long awaited XBMC 12 “Frodo.” Features for XBMC 12 include:

HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine (OSX/iOS not yet available)
Live TV and PVR support
h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types and more interesting and complex skins
Support for the Raspberry PI
Initial support for the Android platform
Improved AirPlay support across all platforms, including AirPlay audio in XBMC for Windows to match the other platforms
Improved controller support in Windows and Linux
Advanced Filtering in the library
Video library tags to complement movie sets
Advanced UPnP sharing
Default video languages now match the language being used by XBMC
Translations now powered by Transifex

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMC%20v12%20(Frodo)%20changelog


XBMC 12 Frodo - Release Candidate 3
January 3rd, 2013natethomas11 comments
We would like to take this time to announce the third release candidate for XBMC 12. Features for XBMC 12 include:

HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine
Live TV and PVR support
h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types
Support for the Raspberry PI
Initial support for the Android platform
Improved Airplay support across all platforms, including Airplay audio in XBMC for Windows to match the other platforms
Improved controller support in Windows and Linux
Advanced Filtering in the library
Advanced UPnP sharing
Translations now powered by Transifex
At this point, XBMC 12 is entirely feature complete. All changes from this point forward will exclusively include fixes for replicable bugs necessary to reach final release.

Fixes between RC2 and RC3 are entirely stability fixes. For the full list, visit our Github milestones for RC3. As always, please do not report bugs or other issues in Github. If you need to report a verified bug, feel free to use Trac.

A quick note for Linux users, PVR addons have now been made a separate install from XBMC and can be found in the same PPA as XBMC. Each addon will be labeled “xbmc-pvr-[plugin-name].”


XBMC 12 Frodo - Release Candidate 2
December 20th, 2012natethomasLeave a comment
We would quickly like to take this time to announce the second release candidate for XBMC 12. Features for XBMC 12 include:

HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine
Live TV and PVR support
h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types
Support for the Raspberry PI
Initial support for the Android platform
Improved Airplay support across all platforms, including Airplay audio in XBMC for Windows to match the other platforms
Improved controller support in Windows and Linux
Advanced Filtering in the library
Advanced UPnP sharing
Translations now powered by Transifex
At this point, XBMC 12 is entirely feature complete. All changes from this point forward will exclusively include fixes for replicable bugs necessary to reach final release.


XBMC 12 Frodo - Release Candidate 1
December 12th, 2012natethomas6 comments
We would quickly like to take this time to announce the first release candidate for XBMC 12. Features for XBMC 12 include:

HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine
Live TV and PVR support
h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types
Support for the Raspberry PI
Initial support for the Android platform
Improved Airplay support across all platforms
Improved controller support in Windows and Linux
Advanced Filtering in the library
Advanced UPnP sharing
Translations now powered by Transifex
At this point, XBMC 12 is entirely feature complete. All changes from this point forward will exclusively include fixes for replicable bugs necessary to reach final release.


XBMC 12 Frodo - Beta 3
December 8th, 2012natethomas19 comments
Hot on the heels of Beta 2, we are excited to release Beta 3. This release includes a number of fixes as we work to resolve issues that have cropped up since Beta 2 and also attempt to isolate some issues that still exist. For a quick run down of some of the big ones:

Users of Android 4.2 should now be able to install and run XBMC for Android.
The upgrade path of Windows users has been a little tricky. Users may upgrade to beta and discover the audio no longer works. This is due to a bit of trickiness with the AudioEngine upgrade. For Audiophiles to get the most out of AE, we recommend that you check out the AE Wiki entry.
For those Windows users who find themselves without sound, the simple fix is to go to System->system->Audio Output and switch WASAPI to DirectSound. Users doing a clean install of XBMC for Windows Beta 3 should have no problem.
PVR Addons have been included with XBMC for Windows, matching up with most other ports.
We are still only partially complete on translations for numerous languages, including Romanian, Japanese, Estonian, Bosnian, Serbian, Hindi, and more. If you feel comfortable with one of these languages, but don’t know how to help, feel free to visit our forum thread that explains how to help translate XBMC using Transifex. UPDATE: Additionally, Transifex is used for translations for addons and skins, so you are always welcome to go back to a more complete language and help with any unfinished addons.
Finally, we’ve begun compiling a list of some of the more frequently asked questions about the transition from XBMC 11 Eden to XBMC 12 Frodo. If you haven’t made the switch yet, or just want to read about what other people are running into, please visit the XBMC 12 Frodo FAQ.


XBMC 12 Frodo - Beta 2 Now with Android!
December 2nd, 2012natethomas21 comments
Update: The permissions error on the Android download link has been fixed.

We are excited to announce Beta 2 of XBMC 12 today, as it brings with it many fixes and one long awaited major update. As you know, XBMC currently supports OSX, Linux, Windows, iOS, and the ARM-based Raspberry Pi. That’s a great list, but anyone paying attention could tell you that a massive, critical platform is still missing. Well, Scott Davilla and Cory Fields (theuni) have been working tirelessly to bring one more platform to the fold. And we’re all excited to say that we are finally ready to release the very first beta of XBMC for Android.

To run this beta, you will need a fairly modern Android phone, tablet, or other device. We have determined that any Android device that doesn’t include the NEON extension is simply going to run too slowly to be useable. If you are uncertain whether your device is supported, feel free to visit the XBMC for Android compatibility list.

Alternatively, you can simply install the XBMC for Android apk. If your device is not supported, XBMC will post a warning when you try to launch the app and exit out. If it is, and it isn’t included on the compatibility list, feel free to add it.

One Android issue worth mentioning: at present XBMC is likely to load fairly slowly on the first run as it unpacks itself. This is expected behavior. After first run, it should load quite a bit faster.

Update 2: Users should be aware that an update to Android 4.2 appears to have temporarily broken XBMC support for all you Nexus and Cyanogenmod users (and anyone else running 4.2). Beta3 should be right around the corner, and we hope to have a fix in place by the time that rolls out.

Controller Support
Without a doubt, one of the most popular controllers for PC at present is the Xbox 360 Controller. It is invariably the most supported controller for all AAA title Windows games (along with numerous games being ported for Steam for Linux), so it was undoubtedly time for the controller to become fully plug and play compatible with XBMC. Thanks to the work of Shiretoko212, rowan.border, and all those who contributed in this thread, the previously outdated 360 keymap has been updated and dramatically improved so that now almost any 360 controller, regardless of version, should be immediately recognized by XBMC assuming a driver is in place. For those interested in using their 360 controller to control XBMC, check out this 360 button map to show what all the buttons do in XBMC.

Audio Fixes
Easily the number one reported issue with Beta1 was a lack of sound in Windows. This issue was relatively simply resolved by switching from WASAPI to DirectSound as the default output. Users who prefer WASAPI can still easily switch back in System->Audio Output.

Other Fixes
Needless to say, there were numerous other fixes, including fixes to nodes and smartplaylists, the volume range of Airtunes in Windows, a speedup of EPG data importing, solving a minor files issue, and others. To see all the changes, feel free to refer to the Beta2 Git Changelog. Additionally, there are several other issues still being worked on, and more will likely crop up during Beta testing. If you would like to report an issue, please search for the issue in our forums first and report any verified bugs in Trac.


XBMC 12.0 Frodo - Beta 1
November 15th, 2012

It’s been a mere eight months since Team XBMC released XBMC 11. If you’ve been following along with us in that time, you already know about most of the new features, changes, and updates that our entire team has been working tirelessly to put into place. But you also know that all those features have only been available in monthly alpha builds.

Now we are excited to say that we are finally ready to roll out the very first beta of XBMC 12 Frodo.

The Name
In the past, we’ve traditionally named our releases after fantastical places like Camelot, Babylon, and Eden. This time around, on the release set to be titled with the letter ‘F’, we decided to take a slight break from that naming process to honor our roots. Ten years ago, an individual with the username Frodo joined the Xbox Media Player team, bringing along his open source software project called YAMP. With the addition of Frodo’s project the three founders, Frodo, d7o3g4q, and RUNTiME, released the first non-beta version of the Xbox Media Player – XBMP 2.0 – as open source software. Frodo then spearheaded the move from XBMP to the more feature rich XBMC, including acting as the primary author for the initial UI engine.

Today, thanks to the three founders’ decision to release open source, hundreds, if not thousands of people have contributed to XBMC in the form of core code, addons, skins, scripts, hosting, evangelizing, and more. Due in part to its open nature, XBMC has been ported to every major viable operating system and architecture. Skilled skinners have succeeded in making skins that resemble almost every major 10′ UI released in the past ten years, along with dozens of completely unique looks seen nowhere else. XBMC can be had on devices as inexpensive as $25 and can be the primary UI for PCs a dozen times more powerful than the original Xbox was. And for all that, it feels like we’ve only scraped the surface of XBMC’s potential, all because three people decided the project would be better off if it were released as free software.

For that reason – and for so many others – we choose to honor our founders and the past ten years by naming XBMC 12 after one of them. Thanks, Frodo. And thanks d7o3g4q and RUNTiME as well. It’s been a great ten years.

The Features
Thanks to an incredibly successful GSoC experience and numerous dedicated developers who have been working on many projects for years, XBMC 12 figures to be one of the most anticipated feature updates in a long time. Features include…

HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine
Live TV and PVR support
h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types
Support for the Raspberry PI
Initial support for the Android platform
Improved Airplay support across all platforms
Advanced Filtering in the library
Advanced UPnP sharing
Translations now powered by Transifex


XBMC 12.0 Alpha 7

October Cycle
The current goal is to release the first Beta of XBMC 12 at some time mid-November. At that time, we will review all the many features that have been added since the release of Eden. Likewise, during the Beta cycle, we’d like to continue to highlight the work done by our Google Summer of Code students in one or two posts.

For now, we will simply review the new features submitted during the last dev cycle before feature freeze.

UPnP Update

Just as we hit the feature freeze wire, a significant portion of one of the remaining most frequently requested features was added to XBMC. alcoheca’s GSOC project, a massive update of UPnP to make XBMC a truly capable UPnP server is now part of mainline. While transcoding is not part of the update, all metadata, images, and library functions including watched and unwatched status are now available depending on your client – naturally, an XBMC client is best, though efforts are ongoing to work with the numerous alternative clients that all use slightly different specs from one another.

Unfortunately, using XBMC as a UPnP server is still not the preferred method for an XBMC client. For one thing, Confluence and all current skins are designed to expect only a local database or a MySQL database masquerading as a local database, which means one would theoretically need to re-scrape the UPnP server into your local library for the TV shows link to show up in the home screen, which immediately cuts out much of the benefit of a dedicated UPnP server.* For another, at present while the server can tell the client what has and has not been watched, a major bug exists in that the client cannot tell the server the same thing. This means, if you mark Big Buck Bunny as watched on your XBMC client, the watched status on the server won’t be updated. For that matter, since you are using the server library, Big Buck Bunny won’t be marked as watched on your client either.

*For early testers, we highly recommend that you NOT Set Content, if that is still an option for you, as it will likely cause problems in the system.

As such, for now continuing to use SMB or NFS shares on your XBMC clients is still the recommended route, but we will keep you updated on the progress of UPnP, including any bug fixes throughout the Beta process. Additionally, skilled skinners, we are excited to see if and how you incorporate UPnP nodes into your design. To see an ongoing discussion of how UPnP will be improved now and in the future, feel free to visit alcoheca’s GSoC forum thread.

Advanced Filtering

If you have been reading the monthly cycle updates, you know that Montellese has been working on major improvements to the underlying XBMC library. A significant culmination of that work has been added this month in the form of the newly updated Filter.


The New Media Filter
Now those of you with an extensive library will be able to filter your library by any number of new, simple methods, including title, rating, year, actor, whether the series is ongoing, etc., and you can of course combine as many of those methods as you like for laser focus. Additionally, this filtering will occur in realtime, so the moment you narrow the span of years, your library will immediately narrow to meet the specification without any need of hitting the “OK” button.

Many More

Needless to say, because October was feature freeze month, numerous additional features have been added, including…

numerous JSON-RPC updates, including PVR support, optimizations, better conflict handling, and better webserver support by Montellese
PVR timeshift support (if the backend supports timeshift) – hat tip to non-team member Margo for this one
improvements to the OMXplayer, the media player of Raspberry Pi by gimli
Additionally, OMXplayer can now play back DVD ISOs if users have gotten the MPEG2 codec license thanks to user epideme
the CD ripper now works in the background thanks to Spiff
panoramic photo panning support by Montellese
Dirty Region support is now on by default by TheUni
Further improved image handling in the database, allowing one to select fanart, poster, banner, and thumb, rather than forcing the choice between downloading posters and downloading banners – kudos to Jonathan Marshall and Montellese for this work.
As always, this is a mere selection of numerous changes from this month. For a full list, feel free to check out the GitHub changelog. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading.

Windows and OSX
Apple TV and iOS installation instructions
Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for Linux are not currently available at XBMC.org. A number of developers are currently hard at work on the problem however. With luck, we should finally have a Linux PPA available by the time the Betas begin rolling out.


XBMC 12.0 Alpha 6 October 10th, 201

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the September Changelog.

Before we do though, we should note that this month will be slightly different than previous months. As we are beginning to gear up for Frodo, a significant number of new, big features that touch numerous portions of the whole program are being added. With all of these new features added, there is a very good chance that this month’s snapshot will be even less stable than normal.

Personal Video Recorder (PVR) support
It is, without a doubt, one of the single most requested features for XBMC, and we are happy to announce that PVR support has been added to mainline XBMC, which will allow users with a TV tuner to watch live TV, listen to radio, view an EPG, schedule recordings, and more.

XBMC’s approach to PVR support is somewhat unlike its approach to other features. Rather than supplying our own PVR software, a task that likely would have taken much, much more time, particularly if we had wanted any hope of making it work across all platforms, we have determined that there are already numerous PVR software platforms available and ready to serve up TV to XBMC. So we made it possible for XBMC to speak with these other applications through PVR addons. For those familiar with the terminology, XBMC acts as the frontend and the software that tunes and records television acts as the backend.

At present, PVR support remains very much a work in progress. The PVR addons required to get XBMC speaking with your chosen backend still need to be compiled by hand. There is no combination of hardware and backend software that is more highly recommended than any other combination.

The Team does not recommend that you attempt running PVR now, unless you are pretty comfortable working with the guts of XBMC and don’t mind getting your hands dirty. In the coming months, documentation and PVR addon support should become much more user friendly.

For more on PVR, feel free to visit our Wiki section and our PVR Help forum. And check out our list of frequently asked questions. For more images of PVR in action, scroll to the end of this post.

Raspberry Pi Support
As many of you are aware, XBMC has already been available on the Raspberry Pi for quite some time. However, until now, that support has not been a part of mainline XBMC. With this change, OMXPlayer (the player used to playback 1080p video on the ARM powered Pi) enters mainline XBMC as do many under the hood features for ARM and RaspberryPi support.

So Many Others
Additional features this month include:

The Test Suite developed by amejia for Google Summer of Code, designed to make testing various parts of XBMC easier and faster
A code generated scripting engine that comes from Jim Carroll that performs two separate tasks. First, it makes it much easier for XBMC developers to open up the XBMC API to addon writers. Second, it opens up the possibility of more easily writing addons in the future in code other than python.
Improved picture zooming and rotating on touchscreen devices
Tagging support for tv shows and music videos so that they match the tagging support already available in movies
Improvements in slideshow movement.
Additional GUI speedups for Android

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues?milestone=5&state=closed


XBMC 12.0 Alpha 5 September 6th, 2012

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the August Changelog.

Touchscreen Keyboard Optimization
With the push into tablets and the continued support of iOS devices, it’s becoming increasingly critical that XBMC provide a better user experience for touchscreen input. As such, the first feature of this month’s Cycle is a refactor of our GUI Keyboard to allow for native onscreen keyboards. This means the keyboard that you see while using other software on iOS will be the same keyboard you see while using XBMC.

Artist-based Smartplaylists
For those who are not aware, XBMC Smartplaylists are a sort of filter that should not be confused with something like an iTunes Auto Playlist, as they behave differently. An iTunes playlist is typically a list of songs meant to be played in order or randomly, one right after another. An XBMC Smartplaylist is merely a filtered list from which one can pick an individual song or video, and once the song or video has ended, the user will be returned to the list to select another item.

The vast majority of dev Montellese’s GSoC work this summer has been dedicated to speeding up and refining Smartplaylists so that searching and filtering your content is faster and easier than ever before, and all done in real time. This month, he added Artist-based Smartplaylists, so that users can sort and filter their music by topics such as artist, genre, moods, styles, born, bandformed, disbanded, died, biography, and instruments, with the potential of adding even greater filtering support in the future.

Conclusion
As always, this is merely a sample of the many changes this cycle. For a full list of all the August changes, feel free to take a look at our list of August milestones. Also, keep an eye out for both the September Cycle and regular stories on the blog, as we’ve quite a bit of upcoming news. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading.

Windows and OSX (64bit OSX will be available in the morning US time)
Apple TV and iOS installation instructions (also available in the morning US time).
Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for Linux are not currently available at XBMC.org.
Finally, a note for those of you who are tracking and submitting bugs. You may notice that Github has an “Issues” section. The Team would very much appreciate it if you did not submit bug reports through that section, but rather continued to use the forums and Trac. At the moment, the Team is using Issues as a concise means of grouping and identifying particular bugs that they gather from the forum and Trac sources. Thanks for your help!

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues?milestone=5&state=closed


XBMC 12.0 Alpha 4 August 14th, 2012

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the July Changelog.

Embedded Fixes
As is to be expected, now that AudioEngine has been rolled into XBMC proper, other developers are beginning to wrap their heads around how AE affects various components of the XBMC experience and are providing fixes to streamline the process. One of the first major fixes is Dirty Audio, which works quite a lot like Dirty Video. In the past, AE was “always on,” which resulted in the loss of many CPU cycles on embedded devices like the Apple TV and Android. Now, AE is a little smarter and stops doing its conversion work when no sound is output.

Additionally, up to now, XBMC has been running a huge number of SQL queries at startup. These queries haven’t been a big problem for powerful x86 processors, because the queries have not be overly intensive on CPU cycles. The same is not necessarily true on embedded systems. After an extensive round of SQL query optimization, the amount of queries at startup have been cut by 70%, which could have a powerful effect on iOS and Android boot times.

Google Summer of… Database Improvement – Tags
The work being done by devs JMarshall and Montellese as sponsored by GSoC has resulted in a stream of new updates and features this month. In particular, because scraped moviesets are intentionally limited to one per movie for clarity by TheMovieDb, movies (and potentially other media in the future) can now be tagged with additional info by the user with Tags. Think of Tags as personal moviesets that the user can create in the XBMC interface. At the moment, tags are limited to movies, but can be extended to tv shows and music videos in the future. Below is a quick video of how Tags work.



Audio Database Improvements
Newest team member night199uk has provided fixes to the music library that make it smarter at handling multiple artists and albums with the additional benefit of allowing XBMC to better scrape the MusicBrainz encyclopedia.

CEC updates
New fixes for the CEC Adapter have been introduced to the code that introduce wake over CEC and numerous other fixes and features. For a list of the changes, see here.

Conclusion
As always, this is merely a sample of the many changes this cycle. For a full list of all the July changes, feel free to take a look at our list of July milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the August Cycle. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading.


XBMC 12.0 Alpha 3 - June Cycle (updated)

July 12th, 2012
As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the June Changelog.

Airplay Updates
Two major updates have occurred on the Airplay side. First, AirTunes have finally been implemented on the Windows side. This means you can send both music and video from your iOS and iTunes devices to XBMC for Windows.

Second, when sending AirPlay music to XBMC, XBMC can now read the metadata sent in the stream and display the music information (e.g. title, author, coverart, etc.) on the screen. Unfortunately, this is only possible when sending audio from iTunes. iOS devices use FairPlay encryption, which XBMC is not totally compatible with at this time.

GSOC Updates
The efforts of our GSOC students are beginning to come to fruition. Montellese has been working over time to make the XBMC library faster and smarter. This month he has managed to push two fixes/updates to the library. First, movie sets now sort in a manner that better fit the rest of the library. In the past, movie sets were simply listed at the front of the movie library, like folders in front of files. Now, they are sorted based on the category. For example, the average rating of the movies inside the set would determine where the set would reside in a “sort by rating.”

A second new GSOC feature by Montellese should drastically speed up movie listings over JSON-RPC, which will greatly benefit mobile remote users and anyone else accessing the library from non-local devices. In the past, every call to XBMC’s movie library required spitting out every item in that library, even if the remote device was only looking for a few items. Now, a device can just pull those items it needs at any given point, for a massive time saving. Read more…
Conclusion
That covers some of the more notable and easily visible changes in this cycle. For a full list of all the June changes, feel free to take a look at our list of June milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the July Cycle. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading here for Windows (OSX should be available within 24 hours)! Look here for Apple TV and iOS installation instructions.. Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for Linux are not yet available at XBMC.org.

Also, as you no doubt may notice, there are fewer big features this month as more man hours are spent continuing to improve the features already recently added to XBMC (e.g. AudioEngine) and performing work to get XBMC ready on all platforms. As such, it is likely that we may begin intentionally winding down adding on additional new features in an attempt to get Frodo out sooner than later. When a roadmap has been established, we will, of course, update everyone


XBMC 12.0 Alpha 2 - May Cycle (updated)

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the May Changelog.

AudioEngine
As many of you no doubt already know by now, the really big code update this cycle was the inclusion of AudioEngine, led by gnif, into XBMC proper. For more information on this massive code shift, visit this post or check the wiki.

Hi10P
On an only slightly less frequently requested note, anime fans will be happy to learn that elupus has incorporated Hi10P playback into XBMC. A massive caveat to this development is that, in order to play back 1080p 10bit video, you are going to need an incredibly powerful machine with a very fast CPU (we’re talking desktop grade hardware). Users are reporting that 720p video appears to be at least workable on your lower level CPUs, but any expectations for silky smooth playback on something like the NVIDIA ION platform will almost certainly be met with disappointment. With that said, if you are currently running a fairly powerful machine, XBMC is finally ready to play your anime.

BR & DVD
In the steady march toward full unecrypted Bluray playback, elupus has also incorporated a virtual directory for Bluray files. While XBMC is still only able to display and navigate native HDMV Bluray menus (and not the common BD-J menus), users will be able to view a list of video files that display the video duration in the folder and select whichever video he or she would like to watch.

For users who typically watch DVDs recorded in a non-native default language, developer Montellese has subtly altered the way XBMC picks the appropriate audio language from among multiple options. Rather than simply picking the audio that has been flagged as “default,” XBMC will attempt to match the language of the XBMC installation with the audio language. So if you are running XBMC in German, and you attempt to watch a movie that typically would default in English, but happens to have a German track, XBMC will attempt to recognize and then select that track for you.

In addition, after selecting the appropriate language, XBMC will now make its audio selection based on the “best” track, rather than the first track listed. So in the past, there may have been 3 German language tracks listed in the following order: DTS-HD, MP3, and Dolby Digital. If XBMC was unable to play the DTS-HD track, it would default down to the next track and pick MP3. Now it will pick the next best track, and default to Dolby Digital.

Image Caching Improvements
One major area targeted for improvement for Frodo is the XBMC library. In particular, we are focused on making the library faster and smarter. The first step in this process, led by Jonathan Marshall, is a dramatic improvement in the way the library handles images. In the past, images would be cached in a local file and XBMC would have no knowledge of where that local file came from or what it was for. Now, XBMC will log where an art file comes from and where it is cached. In addition, XBMC will log what kind of file it is, whether it is a poster, a banner, clearart, or whatever. This means, as this framework is extended, skinners will be able to use locally cached art in numerous different views, regardless of whether the art type is banner, thumb, or other. Users will be able to change the art, simply by placing a new art file in the folder where the media is located and letting XBMC automatically note that the file has changed. And MySQL users will no longer have to worry about pathsubstitutions, as each client will maintain its own thumbnail cache that gets registered in the bigger database.

This means XBMC needs to recache all your lovely art, which will be done as you browse each item in your library. You’ll notice the first time you browse a listing the art will take a bit longer than usual to come in, but once recached, everything will be nice and snappy again. At the moment, only the smart links to your various image files are part of the May Cycle; however, as XBMC starts to take advantage of these improvements, libraries and skins should experience dramatic improvements in the months ahead.

Confluence Updates
In the shift from Dharma to Eden, Jezz_X was tasked with making media more easily accessible from the home screen with Confluence. Now, as more devices like the Raspberry Pi become available, the goal is to make the default skin Confluence as streamlined and efficient as possible, while continuing to make the media quickly accessible. To that end, you’ll note a number of changes this cycle. First of all, throughout XBMC, users will be greeted with a single, uniform, clean background image that may be altered at the user’s preference (Note: the code to change the background image is not available in this snapshot, so keep an eye out for nightlies and the June cycle). The default font has been switched to Android’s Roboto font. Weather forecasts as well as the home screen “recently added” lists have been bumped up to 10 scrollable items, and the Music category has gotten “recently added” albums. Finally, a “global search” bar has been added to the home screen so that those who have a lot of media can go directly to whatever they are looking for. (At the time of this writing, however, the global search bar has been know to cause some issues, at least on the Windows side, so be careful when trying it out.) Update: At the time of this writing, in order to use global search, users must install it as an addon in Addons->Program Addons.

Our first second 64bit platform
On the platform side, Davilla has drastically updated the build process for OSX. As of this cycle, XBMC for PPC is no longer available. On the upside however, XBMC is now a 64bit program in OSX and users may feel a measurable performance increase. Given how long XBMC4Xbox has lasted, PPC holdouts should probably not fear too much about this shift, as, if demand continues to exist, I have no doubt that a builder somewhere will continue to build XBMC for PPC. Note: while this transition has occurred in code, the automated alpha build available below is still only 32bit. Keep an eye out next month and in nightlies for the first build by our buildbot in 64bit. Update: It appears that 64bit Linux users have actually been enjoying 64bit XBMC since 2008, thereby making OSX our second 64bit platform. Apologies for the earlier misstatement.

Conclusion
That covers some of the more notable and easily visible changes in this cycle. For a full list of all the May changes, feel free to take a look at our list of May milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the June Cycle. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading now! At the moment, builds available are on the Windows and OSX platforms. Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for iOS and Linux are not yet available.


XBMC 12.0 Alpha
With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the April Changelog.

First on the list is a major reshuffle of XBMC settings. In the past, many of the controls for allowing XBMC to interact with your network were found on the Network page. Because the Network group was primarily being used for interacting with various external services, the Network page has been entirely replaced with a Services page. The “Internet Access” setting, which was the only other purpose of the Network page, has been moved to the System page.


XBMC has quite a lot of services to deal with these days!
Next, extending XBMC’s default ability to scrape sets, we’ve now added a new “Sets” submenu item.



For all you iOS users out there, we have an even more exciting announcement. Those of you with iPads, recent iPod Touches, and recent iPhones that are running XBMC will now be able to switch your screen from the local screen to your TV using one of the available TV Out cords provided by Apple. Then, you can use your local screen as a remote control. Or, to put it more succinctly, mirroring for XBMC is now enabled. For a video on how this works, see below. (Note: as already mentioned, the lack of an iOS build for April means this feature will not actually be available until iOS nightly builds start back up again. Keep an eye on our social network pages, as those will likely be the first places with news on the builds.)



On the library front, in addition to Names, Year, Runtime, and many others, a new Date Added sort field has been enabled. This field works slightly differently than the old “Recently Added” sorting. Rather than sorting the files by how recently they’ve been added to XBMC, the files are now sorted by when they were added to your local computer or server. This way, when refreshing an old show, that show won’t suddenly take up all the spaces in your Recently Added field. Instead, Recently Added really will only show items that you have recently added to your collection.

Finally, Addon, Remote Control, and Skin Developers will be happy to hear that yet more json-rpc controls and websocket support have been added, along with PictureInfo tags.

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues?milestone=1&page=1&state=closed


XBMC 11.0 - Eden
March 24th, 2012natethomas7 comments
It’s been over a year in the works and today we are excited to announce that XBMC 11.0 is finally ready and available for download. You can find XBMC 11.0 here.

XBMC 11.0 Milestones include Addon Rollbacks, vast improvements in Confluence (the default skin), massive speed increases via features like Dirty-region rendering and the new JPEG decoder, a simpler, better library, movie set scraping, additional protocol handling, better networking support, better handling of unencrypted BluRay content and structures, adjustable display refresh rate in OSX (to match the already available feature in Windows and Linux), AirPlay support, an upgraded weather service with geoip lookup, and much, much more. Check out the highlights in the summarized changelog.

The new Confluence
In addition to our many software improvements, we’ve increased our reach in the realm of hardware support since Dharma was released. Eden marks the first in-sync stable release for the Apple TV2, iPad, and other iOS devices. We’ve vastly improved the method by which we handle input, including heavily upgrading JSON-RPC support, making remote control support much, MUCH simpler in Windows, and enabling unique methods of device communication with hardware. And now even AMD devices are supported for GPU video decoding in Linux to some extent, thanks to the inclusion of VAAPI.

Beyond XBMC 11 for Windows, Linux, OSX, and iOS, we are also happy to announce XBMCbuntu Final.

XBMCbuntu is very similar to past versions of XBMC Live. By default, the user boots directly into XBMC, and if he/she chooses, he or she will never see the underlying OS. However, unlike Live, XBMCbuntu is now built upon a full LXDE desktop environment, which has a web browser (Chromium) with a fully updated (and updatable) version of Flash built-in and a GUI package manager ready to install and update all of the normal Ubuntu programs a typical Linux user might use. The user may now toggle between XBMC, which auto-starts, and a normal desktop if he or she chooses. And, perhaps most exciting for many users, XBMC will now be upgradeable, both from command line and from the GUI package manager, without fear of crashing the XBMC experience.

Naturally, those users who do not want to see the desktop will never need to. When you boot your computer, you will be booted directly into the XBMC homescreen, just as you are right now. The only clear difference is the new power underneath the hood. Those users who have already installed the Beta version of XBMCbuntu can upgrade to final using the apt-get upgrade commands.

There are truly an incredible number of updates and improvements between Dharma and Eden. But don’t take our word for it. Download XBMC 11.0 Eden now.

Summarized changelog

Addons Framework, API, and Manager

Added ability for all addons to provide their own web interface (and handling of multiple web interfaces)
Added support for addons to save their setting values to their own settings.xml file before quitting
Added support for multi-file selections in the (python) file browser dialog
Extended Addons API to support adding extension points for Service Addons (xbmc.service)
Added support for Addon Rollbacks, enabling users to choose previously installed addons over more recent revisions
Added the ability to search Addons in the Addons-Manager

GUI Engine

Improve XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
Added option for auto login of a specific selected user profile (good for kiosk mode)
Added commands for xbmc.Player().getAvailableAudioStreams() and xbmc.Player().setAudioStream()
Added support to identify DTS-HD (DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD HRA) profiles in audio stream list
Add ability for skinners to show buffering progress for streamed/cached files (similar to YouTube)
Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of seek / slide / scroll bars, and click handling
Improve touch interface API and gesture support for XBMC's GUI Engine for all platforms
Added Dirty Region support to reduce CPU usage
Added a custom JPEG decoder, at least 2x faster than the previous implementation (cximage)

Playback:

Added UDF 2.5 filesystem reading support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc as well as video library integration
Added an option for vertical shift of video image with slider setting
Added support for color and font styles tag in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
Added support for SSA/ASS subtitle tags; italics, bold, and color for SubRip (.srt) subtitles
Added support for MP4 embedded subtitles
Added support delay tag in vobsub subtitles
Gave external subtitles preference over internal subtitles
Added support for a new extended version of MPlayer's EDL (Edit Decision List) format
Added PlayerControl built in function to allow jumping to a percentage offset from a key mapping
Added support for Slingbox
Upgrade FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library
Improved Blu-ray Disc and harddrive playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
Removed subtitle caching (as it was only needed on Xbox because of the severe memory restrictions)
Removed all dependencies of libmms libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native MMS support
Remove all dependencies of liba52, libdts, and faac libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native
Added support for NFS virtual file server (vfs) (all platforms)
Added support for AFP (vfs) (all platforms aside from Windows)
Added Airplay support for Videos/Pictures (all platforms)
Added Airplay support for Music (all platforms aside from Windows)
Added Audio/L16 support for better DLNA UPnP client compliance
Improved UPnP Renderer
Added a slider for volume amplification and dynamic range compression during video playback
Added an option to pause video playback during refreshrate changes
Extended PathSubstitution from playlists to all files for users of shared MySQL Databases
Added the ability to adjust the display's refresh rate to match the video's frame rate in OSX (Feature already available in Windows and Linux)
Improvements made to the adjust refresh rate feature to pick the "best" rate, rather than the closest multiple
Added DXVA Deinterlacing support

Library:

Combined Files and Library mode for videos
Add asynchronous threaded background loading of metadata to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
Added support for cleaning the music library via CleanLibrary(music) command
Added a "Play from here" context menu button for TV Shows Episodes in the video library
Added the option to specify the default select (Play, Resume, Show information, Choose) action on videos
Changed "Set Content" to "Edit Content Settings" after being set
Added disc stub support for cataloging DVDs, BluRays, etc.
Added support for scraping Movie Collections, along with the ability to toggle collections on and off

Scrapers:

Improve TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
Added movie set scraping'
Improve TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper
Improve Freebase (English) music scraper

Skins:

Confluence: Home screen switched to horizontal layout
Confluence: Greatly simplified the way FanArt works throughout the skin and the settings for it
Confluence: Added ability for users to easily add / remove Add-ons as items on the home screen menu
Confluence: Added codec flagging images for DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio

Other:

Added ability to handle and allow access to multiple web interfaces at once
Added option setting to play videos within picture slideshows
Added dimming setting to the built-in picture slideshow screensaver
Added support for sorting depending on current locale
Added advancedsettings.xml option to disable the display of startup splash image (enabled by default)
Added support for batch requests to the JSON-RPC API
Added support for requests by notification to the JSON-RPC API
Make JSON-RPC API compliant with JSON-RPC 2.0 specification ( details)
Cleanup and improve JSON-RPC API
Added advancedsettings.xml option to configure the TCP port used by JSON-RPC (default is 9090)
Improve the features of the default web interface
Removed Weather from XBMC core and switched to Weather Underground as the default weather provider addon
Added weather lookup by IP

Linux Specific:

Add support for Texas Instruments OMAP4 (OMAP4430 and OMAP4440 with video decoding on IVA 3)
Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Linux
Added proper timezone support for systems based on Slackware Linux
Added altname (alternative name) support to LIRC mapping for linux-input-layer devices
Added lircmap for Conexant's CX23885 IR (infrared) recievers
Added lircmap to switch between subtitles with iMON Pad remote control
Improved ARM processor architecture support for embedded devices and embedded system platforms
Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support for embedded devices and embedded system platforms
Improved OpenMAX Video Decoding Acceleration support
Provide JSON-RPC server over Bluetooth

iOS Specific:

Ported XBMC to iOS 4.x (adding "XBMC for iOS" to XBMC's existing list of supported operating-systems)
Added support for Apple A4 (ARM) iDevices, inc. Apple TV 2G, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, the iPad (effectively all jailbroken iOS products)
Added hardware accelerated video decoding support for H.264 decode on iOS via Apple's VideoToolBox API
Added support for OpenGL ES hardware accelerated rendering of XBMC's graphical user interface on iOS
Added retina support
Added initial iOS Touch / Gesture / Inertial Scrolling support for XBMC interface on iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and the iPad
Added a APT repository for Apple TV, and Cydia with packages for iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and iPad

Mac OS X Specific:

Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Mac OS X
Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
Improve XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

Windows Specific:

Added support for NV12, UVYV, UYVY, and YUV2 rendering (software and ps)
Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Windows
Added DXVA video rendering option
Improve XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier


XBMC 11 Eden: RC2
March 2nd, 2012natethomas76 comments
We are pleased to announce that the video sync bug introduced has been resolved and Release Candidate 2 released in record time.

For those of you who skipped RC1, a review of major changes since Beta 3 may be found in this post. Additionally, you are welcome, as always, to review our coding changes on Github.

Meanwhile, those of you excited to get to downloading, as always, visit our Download page at any time.

Lastly, we’re still a few days away from being ready for the next round of XBMCbuntu, but, as always, we’ll update you as soon as possible. Thanks for bearing with us! With your reports, we’re getting closer every day!


XBMC 11 Eden: RC1
February 27th, 2012natethomas10 comments

XBMC 11 Eden: RC1, ready for take off.
Today we are excited to announce Eden Release Candidate 1. It has been a productive few weeks since Beta 3, as we’ve ironed out numerous minor (and one or two major) bugs.

In particular, we’ve:

Given preference to external subtitles over internal subtitles
Updated a number of XBMC translations for final release
Resolved a number of outstanding Airplay issues
Allowed specified movie sets to be sorted by title, rather than year, without changing the default sort order on other sets.
We’ve also added the useful feature of IP weather look up. Now, on a clean install of XBMC, users will no longer need to manually enter their weather location. Instead, XBMC will simply check the IP location of your box and auto-set the weather.

For a complete rundown on changes made since February 9th, feel free to visit here.

Now you all know what to do. Head on over to our download page, pick your favorite version of XBMC, and let us know how the experience goes in the comments.

One additional note: The new release of XBMCbuntu is currently delayed due to packaging issues. We will update this post with new info when it is ready.


XBMC 11.0: Eden Beta 3 available now
February 9th, 2012natethomas1 comment

As we continue moving toward the release of Eden, more and more fixes are slotting into place. With Beta 3, we’ve fixed playlist issues, altered some misbehaving Library buttons, provided a little more control over the way movie sets are scraped, and cleaned up numerous other small bugs.

On top of the many bug fixes though, we are pleased to officially announce the first beta of XBMCbuntu. With this beta release, we have chosen to slightly shift the focus of the pre-built XBMC Live install. In the past, XBMC Live was optimized for a pure set-top box experience. In the switch to XBMCbuntu, we are pushing to a more traditional ‘buntu approach that emphasizes first trying and then ultimately installing XBMC onto the local machine.

There are many benefits to this approach. In particular, XBMC is now built upon a full LXDE desktop environment, which has a web browser (Chromium) with a fully updated (and updatable) version of Flash built-in and a GUI package manager ready to install and update all of the normal Ubuntu programs a typical Linux user might use. The user may now toggle between XBMC, which auto-starts, and a normal desktop if he or she chooses. And, perhaps most exciting for many users, XBMC will now be upgradeable, both from command line and from the GUI package manager, without fear of crashing the XBMC experience.

Naturally, those users who do not want to see the desktop will never need to. When you boot your computer, you will be booted directly into the XBMC homescreen, just as you are right now. The only clear difference is the new power underneath the hood.

For those users experienced in installing XBMC Live, be prepared for a newer, easier graphical installer. Your downloadable Disc Image may be found here. The installer still needs a bit of polish, most notably the slideshow panels, but we will be sure to brush up the cosmetics in time for final release.

And for those users of Eden Beta1 and Beta2, as always, your downloads may be found here. Once again, remember this is Beta software, and bugs are likely to appear. Feel free to let us know how your experience is going in the comments below.

http://trac.xbmc.org/timeline
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/commits/Eden


XBMC 11.0: Eden Beta 2 available now
January 22nd, 2012natethomas5 comments

It’s been a productive few weeks in the race to release Eden. Since Beta 1, unencrypted bluray, dvd player, startup problems in OSX, airplay, subtitle issues, unofficial addon repository installations, and the frustrating TMDB scraper problems that have made it difficult for everyone to scrape new movies have all seen fixes. In addition, a great deal of progress has been made in the new XBMCBuntu build, which should be ready for the next preview release. Finally, all Beta 1 users are encouraged to update immediately to fix a scraper error that causes XBMC to crash.

The same warnings from beta1 still apply. Eden is quite stable already, but don’t forget that it is in beta. Builds for all platforms except XBMCBuntu are uploaded and ready to go. Download the latest in mediacenter goodness right here.

Translators and addon developers, please be sure to send your final pull requests for translations for XBMC and Addons for Eden.


XBMC 11.0 Eden: Beta available now
December 24th, 2011

It took a bit longer than expected due to a few bumps in the road, but we are excited to present the first preview release of (what we consider to be) the best version of the best home theater software out there.

Ladies and Gentlemen, XBMC 11.0 Eden: Beta 1 is available to download.

The sheer number of new features, platforms, and improvements to nearly every facet of the XBMC experience found within Eden are nearly too numerous to count.

Milestones include Addon Rollbacks, vast improvements in Confluence (the default skin), massive speed increases via features like Dirty-region rendering and the new JPEG decoder, a simpler, better library, additional protocol handling, better networking support, better handling of unencrypted BluRay content and structures, adjustable display refresh rate in OSX (to match the already available feature in Windows and Linux), AirPlay support, an upgraded weather service, and much more. Check out the highlights in the summarized changelog.

In addition to our many software improvements, we’ve increased our reach in the realm of hardware support since Dharma was released. Eden marks the first in-sync stable release for the Apple TV2, iPad, and other iOS devices. We’ve vastly improved the method by which we handle input, including heavily upgrading JSON-RPC support, making remote control support much, MUCH simpler in Windows, and enabling unique methods of device communication with hardware like the HDMI-CEC Adapter. And now even AMD devices are supported for GPU video decoding in Linux to some extent, thanks to the inclusion of VAAPI.

We are also in the process of drastically altering XBMC Live to make it more like a full “*Buntu” version of XBMC with massive changes to the boot and install process. That alteration is not quite ready for prime time (and, thus, is not available at this time), but our devs are working on it round the clock. Keep an eye out for a more in-depth article on this in the next week or so. The XBMC Linux PPA is also not immediately available, but check back a few days after Christmas. It should be online at that time.

Because this is Beta software, you can likely expect minor issues over the course of the next few weeks. For example, you may discover issues with playing movie trailers that may require a manual install of the Youtube addon. If, after asking in the forum and updating to the most recently available Beta, your issue is not solved, feel free to follow the above link to the Trac service and create a ticket with the issue. As always, when troubleshooting, providing a debug log will be essential to resolving issues.

And with that, we invite users one and all to backup your userdata folder (which is always a good idea)(also, iOS users, you should follow this link for info on your slightly different backup process), and get to downloading!

Addons Framework, API, and Manager

Added ability for all addons to provide their own web interface (and handling of multiple web interfaces)
Added support for addons to save their setting values to their own settings.xml file before quitting
Added support for multi-file selections in the (python) file browser dialog
Extended Addons API to support adding extension points for Service Addons (xbmc.service)
Added support for Addon Rollbacks, enabling users to choose previously installed addons over more recent revisions
Added the ability to search Addons in the Addons-Manager

GUI Engine

Improve XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
Added option for auto login of a specific selected user profile (good for kiosk mode)
Added commands for xbmc.Player().getAvailableAudioStreams() and xbmc.Player().setAudioStream()
Added support to identify DTS-HD (DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD HRA) profiles in audio stream list
Add ability for skinners to show buffering progress for streamed/cached files (similar to YouTube)
Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of seek / slide / scroll bars, and click handling
Improve touch interface API and gesture support for XBMC's GUI Engine for all platforms
Added Dirty Region support to reduce CPU usage
Added a custom JPEG decoder, at least 2x faster than the previous implementation (cximage)

Playback:

Added UDF 2.5 filesystem reading support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc as well as video library integration
Added an option for vertical shift of video image with slider setting
Added support for color and font styles tag in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
Added support for SSA/ASS subtitle tags; italics, bold, and color for SubRip (.srt) subtitles
Added support for MP4 embedded subtitles
Added support delay tag in vobsub subtitles
Added support for a new extended version of MPlayer's EDL (Edit Decision List) format
Added PlayerControl built in function to allow jumping to a percentage offset from a key mapping
Added support for Slingbox
Upgrade FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library
Improved Blu-ray Disc and harddrive playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
Removed subtitle caching (as it was only needed on Xbox because of the severe memory restrictions)
Removed all dependencies of libmms libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native MMS support
Remove all dependencies of liba52, libdts, and faac libraries from XBMC's code in favour of FFmpeg native
Added support for NFS virtual file server (vfs) (all platforms)
Added support for AFP (vfs) (all platforms aside from Windows)
Added Airplay support for Videos/Pictures (all platforms)
Added Airplay support for Music (all platforms aside from Windows)
Improved UPnP Renderer
Added a slider for volume amplification and dynamic range compression during video playback
Added an option to pause video playback during refreshrate changes
Extended PathSubstitution from playlists to all files for users of shared MySQL Databases
Added the ability to adjust the display's refresh rate to match the video's frame rate in OSX (Feature already available in Windows and Linux)
Improvements made to the adjust refresh rate feature to pick the "best" rate, rather than the closest multiple
Added DXVA Deinterlacing support

Library:

Combined Files and Library mode for videos
Add asynchronous threaded background loading of metadata to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
Added support for cleaning the music library via CleanLibrary(music) command
Added a "Play from here" context menu button for TV Shows Episodes in the video library
Added the option to specify the default select (Play, Resume, Show information, Choose) action on videos
Changed "Set Content" to "Edit Content Settings" after being set
Added disc stub support for cataloging DVDs, BluRays, etc.

Scrapers:

Improve TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
Improve TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper
Improve Freebase (English) music scraper

Skins:

Confluence: Home screen switched to horizontal layout
Confluence: Greatly simplified the way FanArt works throughout the skin and the settings for it
Confluence: Added ability for users to easily add / remove Add-ons as items on the home screen menu
Confluence: Added codec flagging images for DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio

Other:

Added ability to handle and allow access to multiple web interfaces at once
Added option setting to play videos within picture slideshows
Added dimming setting to the built-in picture slideshow screensaver
Added support for sorting depending on current locale
Added advancedsettings.xml option to disable the display of startup splash image (enabled by default)
Added support for batch requests to the JSON-RPC API
Added support for requests by notification to the JSON-RPC API
Make JSON-RPC API compliant with JSON-RPC 2.0 specification ( details)
Cleanup and improve JSON-RPC API
Added advancedsettings.xml option to configure the TCP port used by JSON-RPC (default is 9090)
Improve the features of the default web interface
Removed Weather from XBMC core and switched to Weather Underground as the default weather provider addon

Linux Specific:

Add support for Texas Instruments OMAP4 (OMAP4430 and OMAP4440 with video decoding on IVA 3)
Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Linux
Added proper timezone support for systems based on Slackware Linux
Added altname (alternative name) support to LIRC mapping for linux-input-layer devices
Added lircmap for Conexant's CX23885 IR (infrared) recievers
Added lircmap to switch between subtitles with iMON Pad remote control
Improved ARM processor architecture support for embedded devices and embedded system platforms
Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support for embedded devices and embedded system platforms
Improved OpenMAX Video Decoding Acceleration support
Provide JSON-RPC server over Bluetooth

iOS Specific:

Ported XBMC to iOS 4.x (adding "XBMC for iOS" to XBMC's existing list of supported operating-systems)
Added support for Apple A4 (ARM) iDevices, inc. Apple TV 2G, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and the iPad
Added hardware accelerated video decoding support for H.264 decode on iOS via Apple's VideoToolBox API
Added support for OpenGL ES hardware accelerated rendering of XBMC's graphical user interface on iOS
Added initial iOS Touch / Gesture / Inertial Scrolling support for XBMC interface on iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and the iPad
Added a APT repository for Apple TV, and Cydia with packages for iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G, and iPad

Mac OS X Specific:

Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Mac OS X
Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
Improve XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

Windows Specific:

Added support for NV12, UVYV, UYVY, and YUV2 rendering (software and ps)
Added dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Windows
Added DXVA video rendering option
Improve XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier


Bug-fix Release: 10.1
March 10th, 2011

While we are moving quickly to get new features into 11.0, the time has come for a maintenance release for Dharma. We recommend that all users update to 10.1 as soon as possible to increase stability.

The main focus of this release is to address a bug that could cause XBMC to freeze when updating a skin. We have held back skin updates from the main repository because of this, but now that it is fixed, they will begin rolling out in a few weeks.

This is intended as a bug-fix release only, no new features have been introduced. Notable fixes include:

* If an in-use skin was updated in Windows, XBMC would freeze
* Some RTMP streams in Windows did not play
* Included add-ons have been updated
* The correct referrer is now used for downloading add-ons, improving dependency statistics
* Crashes during playback on ATI hardware in some circumstances have been fixed
* Hardware decoding improvements for OSX
* Various small fixes

In addition, XBMC Live has been updated with the most recent packages, one of which includes a fix for the annoying SMB+Windows Live Essentials bug.


XBMC 10.0
December 18th, 2010

It’s been a LONG time coming. Too long. But here it is.

XBMC 10.0 “Dharma” is ready for consumption. Those who have been following development know that add-ons are the main focus of this release. In the past, in order to find a new skin, you would have to dig through the forums, find a link, and hope it worked. Ditto for plugins, scrapers, etc.

Those days are over. All of these things are now available within XBMC, no need to put down the remote to find new content or change the look of your HTPC. Just head to the “add-ons” section in the system menu. At the time of this writing, there are 11 different skins available, all with distinct looks and personalities. But we didn’t stop there. Want to watch your favorite youtube videos? Listen to some web radio or podcasts? Install a web interface to control your living-room experience, or even one to manage your media? It’s all available in the new add-ons system. Even before the final release, we have seen an average of 50,000 add-on downloads per day. It’s time for you to see what many others have discovered! And remember, the best part is that the add-ons are very much alive. New ones are being added every day, and current ones are continuously updated.


Addons Manager

* Added unified Addon framework that make it easy to distribute addons to XBMC (based on C-Pluff)
* Addon Browser GUI that will allow for an easy way to find, install, and manage third-party addons
* Added support for update notifications and options for manual or automatic updates of addons
* Added Team XBMC's official Addons Repository for open source addons as the default Addon Repo
* Added GUI option to install additional third-party Addons Repos from ZIP files (with addon.xml)
* Added GUI option to install third-party addons from ZIP files without it being in an Addon Repo
* Added support for scrapers (Web Scraper Metadata Aggregators) to the Addons API
* Added support for skins extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for visualizations extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for screensavers extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for python based plugins extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for python based scripts extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for web interfaces extension point to the Addons API
* Added new default web interface as an addon to remote control XBMC via any web browser
* Removed builtin SHOUTcast.com directory support and moved it to the official addons repo
* Removed builtin visualizations and moved them to the official addons repo
* Removed builtin screensavers and moved them to the official addons repo
* Removed all Adult ('XXX' classified) scrapers into a new third-party managed addons repository

GUI Engine:

* Improved XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
* Added option to choose "default select action" of the showing info screen for videos
* Added FanArt support for Addons
* Added initial gesture support to XBMC's GUI Engine (adding touch interface API support to guilib)
* Added initial support for Windows Touch API (Windows 7 touch features and functions)
* Added ability for Karaoke player to optionally show the next song that will be played
* Added video information flagging for trailers
* Improved mouse support, added better exclusive control support for dragging of sliders/scroll bars
* Improved mouse click handling and added the possibility of long verses short clicks detection
* Updated translations for most languages (thanks to all community members who contributed!)
* Renamed "Plugins" in the Addons UI to "Media Sources" as that is what they are now
* Removed AAC, MP1, MP2, and MP3 passthrough options settings from the GUI
* Removed all Xbox only strings from the language files since the Xbox platform is no longer supported

Playback:

* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe hardware accelerated video decoders support
* Added native support for unencrypted Blu-ray Disc playback without menus (via libbluray)
* Added Blu-ray Disc detection for external players (map external player in playercorefactory.xml)
* Added support for using libbluray to play bdmv files (index.bdmv or *.mpls) from local folders
* Added raw bitstream pass-through support for MP1, MP2, MP3, and AAC encoded audio tracks
* Added real-time ATSC A/52 encoder for on-the-fly Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3) transcoded output
* Added support for 5.1 Multi-Channel Analog Output (discrete 6-channel PCM output)
* Added post-processing support and options for videos in standard definition resolutions
* Added High-Quality Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as OpenGL GLSL Shaders
* Added support for embedded Blu-ray/AVCHD PGS subtitles in MKV (Matroska) video containers
* Added support to use MKV (Matroska) embedded descriptions for audio and subtitle tracks
* Added support for DEFAULT/FORCED Matroska flags for subtitles
* Added support for color text subtitles in MKV files
* Added support for unsorted subtitles (ass/ssa, srt, smi)
* Added support for multiple language SAMI subtitle
* Added initial WebDAV (HTTP) media source support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
* Added initial SFTP media source support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
* Added support for WebM via libvpx
* Added Zapstream support for Tuxbox (Dreambox/DBox2) client
* Added RTMPE/RTMPTE and improved RTMP/RTMPT/RTMPS support via librtmp from RTMPDump
* Added "Wide Zoom" video mode option, a combination zoom, cropping, and non-linear stretching
* Added "Stretch 14x9" video mode option, a combination of zoom, cropping, and linear stretching
* Added "Stretch 16x9" video mode option, a combination of zoom, cropping, and linear stretching
* Added support to extract lyrics from Lyrics3v2 (Lyrics3 2.00) ID3 tags when available in music files
* Added support to configured cache buffer size via advancedsettings.xml (rather than hardcoded)
* Upgraded FFmpeg that significantly improves the decoding of all widespread mainstream codecs
* Improved generalization of chapter support and SeekTime from the input stream interface
* Improved Dream Multimedia Dreambox Enigma2 bouquets support in the TuxBox Client
* Improved audio channel matrix mapping, audio channels downmixing, and upmixing support
* Improved DVD-Video navigation in using Next and Prev
* Improved timecode-based seeking in videos

Library:

* Added FanArt image cache height-value size option to advancedsettings.xml (defaults to 480)
* Added initial support for MySQL as abstracted database backend for video and music libraries
* Added improved portability of SQL statements used in the video and music libraries
* Added ability to sort TV Shows folders by the date of the last recorded episode
* Added support for Movie Sets (option to group movie collections into sets for customized sorting)
* Added support to allow scrapers to use a normal settings.xml
* Improved performance for SQL database queries ( expert help is always wanted in this area!)
* Improved video scanner engine
* Improved metadata scraper engine

Scrapers:

* Added hd-trailers.net movie trailers scraping to TheMovieDB.org and IMDb scrapers
* Added new Rotten Tomatoes (English) movie scraper
* Added new Freebase (English) music scraper
* Added new 1ting (Chinese) music scraper
* Added new 7176 (Chinese) movie scraper
* Added new getlib (Chinese) movie scraper
* Added new m1905 (Chinese) movie scraper
* Added new daum (Korean) TV Shows scraper
* Added new daum (Korean) music scraper
* Added new filmbasen (Norwegian) movie scraper
* Added new moviemeter (Dutch) movie scraper
* Added new videobuster (German) movie scraper
* Added new kino (German) movie scraper
* Improved ofdb (German) movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
* Improved TheTVDB (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper
* Removed Discogs (English) music scraper due to them blocking XBMC
* Removed imdb-cn (Chinese) movie scraper due to website closed

Skins:

* Confluence: Addon Browser specific window and icon to get to it in the settings GUI
* Confluence: Added border to the Addon icons in media info view for a uniformed look
* Confluence: Added FanArt support for the Addon Browser
* Confluence: Added buttons in the OSD's for Lyrics and Subtitle Addons
* Confluence: Added browsing for subtitles in full screen video overlay
* Confluence: Added browsing for lyrics in full screen video overlay
* Confluence: Added "Recently Added" Movies and TV Shows script view in the home menu
* Confluence: Improved file and folder path name reading for media flagging
* Confluence: Removed script window completely (turns out you don't need one now)

Other:

* Added JSON-RPC and JSON API over HTTP and Sockets for bidirectional communication
* Added microhttpd Web Server (and removed the old GoAhead and Spyce code) for HTTP API
* Added HTTP authentication methods any, anysafe, digest, and ntlm (via cURL libcurl)
* Added SSH file transfer protocol (sftp) via libssh
* Added support for MD5 passwords in GUIEditControl
* Added function / setting to enable DXTn texture compression (DDS) to all cached non-skin images
* Added doxygen resources for generating source code documentation
* Added ability to turn off LCD/VFD backlight while screensaving to advancedsettings.xml
* Added builtin command for sending Wake-On-Lan (WOL) magic packets
* Added builtin command irsend infra-red send commands using LIRC for IR blaster (lirc.send)
* Added joystick deadzone and calibration support to advanced settings ( advancedsettings.xml)
* Added power abstraction framework with a way to send OnWake and OnSuspend events
* Improved XBMC's integrated DLNA / UPnP MediaServer and Client compatibility
* Improved last.fm and libre.fm passwords storage with MD5, requires user to input password again

Live Specific:

* Optimized XBMC Live for the first and next-generation NVIDIA ION / ION 2 (as reference platforms)
* Added Bootable Disk Wizard (BDW) addon to the Live CD that makes bootable flash disk easier for users
* Added Plymouth Theme with XBMC logo typeface to replace the old USplash Splash Screen on Boot
* Added support for GRUB 2 based images
* Improved support for Wake-on-USB from ACPI S3 Standby with Remote/Keyboard/Mouse
* Updated XBMC Live to to based on a stripped Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Linux Distribution
* Updated NVIDIA and ATI proprietary binary graphics device drivers (restricted drivers)

Linux Specific:

* Optimized keymapping for navigation with MCE (Microsoft Windows Media Center) compatible remotes
* Added PPA (Personal Package Archives) packages for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
* Added support for ARM processor architecture (with TI OMAP3 and NVIDIA Tegra 2 as reference)
* Added initial support OpenGL ES 2.0 compliance in the Linux renderer for embedded devices via EGL
* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
* Added OpenMAX Video Acceleration support (requires OpenMax IL compatible hardware, like Tegra2)
* Added NEON (ARM) Video Acceleration support (requires NEON compatible hardware, like OMAP3)
* Added initial implementation of the OnLowBattery signal in UPower
* Added lircmap for linux-input-layer devices to allow for joystick and gamepad keymaps
* Added lircmap for Alienware Alienware Dual Compatible Game Pad
* Added lircmap for the Xbox 360 (wireless) controller
* Added lircmap for Interact AxisPad
* Added lircmap for MCE (Microsoft Windows Media Center) remotes via SoundGraph iMON IR-receivers
* Added lircmap for Twinhan remotes
* Added lircmap for Antec's VERIS family RM200 / Antec Fusion Remote Control
* Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
* Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support

Windows Specific:

* Added support for most MCE (Microsoft Windows Media Center) compatible remotes out-of-the-box
* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added initial native DXVA 2 support for H.264, VC-1, and WMV9 (Windows Vista and 7 only)
* Added support for WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) for raw bitstream output
* Added High-Quality Bicubic and Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as Direct3D HLSL
* Added Direct3D port of the OpenGL Spectrum 3D Audio Visualization for DirectX
* Added support for Visual Studio 2010 Express edition and Visual Studio 2010 non-Express edition
* Improved support for Microsoft's DirectX, Direct3D, and DirectSound APIs for Windows

Mac OS X Specific:

* Optimizated remote navigation and improved keymapping for both the old and the new Apple Remote
* Added Apple VDADecoder Video Accelleration support (requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added analog audio downmix to user-selected format
* Added check for AC/Battery and Low Battery warning notifications (set to 10 percent)
* Improved the PowerPC (PPC CPU architecture) support for Mac OS X 10.4
* Removed PortAudio now that we only use Core Audio

Apple TV Specific:

* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added support for Apple TV OS 3.0.2


XBMC 9.11: Camelot
December 24th, 2009 Team XBMC 3 comments

It’s been quite a while in the making (and maybe a bit late), but Camelot has arrived for Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBMC Live, and just in time for the holidays. Noteworthy changes include a revamped user interface via the new default skin “Confluence“, DirectX support by default for the Windows platform, a complete reorganization of the settings menus, automatic video information extraction, and smoother video playback. In addition, all scrapers have been updated, new remotes are supported out of the box, and codecs have been updated for more reliable playback. For a full changelog, see the end of this post.

GUI:

Improved XBMC GUI Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
Powerbutton follows “shutdown function” in settings/system/power saving
Updated translations for most languages (help is always wanted with translation)
Skinnable Weather Plugin API enabling third-party Weather Plugins (Python Scripts)
Edit button for RSS feeds in settings, (needs RssTicker script installed, see SCRIPTS section below)
New screensaver option to turn off the screen (using VESA DPMS)
Always On Top option to advancedsettings.xml when XBMC runs in Windowed Mode
Better support for multi-monitor setups
Settings have been re-organized and cleaned up to sync with new features

Playback:

High Definition, Surround Sound, and Subtitle Flagging and Filtering in Video Library
Added support for SingStar and UltraStar Karaoke Lyrics Format
Updated FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library
Speed up RAW image loading and handle more file extensions
Implemented better WAV/PCM handling on 64-bit operating-systems
Added support for additional tags in CUE sheets (Genre/Year)
Added support for MPL2 (Blu-ray) subtitles format
Added support forVPlayer subtitles format (which unfortunately is still in use)
Added support for RTMP (Flash) live video streams, plus skip, pause, and resume feature
Added proper MMS/MMSH streaming client (libmms) support
Added audio and subtitle delay pop-up to the GUI (similar to volume control)
Improved Commercial Skipping, EDL (Edit Decision List), and SceneMarker support
Options for smoother video playback (syncing the video to the refresh rate of the display)
Smart Playlists support for video resolution, aspect-ratio, codec, audio, and subtitles
Extension of ExternalPlayer enabling multiple external players based on file-extension
Added overlay renderer for dvd/vobsub/xsub

Library:

Performance improvements to SQLite (database) queries (help is always wanted here)
Support for movie sets and a sortorder tag in the Video Library
UPnP MediaServer compliant with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standards
Ability to view pictures over UPnP in XBMC, also loads of fixes to the UPnP library
Added scan for new content command to HTTP API, extended XBMC.updatelibrary call
Reorganized MythTV directory structure to separate TV Shows from Movies
Support importing MythTV movies into the Movies Library (including scraping)
Added support local actor thumbnails (store as actor_name.tbn under .actors directory)
Scrape studio info for TV Show/Season/Episode, info is available via studio field item
Changed handling in Scrapers and NFO replacing «thumbs» with multiple «thumb»
Added library update on resume if we are coming from suspend/hibernate
Ability to scrape and scan TV Shows into the video library by air-date via TheTVDB.com

Scrapers:

TheMovieDB.org (TMDB) movie scraper upgraded to version 2.1
Added Movie Trailer scraping from dtrailer.com to TheMovieDB.org scraper
TheTVDB.com TV Shows scraper scraper improvements and enhancements
MTV (Music Videos) scraper improvements and enhancements
New freebase music scraper (with Artist FanArt support via htbackdrops.com)
New Polish music scraper combining allmusic.com,merlin.pl, and lastfm.pl
New mymovies.dk (Multilanguage) movie scraper (*commercial)
New fdb.pl (Polish) movie scraper
New cinefacts.de (German) movie scraper
New filmdelta.se (Swedish) movie scraper
New world-art.ru (Russian) movie scraper
Updated imdb.cn (Chinese) movie scraper
New cine-passion (French/English) movie scraper
Fixes and additions for the mymovies.xml scraper

Skins:

Confluence is the new default
PM3.HD set to secondary
Removed legacy PM III (farewell old friend)

Windows-Specific:

Changed from Open GL to DirectX for GUI and video rendering.
Added Crash Dump for Windows
Support Milkdrop visualizations

Linux-Specific:

Added support for Debian building and packaging to the XBMC SVN
External libraries options when compiling XBMC for Linux making it more distro agnostic
Support for PPC (PowerPC) processors in XBMC for Linux (OpenGL support required)
Avahi Zeroconf (Zero Configuration Networking) for XBMC webserver
Added DeviceKit.Disks integration
Added DeviceKit.Power and ConsoleKit.Manager integration

OS X Specific:

Logitech Harmony Universal Remote support
Added support for CoreAudio API and removed the PortAudio API code
AC3 and DTS digital audio pass-through to SP/DIF on Apple TV (thanks to CoreAudio)
Support for running external Applescripts
Support for command-tab application switching
support for OS X Spaces (virtual desktops)

Live-Specific:

New installer with disk partitioning support, network setup and language selection
Uses Beatzeps08’s variation of duduke’s great “spinner black” usplash theme! Thanks Beatzeps08!!
Based on Ubuntu Karmic
NVIDIA drivers: 190.53 (VDPAU included on supported GPUs)
ATI/AMD drivers: Catalyst 9.11
Includes the magic tvheadend package, which brings live TV in XBMCLive
The plugin “SVN Repo Installer” is also included, thus installing new scripts/plugins/skins will be easier


XBMC 9.11: RC1 ready for testing
December 17th, 2009 Team XBMC 3 comments

The testing process is winding down, and we are happy to present XBMC 9.11 Release Candidate 1. Assuming there are no major show-stoppers, we expect that this will be the last pre-release before final. That means that this is your last chance to report major bugs, or to help us reproduce or fix the ones that have been identified. If you have submitted a trac ticket and we’ve asked for further assistance, this is the time to help! For those not bold enough to try the pre-releases, watch this site in the coming days for a summary of the new features you can expect to see in Camelot.


XBMC 9.11: Beta2 ready for testing
December 9th, 2009 Team XBMC No comments

Development for Camelot is winding down, and we have a new beta for all brave users to try. We have closed just under 200 bugs since the last beta (to be fair, some of those were translations and other small patches). That is an impressive number, thanks to all who have reported their issues. As we are feature frozen, nothing new has been added this time around, we’re purely focusing on fixing bugs.

As always, head on over to the download page for the latest and greatest. The Ubuntu PPAs will be updated soon. Give it a go, and be sure to submit quality bug reports if you have any issues. Also, please keep great the translations coming!


XBMC 9.11 Beta1: Introducing Confluence
November 22nd, 2009 Team XBMC 2 comments

Confluence_LogoAs the testing portion of Camelot continues, we would like to introduce Confluence as the new default XBMC skin. We have also stopped including the original Project Mayhem III skin (Don’t worry, PM3.HD is still there). It will be added to the gallery soon, but for now you can find it here.

A ‘Confluence’ is the coming together of many things into one point, and the skin lives up to that for sure. Jezz_X started it as a progression of his MediaStream_Redux, but it has evolved into something entirely different from its origins. You’ll surely notice that it shares a home-screen ‘blade’ with MediaStream, a settings screen feel with Aeon, views from many other skins, etc. In short, he’s used ideas from existing skins to make a coherent amalgamation that is both sexy and easy to use. Feel free to visit the gallery for screenshots or the forum to discuss the skin.

Confluence

Confluence 'Fanart' View

Soft String Freeze

Also for this release, the settings cleanup is in the final stages. For the most part, we’ve reorganized and renamed everything that needed attention. All that’s left now is the finishing touches. As a result, you may notice that some of your settings have reverted to the new defaults. Please double-check this before submitting bug reports.

While strings are not completely frozen yet, we ask at this time that translators begin submitting their translations, paying special attention to the settings and Confluence. There should be no new strings and no drastic changes from here on out, only tweaks where they are needed.

Skin Freeze

We’re introducing a skin freeze for this release in an effort to improve the experience of users and alleviate some of the stress for skinners. From this point on, the XBMC skinning engine should be considered frozen, meaning that only bugfixes will be committed. We ask that all skinners take this opportunity to be sure that your skins work with Beta1. Starting with Camelot, the skin gallery will reflect the skins that work in the current STABLE version of XBMC. If skinners wish to link to skins that work on unstable versions of XBMC, they should make the distinction VERY clear on their skin page and optimally link to their forum for all necessary information. We hope that this will help to clear the confusion for the many casual users of XBMC who don’t visit the forum, but want to see the skins that will work in the latest stable version.


XBMC 9.11: Alpha2 ready for testing
November 12th, 2009 Team XBMC

The second testing release in the Camelot series has been tagged and is now available for general consumption. The first Alpha was a great success; all of the known issues listed in the previous announcement have been fixed, along with a slew of others. All of those who are currently using Alpha1 are strongly encouraged to update. Though the same warnings still apply: this should be treated as pre-release software and is only for those who don’t mind running into a few bugs.

As usual, some of the builds are still being created or uploaded. The new files will appear on the downloads page and the PPAs as they become available.


XBMC 9.11: Alpha1 ready for testing
November 4th, 2009 Team XBMC 29 comments

Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release.

Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as such. While it’s not likely to burn your house down or eat your pets, it’s likely that testers will run into a few bugs. If this happens, please search TRAC to see if someone else has already reported it. If not, you may submit a QUALITY bug report. Keep in mind that the reason for releasing alphas/betas is so that we can get a better feel for what bugs are out there. If you don’t report them, we can’t fix them.

We are also still working hard to clean up the settings. Many useless ones have been removed, but there’s still quite a bit of rearranging to do.

There are a host of new features in this release, far too many to list here. The highlights are:

* DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
* Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
* Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
* Switch to Core Audio on OSX
* Many VDPAU improvements under linux
* Many platform-specific customizations
* Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.


XBMC 9.04 Babylon

Final version released.


XBMC 9.04 Babylon RC1 released

No changelog yet


XBMC 9.04 Babylon Beta 1 released
Bookmark and Share By jmarshall, posted April 23, 2009 5:58 am

Hot on the heals of the Alpha 1 release, and some 350 code fixes later, the first (only?) beta release of XBMC 9.04 is now available.New in this release is support for PPC processors under Mac OS X, thanks to new developer Beenje.We’ve also branched for release, which means that from here to the end of the month or so we’ll be only taking well-reviewed fixes in to the final Babylon release.Please give it a run through it’s paces and let us know if you have any problems.The more testing that’s done, the more stable XBMC 9.04 will be!


Babylon Alpha 1 (9.04)

As predicted by many, the codename for this next release is Babylon.New in 9.04 is the VDPAU code (hardware decoding of h264 and VC1 on recent nvidia GPUs on Linux) worked on by motd2k, and the path cleanup work (XBMC will no longer steal all those drive letters on Windows), in addition to all the usual improvements that you’ve come accustomed to expecting.

We’ll need help to get things nice and stable for release.This means taking time to test things thoroughly, helping developers reproduce problems, identifying any holes in the current documentation and so on.

Let the bug-bashing begin!


XBMC ‘Atlantis’ released

Team-XBMC is proud to announce the cross-platform release of XBMC Media Center for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Windows, and Xbox, code named ‘Atlantis‘.

We’ve reached the end of over 3 months of bug bashing, and have closed 425 tickets for this release and, while there are still some bugs outstanding, we feel that ‘Atlantis’ is reasonably stable, and thus it’s time to move on and get cracking on new features.We’ve branched for release, and will maintain this branch with critical bug fixes while we move on and begin working on new features in the main linuxport trunk.

Thanks to all in the community who have made this possible by reporting bugs and suggesting improvements.In particular we’d like to recognise the sterling efforts of Sho who was our release manager for ‘Atlantis’, diligently handling the trac system on behalf of developers.We’d also like to thank our new QA team of Arnova, SandmanCL and ShortySco for their help verifying bug reports and making it easier for the devs to concentrate on fixing bugs.

Go grab XBMC ‘Atlantis’ and let us know how it goes!


XBMC 'Atlantis' Beta 2 release

Team-XBMC is proud to announce the second cross-platform Beta version of XBMC Media Center for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Windows, and Xbox, in preparation for the upcoming point release of XBMC, code named 'Atlantis'.

New in this release is multi-core video decoding for Windows users, courtesy of a rebuilt FFmpeg by WiSo and AreaScout, and XBMC now runs on the Apple TV via the easy to use USB installer created by Scott Davilla. We've also updated the skins (PM3.HD, Project Mayhem III, and MediaStream by Team Razorfish) to their latest versions.

With almost 80 tickets closed, and close to 200 commits to SVN since Beta 1 was released, Beta 2 represents a clear step forward in terms of stability. Thanks to all in the community who have made this possible by reporting bugs and suggesting improvements!

Go grab XBMC 'Atlantis' Beta 2 and let us know how it goes!

For more information see:
http://xbmc.org


XBMC 'Atlantis' Beta 1 release

Team-XBMC is proud to announce the first cross-platform Beta version of XBMC media center for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and Xbox, in preparation for the upcoming stable release of XBMC, code named 'Atlantis'. There are three important news items associated with this release:

1. The first item that is new in this release is the brand new skin "PM3.HD", a high-definition tribute to Project Mayhem III, which will be gracing screens as the default skin on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Xbox users can, of course, choose to use this skin if they wish as well, and the original Project Mayhem III skin is still packaged with Beta 1 for those who prefer the old-school look. This is in addition to the already awesome selection of skins available for XBMC.

2. The second item is the initial release of "XBMC Live", a bootable CD which gives users the opportunity to try XBMC on their computer, without touching their harddrive. In addition, XBMC Live allows installation of XBMC, complete with an operating system, onto a USB flash memory sticks for a permanent, fast booting, dedicated set-top-box style installation of XBMC. XBMC Live is designed to support Microsoft's MCE Remote and USB receiver out-of-the-box.

3. The third item is that the XBMC for Mac release now has initial support for integrating iTunes and iPhoto media into XBMC. For more information on this, please read this developers blog entry; "iTunes and iPhoto integration in XBMC". The Mac release of Beta 1 also comes bundled with a bonus skin for XBMC, and that is MediaStream by Team Razorfish, (this skin can, of course, be downloaded and installed on all XBMC platforms, like all other XBMC skins).

You should know that XBMC 'Atlantis' is still in a feature freeze, the final release of which is scheduled for October, and we really need your help in order to make 'Atlantis' as stable as possible. We encourage all users to download and use this Beta release in preference to using SVN or the Alpha builds, and test it thoroughly, reporting all bugs to our tracking system.

We would also appreciate any and all assistance in making sure that the online manual and FAQ are as up to date as possible. Both the online manual and FAQ are wiki based so just register and request write access if you wish to contribute. In addition, translations and updates of XBMC language files is another area where help would be appreciated.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the XBMC community for the great feedback in terms of bug reports and usability suggestions. Without your assistance, we would never be able to make XBMC as solid and stable as it is right now.

XBMC Live (ISO in ZIP archive):
XBMC_for_Windows-Atlantis-Beta_1.zip

XBMC for Mac
XBMC_for_Mac-Atlantis-Beta_1.dmg

XBMC for Windows:
XBMC_for_Windows-Atlantis-Beta_1.exe

For more information please visit http://xbmc.org

Yours sincerely / Team-XBMC


XBMC Atlantis Alpha 3
Today Team-XBMC has officially hit a feature freeze in anticipation of an upcoming stable release of XBMC, codenamed 'Atlantis'. XBMC Atlantis will be released on Linux, Mac, Windows, and Xbox simultaneously in about 2-months time. You may track the development progress here.

In order to make this release as stable as possible, we will need your help with testing the XBMC and reporting bugs to trac. We would also appreciate all and any assistance in making sure that the XBMC online manual and FAQ is as up-to-date as possible, (both the manual and FAQ are wiki based so anyone who register can request write access from us), in addition, translations and updates of the language files are also wanted.

An "Alpha 3" release for all platforms will be released shortly. We encourage all XBMC users to use this release instead of SVN builds when reporting bugs.

Changelog
http://xbmc.org/trac/timeline