Kodi

So, a slightly different topic for a change. We talk a lot about the Kodi software, its development and releases, and that's fine, as that's what we're all about and that's what everyone ultimately sees. However, we thought we'd change the subject a little and explore what goes on behind the scenes: how "Team Kodi" is structured, and what else is going on in the background in support of that glorious code. The Kodi Foundation and the Board of Directors Kodi has a legal personality. We're incorporated in the US as the Kodi Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit - or a type of NGO, in common European parlance. This is the "company", it's the entity that receives donations, s…

Team Flirc and Team Kodi are thrilled to introduce the newly designed Flirc Raspberry Pi 5 Case, Kodi Edition. Available now! Our journey began with a host of ideas that we transformed into a crowdsourcing poll on the Kodi forums. The community chose from six designs, and we loved seeing your preferences and hearing your feedback. We’re excited to continue this collaborative approach because, just as Kodi is community-driven, so should its official case be. With only about 2,000 cases available, this is a truly limited edition. Once sold out, we won’t produce more. Instead, every quarter, we’ll engage with the community again, allowing you to submit and vote on new idea…

Okay, a late announcement - apologies, you can blame the summer holiday season. Or, if it's easier, you can just blame me as the bloke with the keyboard, that works equally well. Either way, many of you will already have noticed this, but, in case you haven't ... Team Kodi is here with the first point release of the 21.x "Omega" series. A range of bugfixes have been collected since the original release of Omega 21.0. Rather than list them all here, you can see the full changelog on Github, as usual. We always want to thank everyone who has helped us track down and fix any issues. We endeavour to minimise the issues everyone experiences, but with such a large project, a…

This is a little later in the development cycle than would normally be the case, but I'm sure you'll understand why. It's traditional, as we move towards the release of a new version of Kodi, to begin the process of naming what will become its successor. In recent years, "Leia" gave way to "Matrix", which moved aside for "Nexus", and then on to our current version, "Omega". There's a clue there to the pattern, so P-something it is. Our normal process would be to ask the forums and team for suggestions, edit these down to a shortlist, and then run an internal poll and choose a winner. However, the shortlisting was done a little quickly this time, and we ended up picking …

In 2015, Kodi’s default theme Confluence was growing long in the tooth. Most of the really exciting skins from that time accomplished far more, and Confluence was ultimately a 2009 update to an existing skin called MediaStream that was itself several years old. It was time for Confluence to retire. We needed something new that adhered to the UX best practices of the time. I proposed some wireframes based on Google’s Material Design that were pretty vague, but I hoped would be enough to get us started. Almost immediately, members of our team of skilled skinners (Phil65 and Piers) jumped on the task. I made my initial suggestion early on the 17th of June, and Piers had…

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Epitaph replied May 1May 1

Recently, Team Kodi proudly released Kodi v21 "Omega", the latest major release of our popular media centre software. Our longevity and popularity means that Kodi is installed on literally millions of devices worldwide. For a range of reasons, not all of them are capable of supporting the newer releases; we do, however, try to maintain as much support as we can for the older releases, with our target being support for the previous two versions before the current one. The release of Omega thus moves Kodi Leia out of active support. The final version of Kodi Leia (v18.9) was released in October 2020. Leia was also noteworthy as being the final version which made use of th…

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Matt replied April 26Apr 26

It's time! We are very pleased to present the latest and greatest release of Kodi, v21.0 "Omega". With this release we have seen over 3,750 commits since v20.0 "Nexus" was available to the world on January 15th, 2023. As always, this has been a huge effort from many contributors, testers and supporters. Thanks go out to our team members, plus everyone in our community who sent in a pull request, tested and gave feedback, or provided support to users on the forum. We always appreciate your contribution to making Kodi better. Let's review some of the changes you can expect: Major Features FFmpeg 6 Kodi relies significantly on FFmpeg to do a lot of heavy lifting for us. …

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MidnightWatcher replied April 21Apr 21

Hi, everyone - I'm Keith, and while I now find myself President of the Kodi Foundation, my initial involvement with Kodi goes way back, as a humble user. Since our 20th anniversary came and went, I've been meaning to write a bit of a look back on how we got here - how I got here. This is the story of my - and the project's - journey. In the Beginning... In 2002, a couple guys saw the potential of being able to watch media on their own terms, through what was a new type of device: a "connected" TV device. They wanted to bring many things you'd traditionally need a computer for to the living room, operating it from the couch without needing a keyboard or mouse, controllin…

The Team Kodi PPA has long been a staple for Ubuntu (and similar) users wishing to use more recent, and less adulterated, versions of Kodi. It is with sadness that the team has come to a decision to officially retire the PPA due to the overhead of maintaining it. We want to express our sincere thanks to wsnipex for maintaining it for so many years, tirelessly making it available to countless users in the pursuit of making Kodi more easily accessible for the masses on many of the more popular Linux distributions. The Linux world is shifting slowly to packaged deployments and containers, and so, going forward, the team is looking to utilise Flatpak to hopefully give Linu…

Time flies, and we're already at the third and final day of DevCon 2024. We'll be losing people today as they head home, which will shorten events; additionally, most of the day is scheduled for the inevitable people-sitting-together-and-hacking-code later today, which will also eat into time, so this will inevitably be a short post. Random, spontaneous, unstructured conversations about mirrors, more about release cycles, about merging. A wild conversation about a potential third-party conference in south Asia, and how any of us would physically get there anyway, given that some of our members don't fly for climate reasons (and we can't afford it anyway). Various debates…

Good morning, dear reader (okay, "readers" - I'll be generous, and assume there's more than one of you!). It's a beautiful day, the skies are an endless sea of blue, the forecast is a congenial 20℃ spring day - and we're back in a sealed room, and ready to get going with Day Two of this year's DevCon. First up, romanvm, with a talk on computer text encoding - not necessarily Kodi-specific, but something that affects so many applications, particularly when using non-Latin scripts. Fundamentally, all text is abstract, and we simply need an agreed way to represent some symbols in a binary form so they can be stored, manipulated, and retrieved as needed - from 7-bit ASCII to…

The lights are dimmed, the projector is running, the microphones are tested, the coffee is on... yes, it's time for Kodi's DevCon once again! We're coming to you from beautiful Budapest, the grand capital of Hungary - which last hosted us eight years ago, and it's genuinely great to be back. With two thousand years of history, stretching from Celtic origins by way of Romans and Mongols and the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, modern Budapest is today a global city with vibrant finance, media, fashion, technology, and entertainment sectors. If you know nothing about Hungary, I promise you that you've seen this city and the surrounding countryside in more films and tel…

Can you feel the excitement building in the air? Well, you should, as we are ready for our first Release Candidate for Kodi 21.0 "Omega"! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that we'll get some regressions As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues that you wonderful testers come across. First, we'd like to make a few targeted announcements. Android users M…

Nexus just won't end, it seems: we're back already, this time what we hope will be the final release for the Nexus line. Welcome to 20.5! An assortment of bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 20.4 on Github, as usual. Release notes Input Reverted a number of controller changes that caused massive failures on Android devices. Input handling will now be the same as what was available in 20.3. Platform Specific Android Some great detective work was done by @spdfrk for a fix that meant Kodi would close the app during potential colour mode changes. A backport by @fritsch that intends to bring Nexus inline with Omega behaviour for Audi…

Editorial note: this blog post has been delayed for technical reasons, so the release is already available. Time marches on for Kodi 21 "Omega", we are here with the third Beta release! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. First, we'd like to make a …

It looks like one last hurrah was premature for the "Nexus" line: we find ourselves back again already, this time with a new 20.4 release. An assortment of bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 20.3 on Github, as usual. Release notes Build A backport aimed at fixing the failure rate of binary addon builds has been merged by @garbear. Input Update to the controller addons. Platform Specific Android Several fixes have been backported from master to fix deployment issues on Google Play. Thanks to @joseluismarti for working with us on these. A number of fixes backported to resolve input issues (remotes/controllers). iOS/tvOS A…

Hi! This is just a quick note to let everyone know that Team Kodi will be present at the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels on 3 & 4 February 2024. We will have a booth in Building H level 1 where you can try out Kodi and chat with us at your leisure :) We have team members attending that are knowledgeable about, among other things, Python add-on programming, Kodi on Linux, the Kodi flatpak package, and Kodi on embedded GPUs. If you're in the area, we'd love to see you and get your first-hand feedback about ... well, anything, really. We're also planning to have some sample branded merchandise for you to look at - so, please, join…

A new year dawns, and brings with it one last hurrah for the Kodi "Nexus" release line. An assortment of bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 20.2 on Github, as usual. Release notes Estuary An assortment of fixes for Estuary, including home categories' focus position, alignment of counter labels and Shift view for collections. Fixes to the weather layout when busy. Game/Retroplayer Fixed controllers not assigned to game ports correctly on Android. Fixed blue/pink washed out colours on Windows with 10-bit displays. Fixed possible crash in Port dialogue box. Fixed typo for the mouse middle button in Controller dialogue box. General …

We are keeping things ticking over with Kodi 21 "Omega" with the second Beta release! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. First, we'd like to make a few targeted announcements. Android users Many users may still be on the Kodi testing track for the…

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MidnightWatcher replied December 20, 20231 yr

Things are beginning to heat up for Kodi 21 "Omega" with the first Beta release! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. First, we would like to make a few targeted announcements. Android users Many users may still be on the Kodi testing track for thei…

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Matt replied October 26, 20231 yr

Time for the next milestone release for Kodi 21 "Omega". Slightly delayed this time around compared to what we were striving for, however we are happy to announce the arrival of Alpha 3. This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. A further 176 Pull Requests …

As is always inevitable in software, we are back with a new release of Kodi "Nexus". An assortment of bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 20.1 on Github, as usual. Release notes Audio An assortment of E-AC3 related fixes were backported. Estuary A fix to the Music Viz screen has been made by @enen92 in an endeavour to chase that elusive target of perfection Fixes to the seekbar timer when seeking. Game/Retroplayer A fix to a crash by memory exhaustion when some emulators are used. General A whole assortment of fixes were made to fix building Kodi with GCC13. Platform Specific Android A fix for a crash that occurred when…

Time for the next milestone release for Kodi 21 "Omega". This is our second Alpha release for this cycle. This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. Over the last couple of months we've merged 120 pull requests - fixing issues, adding features, and improvin…

Current Status - Last Updated, Monday 01 May 2023 Forum, Wiki and Paste sites are now all active. Systems have been rebuilt from scratch with new images, software and patches. All users will need to reset their passwords before they can log in. Forum registration is now open for new users. Known issues Fixed: We identified a login bug in the forum software which we've fixed and are reporting to the authors. The resolution may require some users to reset their passwords again. Fixed: There was an initial problem with registration of new accounts on the forum after we re-enabled registrations. This has now been resolved. Open: MyAlerts/Pings were not available because …

As you may have seen on other posts, we're broadly back on line now, with the forum, Wiki and paste sites all operational. It's been a huge effort by several key team members - I won't name names, but you know who you are - and we're all immensely grateful for their work. So, without putting on a hair shirt...in the interests of transparency and minimising the chances of anything like this happening again, we've really had to dig into this to see what we can learn. First of all - what happened? This is probably the most important question, and actually one of the hardest to definitively answer. We've been open about the attack vector being an old administrative accoun…