Developers release first beta XBMC successor Kodi

The XBMC Foundation has released the first beta of XBMC successor Kodi. The open source media player software, which is changing its name, includes support for playing h265 videos, although this still happens without hardware acceleration.

Kodi 14.0, codenamed Helix, includes ffmpeg 2.4. This open source video library makes it possible to play back video compressed with the h265 codec. The format is intended, among other things, to compress 4k videos and it promises a compression twice as efficient than h264. Ffmpeg does not support hardware acceleration for h265 video playback yet. The XBMC Foundation therefore warns that a solid CPU is required and that many Android devices do not have sufficient processing power for such calculation tasks.

The Kodi release would also greatly speed up library building and scanning, while also improving compatibility with the upnp protocol. For example, from now on, artwork can also be exchanged between Kodi clients and servers, and a search function will become available.

When managing add-ons it is now possible to block automatic updates and to disable update notifications. From now on, virtual keyboards are also available with layouts other than the classic QWERTY layout.

On Android, Kodi would support more chipsets, including hardware 4k acceleration for the AMLogic s802 chipset and support for the Freescale i.MX6 soc. For iOS users, AirPlay has been brought back to work after the upgrade to iOS 7 caused problems in XBMC. Several audio bugs have been squashed on the Windows, OS X and Linux platforms, while dxva acceleration is also said to have been improved in Windows. The Foundation changed the name because XBMC would refer too much to the Microsoft console.