Download Kodi 16.0 beta 1

The first beta release of Kodi version 16.0 has come out. This cross platform media center software is developed for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android and iOS. Version 16.0 beta 1 includes support for Directx 11 and the ability to stretch 4:3 material to 16:9 in such a way that the images in the center of the screen do not look stretched. It is also now possible to do ‘event logging’, although the function is still rudimentary and should be further developed in Kodi 17.

Since devices that act as a remote control have fewer and fewer physical buttons, a ‘long press’ function has also been added. Also, the libstagefright framework has been removed and the karaoke function has been removed.

The changelog looks like this:

• Start of integration of ADSP (Audio Digital Signal Processing) handling (no add-ons shipped yet)
• Improve image resizing and caching algorithm to improve image quality of images
• Added support for the musicbrainz “ARTISTS” tag in id3v2, ape, xiph.
• Add date added to music library and use it for sorting
• Support saving skin settings as add-on data instead of in guisettings.xml
• Image resource add-ons which provides common image libraries than can be used by several skins and add-ons.
• Don’t mess with the long and short date formats defined in the language files
• Win32: Proper 24.0/60.0 Hz refresh rate in fake fullscreen mode
• Add sort method for albums “artist / year”. This will sort the albums chronologically by artist.
• Moved some add-on categories to “look and feel” in add-on manager
• Series recording added for PVR
• Add a “none” option for preferred subtitles
• Properly handle wired or bluetooth headsets on Android and only use PCM output
• Fix playback of VP9 and VC1 video codecs on Android
• Use best possible icons from other Android apps while browsing these in Kodi
• Enable true 1920×1080 output on AMLogic device without up-scaling
• Add Korean, Chinese and Chech keyboards
• Add multi-touch support for Linux platform
• Improve touch screen keymapping
• Add stereoscopic depth for Confluence skin
• The item that you had previously chosen will now be selected in the selection list instead of just starting at the top of the list
• Decouple Kodi and system volume on Android which removes the double audio volume slider
• Karaoke support has been completely removed as it wasn’t functional
• Further improve DX11 implementation in Windows
• iOS9 support
• Various PVR fixes and improvements
• Various improvements to the music section
• Three finger touchpad mapping in iOS to make room for new tablet gestures which will be available in Alpha 4 to complement existing tablet gestures.
• Kodi now supports being compiled with Xcode 7
• The Kodi GUI now supports a new stereoscopic depth effect for users of Kodi on 3D TVs or VR headsets
• The Music Library and Files View for music have now been unified, similar to how video files and library are unified
• Extended support for browsing movies by country and through UPnP as well as user-ratings which we be added in future versions.

Known problems in this beta

As with all developments we sometimes hit problems that need a little more time. One of the is the library export feature which currently isn’t working as it should. We have a fix pending but it needs some more work before we can include it. The other known problems is using profiles. With the splitting of skin settings we hit a small regression that affects users who are using the profile feature. Switching will possible cause your profile to be reset so in case you use this feature we suggest to not upgrade to this version.

We will make sure these issues are resolved by the release of final version.