Kodi developers have recently announced two release for Kodi: the stable version of Kodi 14.2 Helix, which should be the last Kodi 14 release, and Kodi 15 Alpha 2 Isengard with some interesting new features.
Since Kodi 14.2 is a minor release, no new features have been added, but they fixed several bugs:
- Application stopped responding on Windows
- Gap-less playback on MP3
- Playback of rtmp protocol
- Scanning of newly added episodes
- Fix multipath source scanning
- Loading external subtitles in some cases
- packaging of PIL module on Android. This fixes some script error when using weather add-on
- Fix video playback on all platform after refresh rate change
- Various bugs that were present in PVR add-ons.
- Save weather location
- Fix filtering of foreign add-ons
- ftps handling
- Use LastWrite instead of ChangeTime for file system on Windows
As usual, you can download the release via Kodi download page for Windows, Linux. Mac OS X, Android ARM and x86, iOS, ATV2, and Raspberry Pi.
So now all developments effort are focused on Kodi 15 codenamed Isengard, which some of the new features including:
- Chapter Selector Window – When you first launch a movie and navigate to the Bookmarks icon in the Video GUI, Kodi will automatically populate all the necessary bookmarks with the name and a picture of each chapter. Disabled by default on slower devices like the Raspberry Pi 1, but you can enable in System->Video->File lists->Extract chapter thumbnails.
- Audio and Subtitle Lists – Audio and subtitle streams in Blu-rays are now listed as one big list for easier selection.
- Language Add-ons and an Expansion of International Options – Kodi 15 allows more much precise control over most of the International settings such as temperature, date/time, etc.. All languages won’t be installed by default as in the case in previous Kodi/XBMC versions, but instead your language of choice will be download as needed. This will allow for faster language updates since you won’t need to wait for Kodi releases.
- Add-on Manager Improvements – The Add-on Manager should become easier to use.
- Misc improvements – Some code clean-up, removal of AFP file system, Windows DXVA HEVC hardware decoding support, and so on.
You can download Kodi 15 alpha and nightly builds @ http://kodi.tv/download/#alphabuilds.
Thanks to Harley for the tips.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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It is most strange that, after having gone through all the contortions to rename xbmc to kodi, the developers have not bothered to rename their page at GitHub
https://github.com/xbmc
from xbmc to kodi, and the page there still proclaims “XBMC Foundation” with the kodi source repository (the only place to actually get the latest release source code, which is not even mentioned on the Kodi web site download page)
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc
Surely a most confusing arrangement?
My mistake — if one keeps scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, down the Download web page, all the very long way to the bottom, it does actually provide a link to the source on the Github page.
Nonetheless, there is no information concerning the fact that for Helix 14 versions, one must still use the Github Odenkamp repository to get the PVR addons (which enables Live TV) source code and not the official PVR addon source code from the Github XBMC repository because that is on the new API for Isengaard 15.