Ooit eeuwen geleden verscheen er een heel erg handig stukje homebrew software op de eerste Xbox. XBMC (Xbox Media Center) kon alle video bestanden op de omgebouwde console afspelen. Maar XBMC is al een tijdje dood en gaat tegenwoordig door het leven als Kodi. Dit verdomd handige stukje software is geheel modulair en hier door is er zoveel meer mogelijk dan alleen maar video bestanden af te spelen. Je kan door addons bijvoorbeeld streams kijken die niet altijd even legaal zijn en copyright schenden. Zo juist is de nieuwste versie (15.0 met de naam Isengard) verschenen en wat er veranderd is kan je hier onder lezen en zien.

Kodi 15.0 Features
Across platforms, Kodi itself has gained quite a lot of features. Some notable examples include:

• A new chapter selector window - Allows you to visually browse and select chapters from mkvs and other containers that support chapters.

• Adaptive seeking (aka Skip Steps) - The more times you press a button to seek in a period of time, the larger the jump forward or backward will be.



• Audio and Subtitle Lists - For content that includes multiple audio and subtitle choices, you can select from a full list of choices, rather than manually searching through a spinner.

• Language Add-ons and Expanded International Preferences - Now language translations aren't dependent upon release, but get regularly updated to all users as the add-ons themselves update. Additionally, you now have total control over date, time, temperature and more displayed formats.

• Improved Add-on Manager - The add-on manager has now been reworked to help make finding the add-ons you are looking for easier.

Additional Improvements and Changes

Other improvements include:

• ffmpeg 2.6.3 update
• Improved Closed Captioning support in Live TV
• Fixed music video queuing
• Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as "update library"
• Windows DXVA HEVC hardware decoding support if driver and hardware support exist
And more.

Changes from 14.2 to 15.0 include:

• Minimal 10.7 Lion 64-bit required on Mac OSX
• Minimal iOS 5.1 required and ATV2 support discontinued
• Minimum Android 4.2 Jelly Bean MR1 required on Android
• Ubuntu 12.04 support dropped in PPA
• On Android the system now handles the volume instead of Kodi
• Removed the need for root/SU on Android. Some hardware/firmware might not like that. Please contact your hardware supplier
• Removal of Tuxbox support. Users of Enigma2 boxes can use the VUPlus PVR add-on
• Removal of AFP filesystem support
• Remove legacy code pre-Frodo 11.0
• Vast amount of possible memory leaks, segfaults, crashes and minor issues have been fixed
• General improvements regarding code stability and performance in all areas
• General code clean-up in all areas to simplify adding future features
And more.

DirectX 11 upgrade (not included in 15.0)

Although this release post is all about the upcoming 15.0 version, mentioning the DX11 upgrade for Kodi 16 is very important. One of our developers afedchin took on this task and completely revised our DirectX 9 implementation and upgraded it to the more current standard of DirectX 11. Don't worry if you still have an older card, we only use low level features so you don't need to run to the shop for new gear. If you are having problems on Windows you can head to our forum where you can find the most recent build available which is currently based on our 15.0 release. We appreciate all the feedback we can get. Read more: here. Again this will not be part of our final 15.0 release, it will be in 16.0.