Kodi 14.0 Feature Freeze

This morning, the Kodi team has announced that Kodi 14.0 has now entered Feature Freeze – This means that no new features will be added to the release and development will now be focused on bug fixing.

So what does this mean for us users? Well, with this milestone reached and the development focus switching to stability, we can anticipate that a Kodi 14.0 Beta will be released shortly. There has been some changes to the minimum requirements for skins which means some of your favorite skins may not be compatible, but the team are reporting that “as of now there are already several skins which are Helix ready”

Key changes reported are:

  • Ability to increase font size in Confluence skin
  • Add 5.1 PCM playback for Android.
  • Improved MusicBrainz matching from tags
  • Ability to choose between auto-update, notify or off for updating add-ons. This is a global setting for all add-ons.
  • Extend JSON-RPC which is used for by a variety of services and remotes
  • VP9 video codec now uses software multi-threading. This codec has no hardware support yet.
  • Simplifying and improving core code.
  • Choose to disable/notify/auto-update when add-on updates are available.
  • International keyboard layout
  • Update PVR add-ons
  • Redesign of the PVR windows
  • Various improvements to the Audio Engine, with the OSX platform as great beneficiary.
  • Improvements to the GUI skinning engine
  • Extended JSON-RPC interface
  • Countless smaller and larger bug-fixes throughout the program and vast improvements in every area. This should improve memory usage, stability, speed and user friendliness.
  • Add-ons are still compatible up to the Frodo/Gotham versions (excluding skins)
  • FFmpeg upgrade, this means Kodi will now be capable of playing back h.265 (also known as HEVC) and VP9 video codecs and 4K video.
  • Better UPnP compatibility between Kodi clients or third-party applications
  • Massive speed boost with scanning library or doing a clean.
  • Changed the Touch skin be a re-designed re-Touched skin. This of course only applies for touch enabled devices.
  • Support for sub-channels in PVR
  • Update sqlite which brings some improved library speed
  • Add support for DSD audio
  • Add mouse support in Bluray menus
  • Add support for EGL/GLESv2 when using X11
  • 4K playback on Android using AMLcodec
  • Support for the Freescale i.MX6 SystemOnChip
  • Replaced Touch skin with re-Touched

We want to congratulate Team Kodi on reaching this milestone and eagerly anticipate the Beta release.

For those of you wanting to take Kodi for a spin, you can download the Kodi 14.0 Alpha here.

[Via Kodi]

Michael

Michael is a technology expert with over 15 years of experience in IT, Home Theatre and Automation. Feel free to send Michael a message here.

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