Official XBMC Releases and Discussion

[crainger]

nekro, could you please enlarge the body text please? The huge heading throw off the scale and makes the body text way way to small.

thnx.

PVR news is very good, but I'll wait a while I think until it's rock solid. Nothing worse than missing a show because the software recording it fell over.

[betterdan]

Those are some big words.

[six_storm]

New update can't come fast enough. Camelot is starting to hose on me after a few days of my HTPC running.

[nekrosoft13]

hmm, my database is about 2 years old, always install new version on top

[nekrosoft13]

Today we announce the first beta in what we hope is a very short pre-release cycle. Dharma has been in development for over 9 months now, and we’re quite happy with the result.

The improvements are too many to name, but head over to the milestone page to get an idea. By far the biggest new feature is the Add-ons system. Our community is full of talented script-writers, skinners, and designers; we wanted XBMC to display their full potential. The result is a powerful and flexible system that allows for complete customization of the XBMC experience. Gone are the days of digging for the latest version of buggy plugins, or incomplete skins in our forums. Most of our users probably never even made it that far.


Currently available video sources.

We have refactored everything that doesn’t belong inside the core of XBMC to be an addon. So in the future, your scrapers, visualizations, skins, etc. will update automatically (unless disabled). Since opening the xbmc.org repository a few weeks ago, submissions have been pouring in. We expect to have a very nice collection by the time we reach our final release.

But don’t let the add-ons take away from the loads of other features (hardware acceleration, anyone?) that have gone into XBMC in the last 9 months. We’ll be sure to hi-lite some of the other big features in the coming days/weeks.


Install new skins from inside of XBMC


For those brave users, please give beta1 a shot. Builds are ready for all OSs, visit the download page to grab them. If you stumble upon any nasty bugs, be sure to send us a QUALITY bug report. Beware of (at minimum) the following:

As always, treat this as beta-quality software. Be sure to back up your profile in case you decide to roll back.
The clunky old web interface has been removed. We’re working hard to have a new one ready for final release.
svn-ppa users may have to remove old xbmc packages before installing Dharma.
You may have to reset your screensaver and visualization settings after upgrade. These are now addons.
Pre-Dharma scripts/plugins/skins will NOT work with Dharma, but most have been updated accordingly.
Enjoy. And to the add-on creators: keep the submissions coming!

http://xbmc.org/theuni/2010/08/30/finally-out-the-door-dharma-beta1/

Whats new

Planned major new features and functions for XBMC codename "Dharma"
GUI:


◦ Improved XBMC GUI Skinning Framework / Engine making it even more flexible and powerful

◦Improved mouse support, added better exclusive control support for dragging of sliders/scroll bars

◦Improved mouse click handling and added the possibility of long verses short clicks detection

Addons Manager


◦Unified addon framework.

◦Addon Browser GUI that will allow for an easy way to find, install, and manage third-party addons

Playback:


◦Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe hardware accelerated video decoders support

◦Added support for unencrypted Blu-ray Disc playback (via libbluray and libbdnav) without menus

◦Added Blu-ray Disc detection for external players (map external player in playercorefactory.xml)

◦Added raw bitstream pass-through support for MP1, MP2, MP3, and AAC encoded audio tracks

◦Added a real-time ATSC A/52 encoder for on-the-fly Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3) transcoded output

◦Added support for 5.1 Multi-Channel Analog Output (discrete 6-channel PCM output)

◦Added High-Quality Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as OpenGL GLSL Shaders

◦Added support for embedded Blu-ray/AVCHD PGS subtitles in MKV (Matroska) video containers

◦Added support to use MKV (Matroska) embedded descriptions for audio and subtitle tracks

◦Added support for unsorted subtitles (ass/ssa, srt, smi)

◦Added support for multiple language sami subtitle

◦Added "Wide Zoom" video mode option, a combination zoom, cropping, and non-linear stretching

◦Added "Stretch 14x9" video mode option, a combination of zoom, cropping, and linear stretching

◦Added "Stretch 16x9" video mode option, a combination of zoom, cropping, and linear stretching

◦Upgraded FFmpeg (libavformat and libavcodec) audio/video codec and demux library

◦Improved Dream Multimedia Dreambox Enigma2 bouquets support in the TuxBox Client

◦Improved audio channel matrix mapping, audio channels downmixing, and upmixing support

Library:


◦Added FanArt image cache height-value size option to advancedsettings.xml (defaults to 480)

◦Added initial support for MySQL as abstracted database backend for video and music libraries

◦Added improved portability of SQL statements used in the video and music libraries

◦Improved performance for SQL database queries ( help is always wanted here!)

Scrapers:


◦Added hd-trailers.net movie trailers scraping to TheMovieDB.org and IMDb scrapers

◦Added new 1ting (Chinese) music scraper

◦Added new 7176 (Chinese) movie scraper

◦Added new getlib (Chinese) movie scraper

◦Added new m1905 (Chinese) movie scraper

◦Added new daum (Korean) TV Shows scraper

◦Added new daum (Korean) music scraper

◦Added new filmbasen (Norwegian) movie scraper

◦Added new moviemeter (Dutch) movie scraper

◦Added new videobuster (German) movie scraper

◦Added new kino (German) movie scraper

◦Improved ofdb (German) movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping

◦Improved TheTVDB (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper

◦Removed Discogs (English) music scraper due to them blocking XBMC

◦Removed imdb-cn (Chinese) movie scraper due to website closed

Skins:


◦Confluence: Addon Browser specific window and icon to get to it in the settings GUI

◦Confluence: Added button for Subtitle Downloads to Video OSD (add script path in settings)

◦Confluence: Added browsing for subtitles in full screen video overlay

Other:


◦Added JSON-RPC and JSON API over HTTP and Sockets for bidirectional communication

◦Added microhttpd Web Server (and removed the old GoAhead and Spyce code) for HTTP API
*
◦Added HTTP authentication methods any, anysafe, digest, and ntlm (via cURL libcurl)

◦Added SSH file transfer protocol (sftp) via libssh
◦Added support for MD5 passwords in GUIEditControl

◦Added doxygen resources for generating source code documentation

◦Added the ability to turn off LCD/VFD backlight while screensaving to advancedsettings.xml

◦Improved XBMC's integrated DLNA / UPnP MediaServer and Client compatibility

◦Improved last.fm and libre.fm passwords storage with MD5, requires user to input password again

Live Specific:


◦Base XBMC Live on a stripped Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Linux Distribution

◦Added support for GRUB 2 based images

◦Updated NVIDIA and ATI binary graphics device drivers

Linux Specific:


◦Added out-of-the-box support for Antec's VERIS family RM200 / Antec Fusion Remote Control

◦Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities

◦Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support

Windows Specific:


◦ Added initial native DXVA2 (DirectX Video Acceleration) support for H.264, VC-1, and WMV9

◦Added support for WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) for raw bitstream output

◦Added High-Quality Bicubic and Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as Direct3D HLSL

◦Added Direct3D port of the OpenGL Spectrum 3D Audio Visualization for DirectX

◦Improved support for Microsoft's DirectX, Direct3D, and DirectSound APIs for Windows

Mac OS X Specific:


◦Added OSX H.264 Acceleration

◦Improved the PowerPC (PPC CPU architecture) support

◦Removed PortAudio now that we use Core Audio

Apple TV Specific:


◦Added support for Apple TV OS 3.0.2

*Please note that new Web Server may break many third-party applications using XBMC's HTTP API!

[nekrosoft13]

XBMC 10.0 out

**Note that all skins, plugins, and scripts need to be updated by their authors to work with Dharma.
They are now part of the new add-ons system, installable from XBMC itself.

**The HTTP API is deprecated. Please use json-rpc instead.**


Addons Manager

* Added unified Addon framework that make it easy to distribute addons to XBMC (based on C-Pluff)
* Addon Browser GUI that will allow for an easy way to find, install, and manage third-party addons
* Added support for update notifications and options for manual or automatic updates of addons
* Added Team XBMC's official Addons Repository for open source addons as the default Addon Repo
* Added GUI option to install additional third-party Addons Repos from ZIP files (with addon.xml)
* Added GUI option to install third-party addons from ZIP files without it being in an Addon Repo
* Added support for scrapers (Web Scraper Metadata Aggregators) to the Addons API
* Added support for skins extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for visualizations extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for screensavers extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for python based plugins extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for python based scripts extension point to the Addons API
* Added support for web interfaces extension point to the Addons API
* Added new default web interface as an addon to remote control XBMC via any web browser
* Removed builtin SHOUTcast.com directory support and moved it to the official addons repo
* Removed builtin visualizations and moved them to the official addons repo
* Removed builtin screensavers and moved them to the official addons repo
* Removed all Adult ('XXX' classified) scrapers into a new third-party managed addons repository

GUI Engine:

* Improved XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful
* Added option to choose "default select action" of the showing info screen for videos
* Added FanArt support for Addons
* Added initial gesture support to XBMC's GUI Engine (adding touch interface API support to guilib)
* Added initial support for Windows Touch API (Windows 7 touch features and functions)
* Added ability for Karaoke player to optionally show the next song that will be played
* Added video information flagging for trailers
* Improved mouse support, added better exclusive control support for dragging of sliders/scroll bars
* Improved mouse click handling and added the possibility of long verses short clicks detection
* Updated translations for most languages (thanks to all community members who contributed!)
* Renamed "Plugins" in the Addons UI to "Media Sources" as that is what they are now
* Removed AAC, MP1, MP2, and MP3 passthrough options settings from the GUI
* Removed all Xbox only strings from the language files since the Xbox platform is no longer supported

Playback:

* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe hardware accelerated video decoders support
* Added native support for unencrypted Blu-ray Disc playback without menus (via libbluray)
* Added Blu-ray Disc detection for external players (map external player in playercorefactory.xml)
* Added support for using libbluray to play bdmv files (index.bdmv or *.mpls) from local folders
* Added raw bitstream pass-through support for MP1, MP2, MP3, and AAC encoded audio tracks
* Added real-time ATSC A/52 encoder for on-the-fly Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3) transcoded output
* Added support for 5.1 Multi-Channel Analog Output (discrete 6-channel PCM output)
* Added post-processing support and options for videos in standard definition resolutions
* Added High-Quality Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as OpenGL GLSL Shaders
* Added support for embedded Blu-ray/AVCHD PGS subtitles in MKV (Matroska) video containers
* Added support to use MKV (Matroska) embedded descriptions for audio and subtitle tracks
* Added support for DEFAULT/FORCED Matroska flags for subtitles
* Added support for color text subtitles in MKV files
* Added support for unsorted subtitles (ass/ssa, srt, smi)
* Added support for multiple language SAMI subtitle
* Added initial WebDAV (HTTP) media source support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
* Added initial SFTP media source support to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
* Added support for WebM via libvpx
* Added Zapstream support for Tuxbox (Dreambox/DBox2) client
* Added RTMPE/RTMPTE and improved RTMP/RTMPT/RTMPS support via librtmp from RTMPDump
* Added "Wide Zoom" video mode option, a combination zoom, cropping, and non-linear stretching
* Added "Stretch 14x9" video mode option, a combination of zoom, cropping, and linear stretching
* Added "Stretch 16x9" video mode option, a combination of zoom, cropping, and linear stretching
* Added support to extract lyrics from Lyrics3v2 (Lyrics3 2.00) ID3 tags when available in music files
* Added support to configured cache buffer size via advancedsettings.xml (rather than hardcoded)
* Upgraded FFmpeg that significantly improves the decoding of all widespread mainstream codecs
* Improved generalization of chapter support and SeekTime from the input stream interface
* Improved Dream Multimedia Dreambox Enigma2 bouquets support in the TuxBox Client
* Improved audio channel matrix mapping, audio channels downmixing, and upmixing support
* Improved DVD-Video navigation in using Next and Prev
* Improved timecode-based seeking in videos

Library:

* Added FanArt image cache height-value size option to advancedsettings.xml (defaults to 480)
* Added initial support for MySQL as abstracted database backend for video and music libraries
* Added improved portability of SQL statements used in the video and music libraries
* Added ability to sort TV Shows folders by the date of the last recorded episode
* Added support for Movie Sets (option to group movie collections into sets for customized sorting)
* Added support to allow scrapers to use a normal settings.xml
* Improved performance for SQL database queries ( expert help is always wanted in this area!)
* Improved video scanner engine
* Improved metadata scraper engine

Scrapers:

* Added hd-trailers.net movie trailers scraping to TheMovieDB.org and IMDb scrapers
* Added new Rotten Tomatoes (English) movie scraper
* Added new Freebase (English) music scraper
* Added new 1ting (Chinese) music scraper
* Added new 7176 (Chinese) movie scraper
* Added new getlib (Chinese) movie scraper
* Added new m1905 (Chinese) movie scraper
* Added new daum (Korean) TV Shows scraper
* Added new daum (Korean) music scraper
* Added new filmbasen (Norwegian) movie scraper
* Added new moviemeter (Dutch) movie scraper
* Added new videobuster (German) movie scraper
* Added new kino (German) movie scraper
* Improved ofdb (German) movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
* Improved TheTVDB (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper
* Removed Discogs (English) music scraper due to them blocking XBMC
* Removed imdb-cn (Chinese) movie scraper due to website closed

Skins:

* Confluence: Addon Browser specific window and icon to get to it in the settings GUI
* Confluence: Added border to the Addon icons in media info view for a uniformed look
* Confluence: Added FanArt support for the Addon Browser
* Confluence: Added buttons in the OSD's for Lyrics and Subtitle Addons
* Confluence: Added browsing for subtitles in full screen video overlay
* Confluence: Added browsing for lyrics in full screen video overlay
* Confluence: Added "Recently Added" Movies and TV Shows script view in the home menu
* Confluence: Improved file and folder path name reading for media flagging
* Confluence: Removed script window completely (turns out you don't need one now)

Other:

* Added JSON-RPC and JSON API over HTTP and Sockets for bidirectional communication
* Added microhttpd Web Server (and removed the old GoAhead and Spyce code) for HTTP API
* Added HTTP authentication methods any, anysafe, digest, and ntlm (via cURL libcurl)
* Added SSH file transfer protocol (sftp) via libssh
* Added support for MD5 passwords in GUIEditControl
* Added function / setting to enable DXTn texture compression (DDS) to all cached non-skin images
* Added doxygen resources for generating source code documentation
* Added ability to turn off LCD/VFD backlight while screensaving to advancedsettings.xml
* Added builtin command for sending Wake-On-Lan (WOL) magic packets
* Added builtin command irsend infra-red send commands using LIRC for IR blaster (lirc.send)
* Added joystick deadzone and calibration support to advanced settings ( advancedsettings.xml)
* Added power abstraction framework with a way to send OnWake and OnSuspend events
* Improved XBMC's integrated DLNA / UPnP MediaServer and Client compatibility
* Improved last.fm and libre.fm passwords storage with MD5, requires user to input password again

Live Specific:

* Optimized XBMC Live for the first and next-generation NVIDIA ION / ION 2 (as reference platforms)
* Added Bootable Disk Wizard (BDW) addon to the Live CD that makes bootable flash disk easier for users
* Added Plymouth Theme with XBMC logo typeface to replace the old USplash Splash Screen on Boot
* Added support for GRUB 2 based images
* Improved support for Wake-on-USB from ACPI S3 Standby with Remote/Keyboard/Mouse
* Updated XBMC Live to to based on a stripped Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Linux Distribution
* Updated NVIDIA and ATI proprietary binary graphics device drivers (restricted drivers)

Linux Specific:

* Optimized keymapping for navigation with MCE (Microsoft Windows Media Center) compatible remotes
* Added PPA (Personal Package Archives) packages for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
* Added support for ARM processor architecture (with TI OMAP3 and NVIDIA Tegra 2 as reference)
* Added initial support OpenGL ES 2.0 compliance in the Linux renderer for embedded devices via EGL
* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
* Added OpenMAX Video Acceleration support (requires OpenMax IL compatible hardware, like Tegra2)
* Added NEON (ARM) Video Acceleration support (requires NEON compatible hardware, like OMAP3)
* Added initial implementation of the OnLowBattery signal in UPower
* Added lircmap for linux-input-layer devices to allow for joystick and gamepad keymaps
* Added lircmap for Alienware Alienware Dual Compatible Game Pad
* Added lircmap for the Xbox 360 (wireless) controller
* Added lircmap for Interact AxisPad
* Added lircmap for MCE (Microsoft Windows Media Center) remotes via SoundGraph iMON IR-receivers
* Added lircmap for Twinhan remotes
* Added lircmap for Antec's VERIS family RM200 / Antec Fusion Remote Control
* Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
* Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support

Windows Specific:

* Added support for most MCE (Microsoft Windows Media Center) compatible remotes out-of-the-box
* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added initial native DXVA 2 support for H.264, VC-1, and WMV9 (Windows Vista and 7 only)
* Added support for WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) for raw bitstream output
* Added High-Quality Bicubic and Lanczos Upscalers (Video Resamplers) as Direct3D HLSL
* Added Direct3D port of the OpenGL Spectrum 3D Audio Visualization for DirectX
* Added support for Visual Studio 2010 Express edition and Visual Studio 2010 non-Express edition
* Improved support for Microsoft's DirectX, Direct3D, and DirectSound APIs for Windows

Mac OS X Specific:

* Optimizated remote navigation and improved keymapping for both the old and the new Apple Remote
* Added Apple VDADecoder Video Accelleration support (requires Snow Leopard and NVIDIA 9400 or later)
* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added analog audio downmix to user-selected format
* Added check for AC/Battery and Low Battery warning notifications (set to 10 percent)
* Improved the PowerPC (PPC CPU architecture) support for Mac OS X 10.4
* Removed PortAudio now that we only use Core Audio

Apple TV Specific:

* Added Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder Support
* Added support for Apple TV OS 3.0.2

[nekrosoft13]

XBMC to work on Sigma devices in the future, they are a major player in the set-top box market and their SOCs are the heart of many products from Popcorn Hour and WDTV, as well as countless other consumer media devices


http://xbmc.org/theuni/2011/01/05/xbmc-port-from-sigma/

[nekrosoft13]

The XBMC team is proud to present our first ARM-based release, and it’s a big one. Scott Davilla, with the help of Edgar (gimli) Hucek and Zeljko (amet) Ametovic and several other developers and testers, is finally ready to pull the curtain off of his fun little secret.

You know that $99 tiny form-factor powerhouse that would be just perfect if it could only run XBMC? Now it can.
Or how about that iPad that is just begging to be used as a real portable media center? Now it can.
And while we’re at it, put your iPhone4 to work using XBMC as well. Why? Because we can.

These are not initial ports, and they are not early development snapshots. Here they are: full XBMC installs and source code, ready for consumption.

AppleTV2
This thing may fit in your pocket, but don’t underestimate its power. Unfortunately, it is seriously lacking in capability due to its limited feature-set revolving around rentals and iTunes. Where’s the fun in that?




Full XBMC install, this is not a remote or thin client streamer.
No longer is your AppleTV2 chained to iTunes.
Who wants transcoded video anyway?
Share files on your network your way.
Full hardware decode for 720p/1080p movies.
Everything else you know and love about XBMC.





iPad/iPhone4
What good is a tablet that makes you play by its rules? We at XBMC want our media our way.




You guessed it, this is full-blown XBMC. Not a remote.
Launch XBMC like any other app.
Drag and drop media from your computer, or share it on your home-network
Also fully hardware accelerated for most formats.
Works on iPhone4, though it’s currently frustrating to use.
Challenge: Who will be the first to create a gesture-driven skin?





Availability
As you might have guessed, you won’t be seeing XBMC in the app-store any time soon, since it directly competes with apple products. XBMC will only be installable for those of you with jailbroken devices. If that’s you, head to the wiki for instructions for the atv2 or ipad/iphone.



http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2381665#post2381665

[nekrosoft13]

Bug-fix Release: 10.1
March 10th, 2011

While we are moving quickly to get new features into 11.0, the time has come for a maintenance release for Dharma. We recommend that all users update to 10.1 as soon as possible to increase stability.

The main focus of this release is to address a bug that could cause XBMC to freeze when updating a skin. We have held back skin updates from the main repository because of this, but now that it is fixed, they will begin rolling out in a few weeks.

This is intended as a bug-fix release only, no new features have been introduced. Notable fixes include:

* If an in-use skin was updated in Windows, XBMC would freeze
* Some RTMP streams in Windows did not play
* Included add-ons have been updated
* The correct referrer is now used for downloading add-ons, improving dependency statistics
* Crashes during playback on ATI hardware in some circumstances have been fixed
* Hardware decoding improvements for OSX
* Various small fixes

In addition, XBMC Live has been updated with the most recent packages, one of which includes a fix for the annoying SMB+Windows Live Essentials bug.



http://xbmc.org/theuni/2011/03/10/bug-fix-release-10-1/

[six_storm]

Question to XBMC users. I think there is a way, but can't figure it out. I want to be able to "mirror" the collection on one computer to another XBMC device (Apple TV). So instead of the ATV downloading all the information (movie posters, pics, movie info, etc), it can just read the collection (or library) from another XBMC server. Is this possible?

Streaming works just fine from my ATV, but I'd rather point it to my media server and call it a day. Any thoughts?

[t3hl33td4rg0n]

You could probably symlink the directories

[nekrosoft13]

You could probably symlink the directories

that might work, never tried it before.

I know that they are thinking/working on network based library that all machines in home would use.

with current setup, if you symlink you might have issues if both machines would try to write to it at the same time.

on my machines, i just copied the library and all the other files from one PC to the next, so I don't have to start from scratch.

[six_storm]

Well scratch XBMC for Apple TV, it crashes a ton. I found Plex and it works like a charm and a lot better than XBMC.

[mullet]

I installed it and wow, why did I use MP for so long. I should have listened Necro.

[six_storm]

In case you guys haven't seen, Plex now has a fork of XBMC. I use it at work and when away from home to connect to my media back home. Works perfectly along side of the iOS and Android versions.

Plexapp.com