Last August, the team behind the popular XBMC project announced a new direction for its main application, starting with a name change. The reference to the original Xbox console is now definitively behind us, and the player is now known as Kodi. Just before Christmas, the developers released the first stable build of version 14.
The adventure of XBMC officially began in 2002. At that time, the Xbox console shared the battlefield with systems like the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube. Unlike other consoles, the original Xbox used a Pentium III processor, which basically made it a camouflaged computer. From there, multiple projects focused on its modification emerged, and XBMC became one of the most popular. However, the player's success went far beyond Microsoft's hardware, adapting to all kinds of additional platforms. On the first day of August, the project leaders decided to leave the old name behind, first because it no longer symbolized the current state of the software (Xbox support ended in 2009), and second due to some legal disputes. Thus, the birth of Kodi was confirmed.
The first stable build of Kodi 14 has been available on the official site since last Tuesday. In essence, all XBMC users will feel at home under Kodi's wing. Among the technical details, one of the most important is the update of FFmpeg to version 2.4.4. This allows playback of content using HEVC and VP9 codecs, especially useful for those users already venturing into 4K territory, although HEVC decoding is done via software, and many systems without sufficient resources will suffer through 4K more than play it. Also notable are optimizations in the libraries for iOS and Android versions, stricter control over add-ons, improvements to the virtual keyboard, and the elimination of several bugs in the audio system, especially on Linux systems.
The warnings for this stable version of Kodi focus on difficulties in doing a downgrade to 13.2, some errors in skins, the fact that it is not a “certified” application under OS X, and the possibility of an unexpected crash under Windows, which is temporarily fixed by disabling the web server feature. Windows users face a download of almost seventy megabytes for Kodi 14, but I have tested it for a while, and so far I have no complaints. Even though my preference is for more detailed control of videos rather than generating playlists, followers of XBMC will practically have no issues if they decide to hop on the Kodi train.
