XBMC v13 (Gotham) changelog

XBMC Wiki copy of the XBMC v13 (Gotham) condensed changelog for the release with a summery of larger and important features and functions.

Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder)

 * Added much improved PVR / EPG and Live TV interface in XBMC's GUI skinning engine (already in use in Confluence)
 * Added improved PVR / DVR timeshift support to pause Live TV (note that each PVR backend still need to support timeshifting)
 * Added much improved PVR / EPG extensions and notifications support over the JSON-RPC API
 * Improved PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings in Confluence skin
 * Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for many popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
 * PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skin development and regression testing
 * IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * Tvheadend PVR Addon backend clients maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the XBMC's community
 * VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * Vu+ / Enigma2 / Dreambox PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community

Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager
For full changelogs on changes to all Addons APIs, see Gotham API changes, the JSON-RPC Development Forum, and the Python Development Forum
 * Added option for allowing skins to query directories (e.g. plugins) to fill static content
 * Added a Monitor class to receive JSON-RPC notifications directly through the Python bindings
 * Added announce function and register addon for announcements to the Add-ons API
 * Added new Built-In function to control state of attached HDMI CEC device via Add-ons API
 * Added support for XBMC's Python interface to use native keyboard if possible (currently only iOS)
 * Added support for addon binary reading and writing via a "buffer" class usable from addons
 * Added WOL (Wake-on-LAN) with send magic packet function to the Add-ons API
 * Improved the ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
 * Improved Addons API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight

GUI Engine (Skinning Engine)
For full changelog on changes to the skinning engine, see Gotham API changes and the Skin Development Forum
 * Added support for customizable menu structure for home and beyond
 * Added Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) to XBMC's GUI skinning engine
 * Added Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) for Subtitles when in 3D mode
 * Added a simple Movie Set management to GUI for Edit/Clear Set and Add/Remove Set members
 * Added option support for both banner and poster music art types simultaneously
 * Added picture tags metadata info accessible for skins or addons developers
 * Added further optimizations to XBMC's GUI engine for faster rendering on low resource embedded devices
 * Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms, and also improved the default touch screen skin (Touched)
 * Added ImageFactory implementation with factory to abstract different image libraries and hardware acceleration
 * Improved Dirty Regions rendering on all platforms
 * Refactored settings system to consist of XML files containing descriptions of every setting

Platform Independent Playback

 * Added support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
 * Added support for Forced Subtitles ("forced flag") in external subtitle files
 * Added support for video playback of SageTV recordings
 * Added unified buffering capability to video and overlay renderers for all internal players
 * Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) audio/video codec and demuxer libraries to FFmpeg 1.2 (rev e820e3a)

Library

 * Added extensive MusicBrainz tags support to the Music Library and Database
 * Added ability to queue list of items / add items to a playlist without playing them
 * Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
 * Added support for scanning videos SFTP and SSH sources so can scrape metadata
 * Added support for write-enabled WebDAV (delete/rename/write files and directories)
 * Added "Add art" button to video artwork selection dialog
 * Added support for "last played" sort option to the TV Show GUI
 * Added support for OGG cover art extraction to TagLib
 * Added option support for exporting music art as JPEG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
 * Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing

Web Scrapers

 * Added theaudiodb.com music video scraper as new default for music videos

AudioEngine

 * Added new cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern ActiveAE sink as the default for XBMC's AudioEngine
 * Added ALSA sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
 * Added PulseAudio sink for ActiveAE for Linux Desktop
 * Added OSS (Open Sound System) sink for ActiveAE for BSD, like FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and similar Unix based systems
 * Added AUDIOTRACK sink for ActiveAE for Amlogic
 * Added Pi Audio sink for ActiveAE for Raspberry Pi
 * Added DirectSound sink for ActiveAE for Windows
 * Added WASAPI sink for ActiveAE for Windows
 * Added Darwin sink for ActiveAE for Mac OS X and iOS
 * Added support for CoreAudio AudioEngine to OS notifications for device changes on Mac OS X and iOS

Other

 * Added support for "Play to" and controlling remote XBMC / DLNA instance over UPnP
 * Added new "Fishbmc" audio visualization addon (only OpenGL versions for Linux and Mac OS X for now)
 * Added GUI settings levels for Basic, Standard, Advanced, Expert (defaults to "Standard")
 * Added support and GUI settings for SOCKS 4/4a/5 proxy types and remote DNS
 * Added possibility to define help descriptions ("I" key) for every setting in GUI settings
 * Added option to set auto login of a specific user profile via the GUI
 * Added CPU / GPU frequency and temperature for all supported Linux platforms
 * Added support to allow key IDs in keyboard.xml to be in hexadecimal format
 * Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
 * Upgraded SAMBA client to version 3.6.x adding full support for SMB 2.0 and SMB 2.1 protocols
 * Added initial support for running libxbmc.so headless (without GUI) as a background service / deamon
 * Added a generic and user-mappable cross-platform touch input system
 * Improved |HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
 * Moved subtitle addon core handling to core and added native support for subtitle plugin services
 * Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for XBMC via Transifex Translation System

Android Specific

 * Added first full (and stable) XBMC for Android port with multi-architecture platform support (supports ARM, MIPS, and x86)
 * Added built-in command for addons and skins to execute Android apps with optional params via applicationmanager
 * Added support to allow landscape and reverse landscape orientation of XBMC GUI on Android
 * Added MediaCodec API (Android 4.1 API level 16) software rendering implementation support to XBMC's DVDPlayer
 * Added StageFright API (Android 4.0 API level 14) hardware rendering implementation support to XBMC
 * Added OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for OpenMAX AL API on Android via StageFright and MediaCodec
 * Improved the dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on Amlogic
 * Added external player (external player launcher) support on Android
 * Added native volume control for Android from within XBMC
 * Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture

BSD Specific

 * Improved XBMC support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
 * Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
 * Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD

Linux Specific

 * Added VA-API (libva) support for decoding videos with larger resolutions than 1080p (such as 4K resolution)
 * Improved ARM processor architecture (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
 * Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
 * Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
 * Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
 * Added RenderCapture implementation to Linux for Raspberry Pi for Ambilight addons
 * Added support for OpenMAX pipeline to handle JPEG decode/resize/convert/encode to texture on Raspberry Pi
 * Added support for hardware assisted video decoding of MJPEG, VP6, VP8 and Ogg Theora on Raspberry Pi
 * Added support for Fast Forward and Rewind video up 4x to OpenMAX (OMXPlayer) on Linux for Raspberry Pi
 * Added support multi-channel PCM audio output over HDMI to OpenMAX (OMXPlayer) on Linux for Raspberry Pi
 * Added screenshot implementation to Linux for Raspberry Pi that includes the video layer
 * Added hot-plug support for Linux input devices, such as Bluetooth remotes and keyboards
 * Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux

iOS Specific

 * Added support for native media control bar and play background music on iOS
 * Added adaptions for developing XBMC on non-jailbroken iSO devices (for development only, not to release on App Store)

Mac OS X Specific

 * Improved XBMC support for OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
 * Added support for copy and paste to and from clipboard with command key

Windows Specific

 * Added support for Pixel Shader based HQ (High Quality) scalers for DXVA renderer on Windows
 * Added hybrid shutdown option on Windows 8 (which in turn enables quick boot)
 * Removed Windows XP support (as from now XBMC for Windows requires at least Vista or later)