Kodi v15 (Isengard) changelog

Kodi Wiki copy of the Kodi v15 (Isengard) condensed changelog for the release with a summery of the most important features and functions as well as other key changes.

Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder)

 * Added possibility to use multiple PVR clients for different PVR backends at the same time
 * Improved PVR, EPG, and OSD frontend GUI in Kodi and extended the PVR API to support more features and functions
 * Improved PVR API and database adding many new EPG and Channel properties
 * Improved PVR / DVR timeshift support to pause Live TV (note that each PVR backend still need to support timeshifting)
 * Improved PVR / EPG extensions and notifications support over the JSON-RPC API
 * Improved Closed Captions (CC) support for Live TV
 * Improved the "GlobalSearch" (service addon) function by adding EPG search support
 * Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for all popular third-party external PVR backend platforms:
 * PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake (method stub) backend for skin development and regression testing
 * IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * FilmOn PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * PCTV Systems (Broadway) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * Stalker Middleware PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * VBox TV Gateway PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * Tvheadend PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the Kodi's community
 * VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * Enigma2 (Dreambox / Vu+ / DBox2) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from Kodi's community
 * Removed internal MythTV VFS client code in favour of its external PVR Client Addons
 * Removed internal VDR (VTP) VFS client code in favour of its external PVR Client Addons
 * Removed internal Tvheadend (HTSP) VFS client code in favour of its external PVR Client Addons
 * Removed internal TuxBox (Dreambox/DBox2/Vu+/Enigma1/2) VFS client code in favor of external PVR Client Addons
 * Removed internal ReplayTV (DirectTV) VFS client code since its old and was no longer being maintained by anyone
 * Removed internal SlingBox VFS client code since its old and is no longer being maintained by anyone

Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager
For full changelogs of all Addons APIs, see Isengard API changes, JSON-RPC, and Add-ons Development Forums
 * Improved Addon Manager frontend GUI in Kodi, adding support for categorization, new manager layout and more
 * Added initial integration for binary addons support and changing the Kodi build system around it
 * Added framework support for binary addons for audio decoder and audio encoder codecs
 * Extend Addons API to support binary addons for audio decoder and audio encoder codecs
 * Added support for context-menu addons for skinners and addon developers
 * Added option for addons scripts to check status of DPMS energy saving functions of underlying OS
 * Improved the ability to extend Kodi's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
 * Improved Addons API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambient lighting (Ambilight clone) client software such as Boblight
 * Improved addon management at Kodi version upgrade by immediately fetch updates from repository after upgrade

GUI Engine (Skinning Engine)
For full changelog on changes to the skinning engine, see Isengard API changes and the Skin Development Forum
 * Added support for context-menu addons for skinners and addon developers
 * Added support Sound Addons for skins instead of including sound files within each skin.
 * Improved PVR / EPG / Live TV and context menus interfaces in Kodi's GUI skinning engine (already used in Confluence)
 * Added support for Language Addons, moving internal Language translation files into external Language Addons
 * Added an accessibility settings section to provide one configuration area for the visually and hearing impaired
 * Added further optimizations to Kodi's GUI engine for faster rendering on low resource embedded devices
 * Added new icon types and missing icons to Confluence
 * Added PVR and EPG support to the Re-Touched (touchscreen friendly) skin
 * Improved Dirty Regions rendering on all platforms
 * Improved Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) to Kodi's GUI skinning engine
 * Improved Stereoscopic 3D rendering support (Side-by-Side, Top-Bottom, and Anaglyph) for Subtitles when in 3D mode
 * Improved navigation of video audio tracks and subtitle selection lists
 * Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms, and also improved the default touch screen skin (Re-Touched)
 * Improved and expanded the internationalization options and regional configuration settings in the GUI
 * Improved GUI settings configuration levels for Basic, Standard, Advanced, Expert (defaults to "Standard")
 * Improved selection when installing new skins
 * Update the default bold and regular Roboto TTF fonts from Google
 * Updated keyboard layout for many languages
 * Restructured settings windows and descriptions for almost every setting and configuration
 * Removed legacy code to backwards compatibility for skins made pre-Frodo (XBMC 11.0)

Platform Independent Playback

 * Added adaptive skipping/seeking through audio and video playback, also known as "skip steps"
 * Improved support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
 * Improved Stereoscopic 3D playback with video playlist switching when playlists have 2D and 3D videos
 * Added support for MK3D (Matroska 3D) video extensions and enable double cache by default on these videos
 * Added a Chapter Selector Window with visual thumbnails shows thumbs on where to skip to in video
 * Added support for Closed Captions (CC) in CEA-608 and CEA-708 formats (ATSC Closed Caption)
 * Added support for external subtitles over UPnP / DNLA through the settings section
 * Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) libraries to release version FFmpeg 2.6.2
 * Remove certain audio codecs from core and made them into audio decoder and audio encoder add-ons
 * Disabled hardware video decoding of MPEG-2 videos with Standard Definition resolution by default

Library

 * Added support for audio nodes that can defined views that are used to organize your media from the music menu
 * Added support for marking as watched during other library operations like “update library” when scanning sources
 * Added support for allowing different sort orders for different sort methods
 * Added ability to jump to first unwatched episode in TV section by default
 * Added support to rescrape season art for newly added seasons
 * Improved MusicBrainz tags support to the Music Library and Database
 * Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
 * Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster library browsing

Web Scrapers

 * Updated music, movies, tv shows, and music video scrapers for Kodi

AudioEngine

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

Other

 * Added new audio visualization addons (only OpenGL versions for Linux and OS X for now)?
 * Improved display of CPU / GPU frequency and temperature for all supported platforms
 * Improved keymap for music playback, as while in full screen pressing select/ok button will now show the OSD
 * Added support for WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface) to extend the Python Script support in Kodi's integrated webserver
 * Added support for JSONP for JSON-RPC requests to Kodi's integrated webserver
 * Added support for image resizing to Kodi's integrated webserver
 * Improved webserver caching control
 * Improved the JSON-RPC API
 * Improved the the integrated UPnP Media Server and Client
 * Changed Kodi application code base to C++11
 * Improved HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
 * Upgraded HDMI-CEC libraries code from Pulse-Eight to LibCEC release version 3.0.0
 * Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
 * Upgraded SAMBA client code library to version 3.6.12 for improved support for SMB/CIFS protocol
 * Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for Kodi via Transifex Translation System
 * Removed internal DAAP VFS client code for iIunes 6.x music shares (network stream from older Apple iTunes)
 * Removal AFP filesystem support from Kodi's VFS (Virtual File System)
 * Improved code stability and performance as well as general code clean-up in all areas

Android Specific

 * Improved MediaCodec API video decoding implementations support for Android 4.2 (API level 17) and later
 * Improved the dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for Amlogic devices
 * Added automatic refresh rate switching support for video playback on Android 5.0 and later (>= API 21), including Android TV
 * Added support for HEVC hardware decoding for MediaCodec API in Android 4.4.2 and later when the VPU supports it
 * Added support for HEVC hardware decoding on Amlogic SoCs in Android 4.4.2 and later when the VPU supports it
 * Added support for UltraHD decoding / 4K resolution output on Amlogic SoCs in Android when HW supports it
 * Added support for screenshot and video bookmarks on Amlogic SoCs hardware
 * Added support for LCD/VFD display panel output on Amlogic SoCs hardware
 * Added support for de-interlacing using BOB deinterlace method on Android
 * Added support for 7.1 channels PCM playback
 * Added support for system handling of audio volume on Android
 * Moved to Android API 17 as minimum with SDK 14 and NDK 10e, meaning at least Android 4.2 is now required
 * Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
 * Removed the dependency for root/SU access permission rights on Android

BSD Specific

 * Improved Kodi support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms

Linux Specific

 * Added MIPS processor architecture support for Linux (Imagination Technologies MIPS Creator CI20 as reference)
 * Added support for HEVC hardware video decoding on Amlogic SoCs when the VPU supports it
 * Added support for UltraHD decoding / 4K resolution output on Amlogic SoCs in Android when HW supports it
 * Added support for screenshot and video bookmarks on Amlogic SoCs hardware
 * Added support for LCD/VFD display panel output on Amlogic SoCs hardware
 * Improved video accelerated decoding on Freescale i.MX 6 based devices
 * Improved ARM processor architecture (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
 * Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (using WeTek Play and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
 * Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration (requires VDPAU compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Improved XvBA (AMD/ATI) Hardware Video Acceleration (requires XvBA compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
 * Improved dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for Linux on Amlogic devices
 * Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
 * Removed dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for everything but hardware abstraction for input devices

iOS Specific

 * Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for iOS (on iPad, iPhone, and iPod iDevices)
 * Moved to iOS 8.1 SDK, minimum iOS 5.1 is now required, this removes support for Apple TV 2 builds

OS X Specific

 * Improve Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X
 * Added Kodi support for OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" from Apple
 * Moved to OS X 10.10 SDK, meaning minimum (Mac) OS X 10.7 Lion is now required, and no more 32-bit builds

Windows Specific

 * Improved DXVA/DXVA2 (DirectX Video Acceleration) support (requires DXVA/DXVA2 compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Added support for HEVC hardware video decoding via DXVA on Windows when hardware and driver supports exist