XBMC v12 (Frodo) changelog

XBMC Wiki copy of the XBMC v12 (Frodo) changelog.

Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder)

 * Added unified Live TV and PVR frontend with a common EPG and DVR (Digital Video Recording) client GUI
 * Added unified PVR backend framework and API for multiple PVR backend software from third-parties
 * Added support to integrate PVR Addon's recorded TV Show Episodes and Movies with XBMC's Video Library
 * Extended JSON-RPC and embedded Web Server API with PVR support to enable Web EPG in a web interface
 * PVR backend clients addons availabe for many popular third-party PVR backend software:
 * PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skinners and regression testing
 * Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
 * DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client 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
 * Tvheadend PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from 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

Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager

 * Added addon API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight
 * Added ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
 * Added support for screensavers written in Python.

GUI Engine

 * Enabled Dirty Regions rendering to redraw screen on single dirty region by default on all platforms
 * Added ability to run a split display resolution for GUI and video playback on embedded platforms
 * Extended XBMC's GUI for PVR and EPG
 * Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms
 * Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of scroll bars, and click handling
 * Improvements to art handling, allowing Skinners to display multiple art types for each item, such as banners and posters for tv shows.
 * Improved texture caching for GUI speedup

Platform Independent Playback

 * Added software decoding of 10-bit depth H.264 profile (Hi10P) videos (requires around a core2duo or equivalent and up)
 * Added HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and M3U8 (Extended M3U) playlist support
 * Added support for color and font style tags in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
 * Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc media
 * Added Bluray HDMV menu support (but not BD-J / BD-Live menus)
 * Improved Bluray playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
 * Improved deinterlacing "Weave" method for playback of interlaced video when upscaling
 * Upgraded FFmpeg's libavcodec and libavformat audio/video codec and demuxer libraries
 * Improved support for forced subtitles
 * Added option to set a default preference for subtitles and audio tracks based on language.

Library

 * Library customization that allows for custom video nodes
 * Added Advanced Library Filtering for Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, and Music views
 * Improved Smart Playlists
 * Added custom video library tags for Movies, TV Shows and Music Videos
 * Added support for both banner and poster video art types simultaneously
 * Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing
 * Added support for exporting video art as JPG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
 * Switched to TagLib for reading metadata embedded into audio files
 * Movie sets can now only be used one set per movie. See here for more info.

Scrapers

 * Improved TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by automatically scraping movie sets.
 * Improved TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper to obtain both posters and banners for shows and seasons.

Skins

 * Confluence: PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings
 * Touched: Improved the default touch screen skin for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android touch devices.

AudioEngine

 * Added unified "AudioEngine" audio abstraction framework with an API and platform sinks

Other

 * Improved |HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
 * Improved AirPlay / AirTunes target support
 * Improved the Audio-CD ripper that now works as a background task job
 * Improved international language file translations system that are powered by Transifex
 * Added a Test Suite based on Google C++ Testing Framework to make regression testing easier
 * Added rich metadata support to XBMC's UPnP Media Server for UPnP/DLNA clients
 * Upgraded Plutinosoft's Platinum (libplatinum) UPnP and DNLA libraries
 * Improved performance of the default Web Interface (complete rewrite of JavaScript loading)
 * Added WebSocket support for JSON-RPC and to Addons API
 * Added basic support for PVR / EPG extensions and notifications over the JSON-RPC API
 * Added SmartPlaylist Extensions and Extended Filtering in JSON-RPC
 * Removed the old HTTP API in favour of the new JSON-RPC API
 * Improved keymap XML files for various controls, including the Xbox 360 Controller for PC (out-of-the-box support for both Windows and Ubuntu).

Android Specific

 * Added initial Android (operating system) port with multi-architecture platform support
 * Added NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
 * Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on Amlogic
 * Added support for OpenGL ES hardware accelerated rendering of XBMC's GUI engine on Android
 * Added ALSA audio output sink for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
 * Added Andriod touch support

BSD Specific

 * Added initial BSD (operating system) port for FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
 * Added ALSA, OSS, and PulseAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
 * Added VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
 * Added VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD

Linux Specific

 * Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on AMLogic devices
 * Added dedicated OMXPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding via OpenMAX IL API
 * Added ALSA and PulseAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
 * Added alternative name support to LIRC mapping for linux-input-layer devices
 * Added lircmap for Conexant's CX23885 IR (infrared) recievers
 * 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 playback with Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe hardware accelerated video decoder
 * Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
 * Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
 * Remove all dependencies of HAL manager libraries from XBMC's code

iOS Specific

 * Added CoreAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
 * Improved H.264 hardware accelerated video decoding support decode on iOS via Apple's VideoToolBox API
 * Improved support for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
 * Improved XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier
 * Added iOS iDevices can now use the native iOS keyboard. Core functions only, so add-ons might still pop-up the XBMC keyboard.
 * Added iOS iDevices can now use native video putout when using the Apple HDMI adapter. "A5" and above iOS devices can also mirror XBMC video to a native Apple TV 2/3 AirPlay server (but not to an XBMC AirPlay server).
 * Added key repeat for ATV2
 * Added navigation sound support
 * Improved stylized subtitle support (ASS/SSA subtitles)

Mac OS X Specific

 * Added CoreAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
 * Add support for compiling 64-bit version of XBMC for Mac on OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later
 * Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard or later)
 * Improved XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

Windows Specific

 * Added DirectSound and WASAPI audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework