Kodi v14 (Helix) changelog

Wiki copy of the Kodi v14 (Helix) 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)

 * Improved PVR, EPG, and OSD frontend GUI in Kodi and extended the PVR API to support more features and functions
 * Improved PVR / EPG and Live TV interface in Kodi's GUI skinning engine (already in use in Confluence)
 * 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
 * Updated and improved PVR backend clients addons for many 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
 * Tvheadend PVR Addon backend clients 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 / Vu+ / Dreambox 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

Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager
For full changelogs of all Addons APIs, see Helix API changes, JSON-RPC, and Add-ons Development Forums
 * Added framework support for binary addons (inc. closed source proprietary addons) for audio encoder codecs
 * Added support for audio encoder codecs via a binary addons and move Vorbis, LAME, Flac and WAV audio encoders to addons
 * Added capability for Text-to-Speech screen readers addons for visual impaired
 * 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 Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight

GUI Engine (Skinning Engine)
For full changelog on changes to the skinning engine, see Helix API changes and the Skin Development Forum
 * 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

Platform Independent Playback

 * Added support for HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) a.k.a. H.265 software video decoding
 * Improved support for H.264 (including Hi10P) multi-threaded video decoding when software decoder on CPU is used
 * Upgraded FFmpeg (libavcodec and libavformat) audio/video codec libraries to release version FFmpeg 2.2)
 * Removed FFmpeg from from the code tree, making it easier to compile/build separately

Library

 * Improved network and file system reading when scanning files and searching for subtitles
 * 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 from the community

AudioEngine

 * Added support for Planar Formats and PTS audio synchronization from player in ActiveAE
 * 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

 * Renamed and rebranded to Kodi Media Center (from XBMC Media Center)
 * Improved |HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
 * Upgraded DVD-Video navigation and playback libraries (libdvdnav, libdvdread, and libdvdcss)
 * Upgraded SAMBA client to version 3.6.x for improved support for SMB and CIFS protocols
 * Updated community maintained translations to over 60+ languages to date for via Transifex Translation System

Android Specific

 * Improved MediaCodec API video decoding implementations support for Android 4.1 (API level 16) and later
 * Improved StageFright API video decoding implementations support for Android 4.0 (API level 14)
 * Improved the dedicated AMLCodec hardware accelerated video decoding support for AMLogic devices
 * Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture

BSD Specific

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

Linux Specific

 * Added initial optional X11 support on EGL (EGL-X11) based systems on Linux, full-screen mode only
 * Added native XvBA accelerated video decoding for AMD/ATI GPUs on Linux
 * Added support 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 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
 * Upgraded SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) from version 1.2 to 2.0 for improved input-support on Linux
 * Removed dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for windowing and event handling on X11

iOS Specific

 * Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for iOS (on iPad, iPhone, and iPod iDevices)

Mac OS X Specific

 * Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support for (Mac) OS X

Windows Specific

 * Improved DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) support (requires DXVA compatible hardware and drivers)
 * Upgraded Kodi for Windows and binary addons to compile with Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 by default