Kodi v16 (J) changelog

Placeholder for Kodi Wiki copy of the Kodi v16 (J*) 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 support to PVR API for Scheduling Recordings of TV Shows / TV Series (EPG based DVR Timers)
 * Added possibility for series recordings to Kodi's PVR API for improved DVR capabilities
 * Improved speedup reading EPG from database
 * Initially bumped the PVR Addon API version to 2.0.0 for Kodi v16 (J)

GUI Engine (Skinning Engine)

 * Added option to conditionally include files to allow skinners to conditionally include a file
 * Added hooks for TvTunes Addon in Confluence

Library

 * Added support for the MusicBrainz "ARTISTS" tag in id3v2, ape, xiph for music files
 * Added ability to fetch season year from video database based on first aired episode

Other

 * Added ability to open the SmartPlayListEditor for a given playlist

iOS Specific

 * Moved iOS 8.4 SDK and Xcode 6.4 IDE which added support for iOS 8.4

Windows Specific

 * Updated rendering system on Microsoft Windows platforms to DirectX 11 and Direct3D 11 native support
 * Added support for caching font vertices on GPU side (requires Windows 8 and DirectX 11 device drivers)
 * Added support for hardware based Stereoscopic 3D (requires Windows 8 and DirectX 11 device drivers)
 * Added support for interleaved Stereoscopic 3D mode on Windows platforms (requires DirectX 11 device drivers)
 * Added support for checkerboard Stereoscopic 3D mode on Windows platforms (requires DirectX 11 device drivers)
 * Improved DXVA/DXVA2 rendering and decoding on Windows (when using DirectX 11 device drivers)