Archive:XBMC v13 (Gotham) changelog

Releases

XBMC v13 (Gotham) changelog

NOTICE: Gotham final has not been released yet. As such, this condensed changelog is for the current XBMC mainline which is a work in progress, and many things are subject to change.

INCOMPLETE: This page or section is incomplete. Please add information or correct uncertain data which is marked with a ?

See also: XBMC v13 (Gotham) FAQ, Gotham API changes, and Releases

XBMC Wiki copy of the XBMC v13 (Gotham) condensed changelog summery for release.

Changelog

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
• ?

Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager

• 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
• ?

GUI Engine (Skinning Engine)

For full changelog see on changes to the skinning engine see Gotham API changes and the 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
• Added ImageFactory implementation with factory to abstract different image libraries and hardware acceleration
• 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 ability to play external audio track with videos
• 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
• Added tag field support for TV Shows and MusicVideos in SmartPlaylists
• Added support to read SmartPlaylists XML files with XMLUtils where possible
• 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
• ?

Scrapers

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

AudioEngine

• Added new event driven ActiveAE audio sink as the default audio engine
• Added support for CoreAudio AudioEngine to OS notifications for device changes on OSX 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
• 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 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
• Added external player (external player launcher) support on Android
• Added native volume control for Android from within XBMC
• ?

BSD Specific

• Improved XBMC support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
• ?

Linux Specific

• Added VA-API (libva) support for decoding videos with larger resolutions than 1080p (such as 4K resolution)
• Added RenderCapture implementation to Linux for Raspberry Pi for Ambilight addons
• Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
• 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
• Removed dependencies of SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for windowing and event handling on X11
• ?

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

• 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)
• ?