Archive:XBMC v13 (Gotham) changelog
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XBMC Wiki copy of the XBMC v13 (Gotham) condensed changelog for the release with a summery of larger and important features and functions.
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
- Improved PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings in Confluence skin
- Added, updated, and improved PVR backend clients addons for many popular third-party external PVR recording software platforms:
- PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skin development and regression testing
- IPTV (IPTV Simple Client) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- Tvheadend PVR Addon backend clients 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
- 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
- Argus_TV|Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- WMC (Windows Media Center) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- DVBLink PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager
For full changelogs on changes to all Addons APIs, see Archive:Gotham_API_changes, the JSON-RPC Development Forum, and the Python Development Forum
- 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
- Improved the ability to extend XBMC'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 Archive:Gotham_API_changes and the Skin 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, and also improved the default touch screen skin Touched
- Added ImageFactory implementation with factory to abstract different image libraries and hardware acceleration
- Improved Dirty Regions rendering on all platforms
- 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 support for Forced Subtitles ("forced flag") in external subtitle files
- 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
- Improved and extended Smart Playlists functionality
- 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
- Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing
Web Scrapers
- Added theaudiodb.com music video scraper as new default for music videos
AudioEngine
- Added new cross-platform event driven active state machine pattern AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] sink as the default for XBMC's AudioEngine
- Added ALSA sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Linux Desktop and generic Linux based Embedded Systems
- Added PulseAudio sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Linux Desktop
- Added OSS (Open Sound System) sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for BSD, like FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and similar Unix based systems
- Added AUDIOTRACK sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Amlogic
- Added Pi Audio sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Raspberry Pi]]
- Added DirectSound sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Windows
- Added WASAPI sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Windows
- Added Darwin sink for AudioEngine#ActiveAE|ActiveAE]] for Mac OS X and iOS
- Added support for CoreAudio AudioEngine to OS notifications for device changes on Mac OS X 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
- Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
- 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 full (and 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
- Improved the dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on AMLogic devices
- Added external player (external player launcher) support on Android
- Added native volume control for Android from within XBMC
- Improved NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
BSD Specific
- Improved XBMC support for BSD (operating system) on FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
- Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
- Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
Linux Specific
- Added VA-API (libva) support for decoding videos with larger resolutions than 1080p (such as 4K resolution)
- 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 VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
- Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
- Improved OpenMAX Video Acceleration API support for Linux (using Raspberry Pi as reference hardware)
- Added RenderCapture implementation to Linux for Raspberry Pi for Ambilight addons
- 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
- Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
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
- Improved XBMC support for OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
- 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)