Kodi

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Kodi
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Developer(s) Kodi Foundation
Initial release June 29, 2004
Stable release Kodi v21.1 Omega
Preview release Kodi v22 P...
Development status Active
Written in Core: C++
Add-ons: Python v3
OS Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS/tvOS, BSD
Platform x86, ARM
Available in 72 languages[1]
License GPL-2.0-or-later[2]
Website kodi.tv

Kodi® (formerly known as XBMC or Xbox Media Center) is an award-winning, free and open source media player/entertainment hub application that runs on an exhaustive list of computers, mobile devices and HTPCs (Home theater PCs) which natively use no less than seven (7) different operating systems. It follows a 10-foot user interface design specification which targets usage as a media player in a living room setting—or any other space where groups of people consume media without having someone seated near the player controls—using a handheld remote control as the primary input device. Its graphical user interface allows the user to easily browse and view videos, photos, podcasts, and music from local file storage, optical discs, the local network or the internet using only a few buttons. The Kodi project is managed by the non-profit Kodi Foundation and developed by volunteers located around the world. As of Summer 2022, more than 1,600 software developers have contributed to Kodi (in the form of 111,800+ individual changes to the codebase, which opened in 2003),[3] with roughly 60 core developers whose regular participation helps to steer it. Now, thanks to the generosity and dedication of over 200 volunteer translators, Kodi is available in 72 languages and useful no matter which continent you're on.

Kodi® (then called "Xbox Media Center") was originally created as a media center application for the first-generation Xbox game console (no longer supported) but is now officially available as a native application for Android, BSD, Linux, macOS, iOS/tvOS, and Windows operating systems, running on most common processor architectures.


Introduction

Overview of features

Kodi can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. Use your media as-is: Kodi can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, almost all popular archive formats from your hard drive. Kodi will scan all of your media and create a personalized library complete with boxcovers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox.


Add-ons

An Add-on is another piece of software that can be added to a program to further expand and enhance the features of that program. Imagine a smart phone and all the additional Apps that can be installed to enhance its functionality. Kodi has the same ability and these apps are referred to as Add-ons. Kodi has a growing list of community driven add-ons which can be installed from a common official repository, while still enabling third-party developers to also host their own unofficial repositories for add-ons that any user can choose to add themselves.

For additional information about specific add-ons, see the All add-ons category.


Video demos

Check out this excellent introduction video (1m 36s) by Lifehacker:[4]

A Kodi beginners guide (13m 27s) by forum user fredphoesh:[5]


Language support

See: Language portal

Kodi includes full support for many different languages by default. Kodi's structure is such that if the language is not available, or not up-to-date, it can be created by signing up at the Kodi Translations Project.

Currently the existing supported languages are: Acadian French, Afrikaans, Albanian, American English, Amharic, Argentinian Spanish, Armenian, Asturian, Australian English, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, European Portuguese, Faroese, Finnish, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malayam, Malay, Maltese, Maori, Metropolitan French, Mexican Spanish, Mongolian, New Zealand English, Norwegian, Ossetian, Peninsular Arabic, Peninsular Spanish, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Silesian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Welsh.


Hardware requirements

Kodi is officially supported on a number of operating systems and hardware devices that are designed to be connected directly to a TV. Kodi runs well on what are relatively "underpowered" systems, thanks to hardware video decoding being common on nearly all supported platforms. These requirements don't include what might be required for some "advanced" features, such as PVR, which might require additional hardware.


Official versions

See: Releases

Full featured versions of Kodi are available on a number of operating system platforms. Team Kodi strives to keep a consistent feature set and include the full Kodi experience for all versions, even those on low-powered devices.


Windows

Kodi for Windows runs natively on Windows Vista and higher. It is a 32-bit application but runs on 64-bit Windows and hardware as well, however it is not yet optimized for that architecture so there is no performance gain when running on 64-bit Windows. 1080p playback can be achieved on Windows based computers either via software decoding on the CPU if it's powerful enough, or by hardware accelerated video decoding.


Android

Kodi for Android is a full port of the complete Kodi application to Google's Android operating-system, was first announced and its source code released publicly on 13 June 2012. This is a full port of Kodi's C++ and C source code with all its dependencies to Android with a build-system that was designed to handle multiple processor architectures, like ARM, MIPS, and x86 with the Android NDK (Native Development Kit for Android) without using a single line of Java, and the Kodi.APK is running natively under Android as a Native Activity application.


iOS

Kodi for iOS, which is a full port of Kodi to Apple's iOS operating-system, was first announced and released publicly on 20 January 2011. It supports both 720p and 1080p hardware accelerated video decoding of H.264 videos, and is compatible several Apple's iDevices that uses Apple A4 or higher SoC processors with a jailbroken iOS operating-system.


Mac

Kodi for Mac runs natively on Mac OS X with Intel processors with hardware video decoding for H.264.


Linux

Kodi for Linux is primarily developed for Ubuntu Linux. Third-party packages for most other Linux distributions are however available, and it is also possible to compile Kodi from scratch for any Linux distribution as long as the pre-required dependency libraries are installed first.


Third-party forks and derivative work of Kodi


History


Kodi Foundation

The "Kodi Foundation" is the non-profit organization that oversees the Kodi project and is registered in the US.


Awards

See: SourceForge Community Choice Awards
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Contest Year Award Result
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SourceForge
Community Choice Awards
Best Project for Gamers Winner
Best Project for Multimedia Winner
Best User Support Finalist
Best Project for Gamers Finalist
Best Project for Multimedia Finalist
Best Technical Design Finalist
Most Collaborative Project Finalist
Best Overall Project Finalist
Winner
Best Overall Project Finalist
Best Project for Multimedia Finalist
Most Likely to Be the Next Billion Dollar Acquisition Finalist
Most Likely to Change the World Finalist
Most Likely to Be Ambiguously and
Baselessly Accused of Patent Violation
Finalist
Most Likely to Get Users Sued by Anachronistic
Industry Associations Defending Dead Business Models
Finalist
Best Overall Project Sixth Place
1,991/22,313 votes (9%)
Best Visual Design Second Place
3,311/14,541 votes (23%)
Best Project for Multimedia Third Place
2,871/15,922 votes (10%)
Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything Third Place
2,036/19,229 votes (11%)
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Mac Informer
Editor's Pick Awards
2013 Best Media Player[awards 2] Winner
Lifehacker Australia
Community Choice Awards
2014 Best Media Player[4] Winner


Programming and developing

Kodi is a non-profit and free software community driven open-source software project that is developed only by volunteers in their spare time without any monetary gain. The team of developers leading the development of Kodi, Team Kodi, encourage anyone and everyone to submit their own source code patches for new features and functions, improve existing ones, or fix bugs to the Kodi project.

Kodi's source code for all its supported platforms is made publicly available by Team Kodi under the open source GNU General Public License, Version 2 (or later) license. The group maintains a public Git repository on GitHub for this source code.


References

  1. Languages. Kodi Weblate. Accessed on August 18, 2022.
  2. "Kodi's licensing rules." xbmc/xbmc on GitHub. Accessed on August 18, 2022.
  3. "The Kodi Open Source Project." Black Duck Open Hub, part of Synopsys. Accessed on August 18, 2022.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Whitson, Gordon. 2012. “Create a Kickass, Seamless, Play-Everything Media Center: The Complete Guide.” Lifehacker Australia. April 10, 2012.
  5. Profile of fredphoesh. Kodi Community Forum. May 21, 2012.


Further reading