Software Update: Kodi 19.1

The final release of Kodi 19.1 has been released. This cross platform media center software is developed for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. In version 19.0, codenamed Matrix, it includes software support for the av1 codec, support for game controllers on iOS, and uses Python 3 for add-ons. It is also possible to set the opacity of the subtitles. The complete release notes for this release are on this page read, this is a portion of it with the main improvements:

Video

• Fixed: HDR metadata is now detected in VP9 profile 2 streams and can be used on platforms that support HDR passthrough or tone mapped when playing this kind of videos.

Discs

• Fixed: playback of optical DVDs in Linux
• Fixed: BD-J Blu-ray chapter skipping via remotes/keyboard

PVR

• Fixed: context menu not accessible in PVR Guide window when using very basic remote to control Kodi
• Fixed: client channel name and number not persisted when changed
• Fixed: play count and resume position of recordings lost after Kodi restart
• Fixed: crash while browsing the EPG when MySQL is used as EPG database
• Fixed: next recording on … label time is not localized in Estuary Timer/Timer rules window
• Fixed: channel manager does not rename backend channel
• Fixed: playing archived program not selected when opening the Guide window
• Fixed: GUI not updated on removal/insert/hide/unhide of channel groups
• Updated: improved look of PVR windows in Estuary

Music Library

• Fixed: issue with music from cuesheets where only the first track was being added to the library on rescanning, with the rest being deleted

JSON-RPC

• Fixed: PVR – Reintroduced broadcast properties ‘hastimer’, ‘hastimerrule’, ‘hasrecording’, ‘recording’
• Fixed: PVR – Reintroduced channel property ‘isrecording’

subtitles

• Fixed: detection of system fonts (directwrite) on windows for ASS subtitles
• Fixed: detection of user fonts (in userdata/fonts) for ASS subtitles
• Fixed: rendering of semi-transparent ASS subtitles on Wayland

GUI/Interface

• Fixed: media flagging for DVD/BluRay

Web Interface

• Updated: Chorus2 based on community contributions

file system

• Updated: enable filecaching by default for network filesystems
• Updated: improve file cache error handling

Network

• Updated: improved reliability for HTTP and NFS network filesystems

Windows Specifics

• Added: support for WS-Discovery protocol that enables locating SMB servers and browsing shared folders using SMBv3.
• Added: debug Info OSD Video. Extends current Debug Info Player (Ctrl+Shift+O) with new video-only info (Alt+O)
• Fixed: with some unusual streams, incorrect HDR metadata could be passed (HDR10 passthrough).
• Fixed: green screen on systems with old HW (DX feature level 9.1) playing 10-bit videos.
• Fixed: black screen with Software render method and with DXVA2 hardware acceleration disabled.
• Fixed: green screen when playing the menu of some DVDs (MPEG2 SD only).
• Fixed: credentials being requested for anonymous SMB shares
• Updated: VC runtimes included in the installer to add compatibility with VS2019 and VS2017 at the same time.

Android Specifics

• Fixed: SMB shares mounted on system level not visible in Kodi
• Fixed: SMB shares labeled with cryptic numbers (UUID) instead of actual disk name

Xbox Specifics

• This version also brings 19.1 to the Xbox – while 19.0 has been in the Microsoft Store since launch, this was Windows-only while we found a way to adequately test the new release on Xbox. We’ve fixed that now, so Xbox users will automatically upgrade from 18.9 to 19.1 if you’ve got auto-update enabled. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a known memory limitation – present in 18.x as well – that causes Xbox application crashes with 4k content, so please be aware.