Software update: OpenELEC 3.0 RC1

After a series of beta releases, the first release candidate of version 3.0 of the Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center has now been released. This Linux distribution is based on XBMC Media Center and aims to turn a computer into a full-fledged HTPC. OpenELEC is easy to install, maintain and use, as well as being small and lightning fast. In addition to the default download there are special versions for AMD’s Fusion, Nvidia’s ION, Apple TV and the Xtreamer Ultra. This release of OpenELEC is based on the third release candidate of version 12 of XBMC and is further shipped with the following release notes:

OpenELEC 3.0 RC1 released

The OpenELEC team is proud to release the first Release Candidate of OpenELEC 3.0! Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.99.1 :).

With the old year we leave the Beta phase of OpenELEC 3.0 behind and jump to the final phase for our upcoming Release of OpenELEC 3.0 with XBMC Frodo included. Our first Release Candidate updates XBMC to XBMC Frodo Release Candidate 3, and fixes some issues found in our Beta 6 release.

We hope the new year brings you all new dreams, visions, resolutions and a new (better!) way of living – We wish you a very happy, healthy, positive and peaceful new year – with many surprises coming from us :-)!

To manually update to this Release Candidate read this.

OpenELEC 3.0 highlights and changes:

• XBMC-12.0 (Frodo)
  Thanks to an incredibly successful GSoC experience and numerous dedicated developers who have been working on many projects for years, XBMC 12 figures to be one of the most anticipated feature updates in a long time. Features include…
  • HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine (DTS-HD / True-HD not support on AMD GPUs)
  • improved Live TV and PVR support
  • Improved image support, allowing the database to accommodate numerous additional image types
  • Support for the Raspberry PI
  • Improved Airplay support across all platforms
  • Advanced Filtering in the library
  • Advanced UPnP sharing
• XBMC Frodo has improved sound card detection and “Audio Engine support”. This may change the naming of audio devices available on your system and the Audio configuration handling. If audio stops working after the update please adjust audio configuration in XBMC settings to use the updated device names and remove any previously installed/configured /storage/.config/asound.conf
• Starting in XBMC v12 “Frodo”, you should no longer use path substitution to sync thumbnails and other art between XBMC devices. For more infos read this.
• Improved PVR Support
  Based on XBMC 12.0 included PVR support we support many more DVB hardware, and have 4TheRecord, DVB Viewer, Mediaportal, MythTV, NextPVR, TVHeadend, VDR, Njoy N7 and VU+ support in the OS.
• New “RPi” image
  With XBMC Frodo version now getting stable, there is also a great choice for RaspberryPi owners, that want to use XBMC on their RaspberryPi. Among multiple distributions, like Raspbmc and XBian which are both Debian/Raspbian based and the fully RaspberryPi and XBMC optimized OpenELEC embedded OS, they can exactly choose what fits their needs. All those projects help XBMC to mature and bear great possibilities for all users out there.
  This new build was created to run OpenELEC on our first supported ARM device the RaspberryPi. To find informations how to use and install this build please read this and this.
  We would like to thanks “Gimli” and “Popcornmix” for all the help we got with porting OpenELEC to the RaspberryPi
• Improved AMD XVBA support
  Thanks to the efforts of FernetMenta, Fritsch, Newphreak and many users who have been testing and providing feedback our native XVBA support was improved again.
  Xvba now uses a better heuristics to detect wrongly encoded H264 files. The AMD decoder heavily relies that the correct level is set. With these changes, it is now possible to playback those files without artefacts.
  Another change was the handling of 2K and 4K video files. In the past, they broke the decoder and forced the user to reboot. We now correctly handle 2K resolution files and don’t try to create the hw decoder for larger resolutions that are not supported by the XVBA SDK.