Software Update: XBMC Media Center 13.0

After four beta releases and one release candidate, the final of XBMC Media Center version 13.0 has now been released. This cross platform media center software is developed for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, AppleTV and the Raspberry Pi. Version 13.0, which has been codenamed Gotham, contains a large number of changes. For example, there are hardware decoding in Android and support for 3D material, and significant improvements have been made to the audio engine. Support for Windows XP has been dropped. The release notes for this release are as follows:

Android Hardware Decoding
Since 2012 July 12, the single most requested feature has been hardware decoding in Android, and with XBMC 13 we are finally able to make that feature a reality. XBMC should run on Android 4.0 and higher and is offered now in two separate builds, namely ARM and x86, which are the hardware architectures of the device. You would need to consult your device specifications before you download XBMC for Android, though the vast majority of Android devices run on ARM hardware.

Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements
Since the release of Frodoa lot of effort has been put into getting XBMC to run smoother on lower powered platform like the famous Raspberry Pi and of course Android. All this effort has paid off and the experience of using these devices has become much more polished and satisfying than ever before. In particular, opening your libraries, browsing through them, loading images and starting videos have all seen dramatic speed increases.

Stereoscopic 3D Rendering
For you lovers of 3D out there, we are also pleased to say that we now support 3D movies encoded in the following formats: SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced (on supported platforms for passive TVs). Unfortunately, XBMC cannot yet support 3D blurays and cannot provide hardware acceleration for FullSBS/TAB movies (therefore limiting those videos to relatively high powered CPUs).

Improved Touchscreen Support
XBMC on touchscreens now supports gesture controls during video playback, as well as supporting swiping controls in navigation.

Improved UPnP capabilities
Instances of XBMC throughout the house can now “speak” with each other and with other UPnP devices. Support now includes more advanced library browsing as well as “Play using…” functions, allowing XBMC to tell another device on the network to play a certain media file.

So you can browse the UPnP library on your tablet and send a video from that library straight to you main XBMC HTPC, similar to Apple’s Airplay and Google’s casting features.

Additionally when watching videos from the XBMC UPnP server, watch status will be updated so you don’t have to remember what shows you’ve already watched.

Dramatic Audio Engine Improvements
The Audio Engine introduced with XBMC 12.0 “Frodo” has been reworked to be simpler, faster, with better quality and less likelihood of breaking in XBMC 13 across all platforms. You may also notice that some users will need to reconfigure their audio settings. This is caused by the audio improvements and restructuring of the settings systems. However this should be more intuitive and user friendly than it was in XBMC 12 thanks to improvements in Settings.

On Linux there is additional good news for Desktop users who don’t use XBMC as a standalone HTPC through OpenELEC or XBMCbuntu. XBMC will now cooperate nicely with the pulseaudio server and will provide real pulseaudio support. This is a behavior change, make sure to read the PulseAudio XBMC wiki page to learn more.

Settings Improvements
From the user perspective, three major changes will be introduced that should dramatically improve usability in XBMC settings.

First, settings have been broken down into levels starting at beginner and going all the way up the scale to expert level. The typical XBMC user should never need to go very far past the Standard settings. If installing XBMC for friends or family, it is highly encouraged that you move the settings down to Beginner level. And if a setting has disappeared that you typically expect to see, definitely browse through the settings levels, as it likely has been hidden on a more advanced level.

Second, every setting now includes a description, which may be found at the bottom of the settings page on the default Confluence skin. If a setting title is odd or is otherwise confusing, this description is intended to clear up the purpose of the setting and the result of changing it.

Third, every setting page now includes a Reset to Default option so that if you find yourself completely unable to return to a useable state in XBMC, you can always start fresh without having to perform a complete reinstall. Importantly, resetting one group of settings to default does not affect any others. So if you have video settings just right, but audio is screwed up, you can reset audio without affecting video.

Making Subtitle Search Better
This change should give subtitle addon developers a great deal more latitude for implementing changes and fixes without needing to wait for other addon devs to submit similar fixes, all to the benefit of the user experience. From the user perspective, the only significant change will be in the way a subtitle search service is downloaded. The user will need to select and download their preferred subtitle addon before starting a movie and searching for subtitles. At present there are 19 to choose from.

An Extended Python and JSON-RPC API for developers
While this feature may not be as immediately noticeable upon install, it could ultimately be one of the most important changes of XBMC 13. With the extension of the API, users should soon be able to control virtually every aspect of XBMC without once touching the XBMC ONION. Developers will now have unprecedented opportunity to make even more powerful remote control apps, web GUIs, and XBMC add-ons. For example, with the Official XBMC Remote for iOS users can now configure every single setting in XBMC without once opening the settings window in XBMC itself.

We look forward to the community taking advantage of this extended API and creating some extraordinary features in the future.

Yet More Features

• Update to FFMPEG v1.2 which we use for audio/video playback
• Stereo audio can now be upmixed to 5.1 and sent through optical/SPDIF devices
• Various visual changes throughout the skin which should improve usability and logic.
• Improve the handling of subtitle downloading and selection
• Extend and improve the User-interface Engine which developers use to create a variety of skins to be used.
• Drop of support for Windows XP. Due to upgrades in the way we build XBMC, it is no longer possible to install XBMC onto Windows XP. For current XP users we can suggest installing OpenELEC or XBMCbuntu as a free way to use XBMC 13 as a pure media center.
• When initiating a library cleaning, XBMC will send a wake-on-lan request to any sleeping servers first, before cleaning the library, to ensure that content isn’t unnecessarily cleaned
• Numerous PVR fixes and updates with additional new features updated on a per-platform basis. For more info, check out our PVR wiki page
• Copy/paste support on Windows, OSX, and iOS to match copy/paste support elsewhere
• Movie sets are now user editable
• Episodic bookmarks – If episodes are not broken into individual parts (eg Friends episode 1 and 2 are in the same video file), a bookmark can be set that will cause launching episode 2 from the UI to go directly to the bookmark in the video file

For a brief change log visit our wiki page: Gotham Changelog

skins
Not all skins from Frodo are guaranteed to work on Gotham. The following is a list of skins that have been checked for 13.0 compatibility and are currently in the XBMC skin repo: Ace, Aeon MQ 5, Amber, Black Glass Nova, Cirrus Extended, Confluence, Hybrid, Metropolis, quartz, Re-Touched, transparency!

Official XBMC Remote for iOS
We are also pleased to announce v1.5 of the Official XBMC Remote app for iOS. In addition to all past features, v1.5 now supports controlling LiveTV, along with access to the EPG, PVR recordings, and PVR timers. Users can now also change and update all XBMC settings from directly within the remote app by hitting the gears button on the Remote Control tab and selecting “…more.” For a complete changelog, visit the Official Remote page in the App Store.

The fixes
The list of fixes is too vast to even being listing here. Some improvements and fixes came in with the features mentioned above and some came in separately. For all this we want to thank our passionate group of Team XBMC developers and the hundreds of third-party developers who contributed to XBMC with patches and improvements. For the curious people who do want to know every change, you can find the full list on our github development repo, although it’s quite technical to read through.