Kodi 19 („Matrix“): Die erste Alpha ist da

Die Entwickler von Kodi haben eine Überraschung parat: Die erste Alpha zu Kodi 19 alias „Matrix“ gibt ihren Einstand. Da es sich um einen Major-Release handelt, sind viele neue Features an Bord. Allerdings empfiehlt sich das Antesten aktuell nur für sehr experimentierfreudige User, da es sich eben um eine Alpha handelt und entsprechend noch viele Fehler enthalten sind.

Die Entwickler mahnen deswegen bereits: Wer sich die Alpha von Kodi 19 („Matrix“) installiere, werde definitiv Probleme bekommen. In erster Linie ist diese Version für Neugierige und solche Anwender gedacht, die sich gerne an der Weiterentwicklung beteiligen möchten, indem sie Rückmeldung geben.

Ihr seid gewarnt? Dann findet ihr die Downloads für Windows, Android und Apple-Systeme direkt hier. Nutzt diese Version von Kodi lieber nicht für den täglichen Gebrauch, sondern eben nur, um mal hereinzuschnuppern. Unten findet ihr eine Aufzählung der neuen Funktionen – viel Spaß!

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Audio/Music

Improved handling of multi-disc CD sets and box sets
Additional metadata tags
Improved handling of album release dates
New setting to open music fullscreen/visualisation window automatically when playback is started
A new, Matrix-inspired music visualisation is now available to install – great care has been put into making this perform well on lower-end systems

Video

Software decoding of the AV1 CODEC

Subtitles

Subtitle opacity can now be changed
New dark grey colour for subtitles

Estuary Skin

Redesign of the music fullscreen/visualisation window to match other fullscreen windows – allows fanart and visualisations to be shown without coloured overlays
Additional media info flags added to music fullscreen/visualisation window info display
The default Playlist view now uses the Widelist view format with options on the sideblade menu as in other areas of the skin
A new „Now Playing“ view added for music playback, showing media details for both any selected song in the playlist and those for any currently playing song

Games

iOS now supports game controllers (Xbox/PlayStation/other supported Bluetooth controllers)

Platform Specifics

Darwin (Apple) platforms:

Objective-C code migrated from manual memory management to ARC

iOS:
Added showing total/free space
Kodi log can now be shared using native sharing sheet
Kodi GUI is no longer obscured on devices with notch

macOS:
Blank Other Displays setting no longer requires app restart
„Toggle fullscreen“ now uses default macOS shortcut

Android:
Static HDR10 support for all source types (if supported by the device)
Dynamic Dolby Vision HDR support for streaming services (if supported by the device)

Windows:
Static HDR10 support for all source types (if supported by the GPU)

Information Providers (scrapers)

New python scrapers for music – available in repo as Generic Album Scraper and Generic Artist Scraper
New python scrapers for TV & movies – available in repo as The Movie Database Python and The TVDB (new)

PVR

PVR reminders
TV and radio channel groups and Estuary home screen widgets
Group manager usability enhancements
Channel manager usability enhancements
Guide window navigation controls
Estuary PVR information dialog enhancements
Setting ‚Switch to full screen‘ now supports channel types
Playlist context menu items for recordings
Dynamic PVR categories for Estuary home screen
Ability to sort channels and EPG by the backend order of channels
Support group specific channel numbering and option to start group number locally from 1
Support for starting EPG entries as live
Support displaying recording sizes and being able to sort by them
New, Live, Finale and Premiere for EPG, recordings and timers
Guide window performance improvements
Search window performance improvements
EPG performance and memory usage optimisations
C++ API for PVR Addon development

Network

Improved information around the security implications of enabling external interfaces
Added default-on switch to require a password for the web interface
Kodi will now enforce the origin of installed add-ons and their dependencies. This has been implemented to prevent third party repositories from overwriting code of unrelated add-ons, which was the cause of numerous error reports in the past.
Improved support around official repos, allowing users some safeguards when installing private repositories

Addons

Probably the biggest change: with this release, we move to Python 3 for addons (see note below).
Kodi will now enforce the origin of installed addons and their dependencies. This has been implemented to prevent third party repositories from overwriting code of unrelated add-ons, which was the cause of numerous error reports in the past.

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• Kodi