XBMC Wiki copy of the XBMC v12 (Frodo) changelog.

Contents 1 Changelog 1.1 Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder) 1.2 Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager 1.3 GUI Engine 1.4 Platform Independent Playback 1.5 Library 1.6 Scrapers 1.7 Skins 1.8 AudioEngine 1.9 Other 1.10 Android Specific 1.11 BSD Specific 1.12 Linux Specific 1.13 iOS Specific 1.14 Mac OS X Specific 1.15 Windows Specific 2 References

1 Changelog

1.1 Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder)

• Added unified Live TV and PVR frontend with a common EPG and DVR (Digital Video Recording) client GUI
• Added unified PVR backend framework and API for multiple PVR backend software from third-parties
• Added support to integrate PVR Addon's recorded TV Show Episodes and Movies with XBMC's Video Library
• Extended JSON-RPC and embedded Web Server API with PVR support to enable Web EPG in a web interface
• PVR backend clients addons availabe for many popular third-party PVR backend software:
  • PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skinners and regression testing
  • Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the XBMC's community
  • Tvheadend PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
  • Vu+ / Enigma2 / Dreambox PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community

1.2 Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager

• Added addon API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight^[1][2]
• Added ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
• Added support for screensavers written in Python.

1.3 GUI Engine

• Enabled Dirty Regions rendering to redraw screen on single dirty region by default on all platforms^[3][4]
• Added ability to run a split display resolution for GUI and video playback on embedded platforms^[5]
• Extended XBMC's GUI for PVR and EPG
• Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms
• Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of scroll bars, and click handling
• Improvements to art handling, allowing Skinners to display multiple art types for each item, such as banners and posters for tv shows.
• Improved texture caching for GUI speedup

1.4 Platform Independent Playback

• Added software decoding of 10-bit depth H.264 profile (Hi10P) videos (requires around a core2duo or equivalent and up)
• Added HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and M3U8 (Extended M3U) playlist support
• Added support for color and font style tags in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
• Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc media
• Added Bluray HDMV menu support (but not BD-J / BD-Live menus)^[6]
• Improved Bluray playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
• Improved deinterlacing "Weave" method for playback of interlaced video when upscaling
• Upgraded FFmpeg's libavcodec and libavformat audio/video codec and demuxer libraries
• Improved support for forced subtitles
• Added option to set a default preference for subtitles and audio tracks based on language.

1.5 Library

• Library customization that allows for custom video nodes
• Added Advanced Library Filtering for Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, and Music views
• Improved Smart Playlists
• Added custom video library tags for Movies, TV Shows and Music Videos
• Added support for both banner and poster video art types simultaneously^[7]
• Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing
• Added support for exporting video art as JPG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
• Switched to TagLib for reading metadata embedded into audio files
• Movie sets can now only be used one set per movie. See here for more info.

1.6 Scrapers

• Improved TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by automatically scraping movie sets.
• Improved TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper to obtain both posters and banners for shows and seasons.

1.7 Skins

• Confluence: PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings
• Touched: Improved the default touch screen skin for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android touch devices.

1.8 AudioEngine

• Added unified "AudioEngine" audio abstraction framework with an API and platform sinks

1.9 Other

• Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
• Improved AirPlay / AirTunes target support
• Improved the Audio-CD ripper that now works as a background task job
• Improved international language file translations system that are powered by Transifex^[8]
• Added a Test Suite based on Google C++ Testing Framework to make regression testing easier
• Added rich metadata support to XBMC's UPnP Media Server for UPnP/DLNA clients
• Upgraded Plutinosoft's Platinum (libplatinum) UPnP and DNLA libraries
• Improved performance of the default Web Interface (complete rewrite of JavaScript loading)
• Added WebSocket support for JSON-RPC and to Addons API^[9]
• Added basic support for PVR / EPG extensions and notifications over the JSON-RPC API
• Added SmartPlaylist Extensions and Extended Filtering in JSON-RPC^[10]
• Removed the old HTTP API in favour of the new JSON-RPC API
• Improved keymap XML files for various controls, including the Xbox 360 Controller for PC (out-of-the-box support for both Windows and Ubuntu).

1.10 Android Specific

• Added initial Android (operating system) port with multi-architecture platform support
• Added NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
• Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on Amlogic
• Added support for OpenGL ES hardware accelerated rendering of XBMC's GUI engine on Android
• Added ALSA audio output sink for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
• Added Andriod touch support

1.11 BSD Specific

• Added initial BSD (operating system) port for FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
• Added ALSA, OSS, and PulseAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
• Added VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
• Added VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD

1.12 Linux Specific

• Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on AMLogic devices
• Added dedicated OMXPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding via OpenMAX IL API
• Added ALSA and PulseAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
• Added alternative name support to LIRC mapping for linux-input-layer devices
• Added lircmap for Conexant's CX23885 IR (infrared) recievers
• Improved ARM processor architecture (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
• Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
• Improved playback with Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe hardware accelerated video decoder
• Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
• Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
• Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
• Remove all dependencies of HAL manager libraries from XBMC's code

1.13 iOS Specific

• Added CoreAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
• Improved H.264 hardware accelerated video decoding support decode on iOS via Apple's VideoToolBox API
• Improved support for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
• Improved XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier
• Added iOS iDevices can now use the native iOS keyboard. Core functions only, so add-ons might still pop-up the XBMC keyboard.
• Added iOS iDevices can now use native video putout when using the Apple HDMI adapter. "A5" and above iOS devices can also mirror XBMC video to a native Apple TV 2/3 AirPlay server (but not to an XBMC AirPlay server).
• Added key repeat for ATV2
• Added navigation sound support
• Improved stylized subtitle support (ASS/SSA subtitles)

1.14 Mac OS X Specific

• Added CoreAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
• Add support for compiling 64-bit version of XBMC for Mac on OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later
• Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard or later)
• Improved XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

1.15 Windows Specific

• Added DirectSound and WASAPI audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework

2 References

1. ↑ Boblight googlecode
2. ↑ Boblight at Bob's blog
3. ↑ Enable Dirty Regions by Default
4. ↑ Working With Dirty Regions
5. ↑ Run a split gui/display resolution for embedded platforms
6. ↑ Added Bluray HDMV menu support (but not BD-J / BD-Live menus)
7. ↑ Added support for both banner and poster video art types simultaneously
8. ↑ Improved international language file translations system powered by Transifex
9. ↑ Support WebSocket for JSON-RPC
10. ↑ Added SmartPlaylist Extensions and Extended Filtering in JSON-RPC