Mod edit - to avoid this thread being removed please do not post any links or name any addons.
There's very little information here about Kodi (née XBMC), so I thought I'd start a thread, every other subject has an "*** Official ***" thread, so why not this?
Current Releases
Current Stable Release: v14.1 (Helix)
We are proud to announce the release of Kodi 14.1, which comes with a new name, a new logo, and a wide variety of new features, but underneath the new coat of paint remains the same software we all love. This is the first small bugfix release in the Helix range. As we have mention in our Kodi 14.0 release announcement, we will be releasing these to squash down any issues left after the first final release. Below you will find a list of fixes so far.
Fixes so far
* Fix: incorrect video screensize on Android AML devices
* Fix: potential segfault when silencing audio
* Fix: do not skip streaminfo if format is not know.
* Fix: DXVA flickering on AMD
* Fix: prevent possible over-flow in ALSA
* Fix: possible sorting problems in library
* Fix: possible problem in library navigation
* Fix: don’t scroll text when it’s set to not do it
* Fix: scroll text if it’s too long on spinner controls
* Fix: don’t overlap PVR search labels
* Fix: bug in DLNA client string on iOS
* Fix: updated several PVR add-ons
* Fix: remember played state of video when started from recently added
* Fix: correct vsync on OSX
* Fix: broken keyboard input
* Fix: prevent crash on circular dependencies of add-ons
* Fix: large file support on Android
* Fix: random exiting on Android x86 builds (Nexus Player for example)
Re-touched skin
As of now the standard touch skin which is called re-touched, now also includes a PVR section.
Windows
Finally, there remain a few known bugs in Kodi 14.1 for Windows. However this should affect only a tiny portion of the users. In very rare cases Windows users may experience a Kodi crash. In such cases please disable the webserver in settings. The developers are working on finding the underlying cause of this and hope is on the horizon. However because this is quite a deeply buried problem we are unlikely to be able to fix it for the 14.x series. We will make certain it will be fixed for 15.0. For more information and test-builds regarding this issue visit this forum thread. Your input and help resolving this problem is much appreciated.
Rasberry Pi 2
The new and faster model Raspberry Pi 2 was just announced and we receive a lot of questions if Kodi will run on it. So yes of course Kodi will run on it. OpenELEC has released a special version for the new model based on Kodi 14.1 which will have full support for it out of the box.
A Few Warnings and Notices
This release marks the switch to the new name Kodi. When you install this releases , your library and add-ons will be moved to Kodi, making reverting back to 13.2 fairly difficult. As such, it is recommended that you back up your library as well as your settings before installing Kodi.
If you are using a skin other than the default Confluence, it is possible that you may find the software keyboard blank as a result of the previously mentioned keyboard layout upgrade. If so, you need to either switch to a new skin, or see if your skin has a Helix update. While Kodi automatically checks for addon and skin updates, you can speed up this process by visiting the addons browser from the settings menu and selecting “Check for updates.”
Also, as Kodi is an unsigned application on OSX, you may need to go through a slightly different process to start it the first time. After you have copied Kodi to the Applications folder, you will need to “right click” or “two finger click” Kodi from within the Applications folder and select “Open” and then accept the warning. You should only need to do this the first time you run Kodi.
Finally, there remain a few known bugs in Kodi 14.0 that should affect only a tiny portion of the population. In very rare cases Windows users may experience a Kodi crash. In such cases please disable the webserver in settings. We hope to have these issues resolved by the inevitable Kodi 14.1 release.
Download
To download, please visit our download page. To upgrade from any previous build, just install on top of your current version.
Download here
Multiple XBMCs Throughout the House
This thread will build upon the basics noted in thisHowToGeek guide. Edit: Don't use the previously linked guide - use the XBMC Wiki instead
The setup of the MySQL server noted in the guide is good, and it's pointless me replicating that good stuff here - so I'll add some more details below, that outline some of my issues, how I've overcome them, and other cool stuff.
Database & Connection
IMPORTANT: XBMC seems to have issues with MySQL 5.6 - use MySQL 5.5 instead.
The <name></name> tag in the advancedsettings.xml file is only required if you want multiple profiles - else it will just use the default naming for the databases (MyMusicXX and MyVideosXX, with a number at the end to denote the current XBMC version)
Here is my advancedsettings.xml file. Note that I use IP addresses for my database host - this is noted as being quicker than using hostname.
advancedsettings.xml
Sources
The most important thing, when running multiple different OSes, which is what caused me issues for a while, is that the sources.xml file is *absolutely* identical between all machines.
If you're using a Windows (SMB) share and a mixture of Windows & other OSes, then you must create your sources file as follows:
sources.xml
The "smb:" is required for OSes other than Windows to know how to find the media - if you add the source from a Windows box, then it will add it without the "smb:" bit - which will work on Windows, but not Linux or iOS or Android.
Before I found this out, and had added each of the shares on each machine - I would successfully add media to the library on one machine, and it would then not play on a Linux box. This is because it checks for a file's existance by the *exact* filename.
Scrapers
All we've done so far is tell XBMC where to store details of the files it finds, and where to look for files.
However, all this will give us is a pretty boring file listing - and hey, we may as well just use a file explorer if that's where we're going to stop!
You can "scrape" a large number of types of media into your XBMC library, and download various information and fanart/thumbnails.
The most common things to use XBMC for is Movies, TV Series, and Music. Each of these come with a number of scrapers, which will take information from various different sources, such as IMDB, TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, last.fm, MusicBrainz, AllMusic to name but a few.
Configuring each of your sources to contain a specific type of media (Movies, TV Series, Music) gives you lots of information about the media you've got, and really adds to the experience.
Thumbnails & Fanart
Thumbnails and fanart are important in XBMC - they give interactivity and "wow" to it - without these, it's a boring listing of files like other methods. Because they are loaded when you browse your media, any slowness in loading fanart and thumbnails will be noticed.
It is for this reason I have fitted out my main XBMC PCs with SSD drives.
In XBMC v11 (Eden), your thumbnails will not keep up to date on all systems without some manual intervention. This is because whenever a machine adds a file to the library, it will download the thumbnails, details and fanart. This means that your "secondary" machines will not download the thumbnails.
You will need to keep these synchronised in one of two ways - place the thumbnails and fanart on a network share, or use a utility to keep the files synchronised.
The first option means that you're instantly slowing down the reading of this fanart to the speed & latency of your network, and the speed for the storage system on the shared drive to find and serve the file back.
To set this up, you add to the advancedsettings.xml file the following (between the <advancedsettings></advancedsettings>:
(where you substitute the "smb://SERVER/Software/" etc to the correct path you've set up)
In XBMC v12 (Frodo) - things are different.
The fanart/thumbnails are now stored locally on each machine (as per default in Eden), but the URL of the fanart is stored in the database, and each client keeps a local database of which fanart it has acquired - and any new media added to the server (and library) will have the fanart downloaded by each client upon first trying to access it.
This ensures that all machines have the correct fanart, but it's still kept locally, on the quicker storage. You can still, of course, decide to store your fanart on a server (say you have a Raspberry Pi with a 4GB SD Card for the OS - your fanart will grow as your media collection grows, and you may fill the SD card with fanart)
Controlling XBMC
I migrated from Windows Media Center, and therefore I had an official Microsoft MCE remote control and IR receiver.
This is still my primary input device for the box in the living room.
To get this working for XBMC, and not try to run Media Center, you can download and install XBMC Custom Regis. The installer comes with options to configure specifically for Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as return these settings back again. It will automatically install AutoHotKey as part of the install process, and will ensure that pressing the Green Button or any of the dedicated buttons that usually fire up Media Center, will instead take you to the correct section within XBMC.
XBMC v12 (Frodo) also has much better support for gamepads (which is surprising, given it was initially designed for the Xbox), and the XBox 360 pad is now properly supported.
But the real gem comes in terms of being able to control it from devices such as an iOS phone/tablet, Android phone/tablet, Windows phone/tablet, and even any web browser.
I have an Android phone, and my preferred favourite is Yatse (which is available for Android and Windows).
This allows you to configure profiles for multiple XBMC systems, and at a couple of touches, use it as a glorified remote control to navigate the screen, or even browse your library locally on the device before telling the XBMC instance to play it.
It also gives you options in the "Send To" menu, so that you can be browsing YouTube etc on your phone/tablet, and send the current video to your XBMC to watch on the big screen.
To configure this, you will need to enable "Allow control of XBMC via HTTP" ( Settings > Services > Webserver), and "Allow programs on remote systems to control XBMC" (Settings -> Network -> Services) - and select a port to use (I use 8080), then you can successfully connect from Yatse or your preferred remote control application.
XBMC can also be an AirPlay client for those of you with iOS devices - there's options to enable AirPlay in the Settings.
Add-ons
There are a ton of great (and probably even more "not great"!) add-ons which really add to the XBMC experience. I've briefly mentioned Add-Ons earlier when talking about scrapers - the official XBMC Add-On repository is filled with plenty of different types of scrapers, as well as other video/music add-ons, photo add-ons, program add-ons - really it's too much to list here.
I've personally got the Univeral Artist Scraper, Universal Album Scraper, Universal Movie Scraper and Universal TV Scaper enabled, as well as BBC i-Player, ITV Player, 4OD, YouTube, TED Talks, TV Show Next Aired add-ons.
There are additional repositories you can add, which include many other cool stuff, including even some adult-orientated add-ons for those of you without families (maybe that multiple profile thing mentioned in the HowToGeek guide is sounding good now?
) - but these require some additional digging, and due to the nature of this forum (and the fact I don't want this post deleted) - I won't be providing any links to those adult add-ons (but discussion about other "family friendly" add-ons is actively encouraged!
That'll do for now - any more questions or XBMC tips please post below!
There's very little information here about Kodi (née XBMC), so I thought I'd start a thread, every other subject has an "*** Official ***" thread, so why not this?
Current Releases
Current Stable Release: v14.1 (Helix)
We are proud to announce the release of Kodi 14.1, which comes with a new name, a new logo, and a wide variety of new features, but underneath the new coat of paint remains the same software we all love. This is the first small bugfix release in the Helix range. As we have mention in our Kodi 14.0 release announcement, we will be releasing these to squash down any issues left after the first final release. Below you will find a list of fixes so far.
Fixes so far
* Fix: incorrect video screensize on Android AML devices
* Fix: potential segfault when silencing audio
* Fix: do not skip streaminfo if format is not know.
* Fix: DXVA flickering on AMD
* Fix: prevent possible over-flow in ALSA
* Fix: possible sorting problems in library
* Fix: possible problem in library navigation
* Fix: don’t scroll text when it’s set to not do it
* Fix: scroll text if it’s too long on spinner controls
* Fix: don’t overlap PVR search labels
* Fix: bug in DLNA client string on iOS
* Fix: updated several PVR add-ons
* Fix: remember played state of video when started from recently added
* Fix: correct vsync on OSX
* Fix: broken keyboard input
* Fix: prevent crash on circular dependencies of add-ons
* Fix: large file support on Android
* Fix: random exiting on Android x86 builds (Nexus Player for example)
Re-touched skin
As of now the standard touch skin which is called re-touched, now also includes a PVR section.
Windows
Finally, there remain a few known bugs in Kodi 14.1 for Windows. However this should affect only a tiny portion of the users. In very rare cases Windows users may experience a Kodi crash. In such cases please disable the webserver in settings. The developers are working on finding the underlying cause of this and hope is on the horizon. However because this is quite a deeply buried problem we are unlikely to be able to fix it for the 14.x series. We will make certain it will be fixed for 15.0. For more information and test-builds regarding this issue visit this forum thread. Your input and help resolving this problem is much appreciated.
Rasberry Pi 2
The new and faster model Raspberry Pi 2 was just announced and we receive a lot of questions if Kodi will run on it. So yes of course Kodi will run on it. OpenELEC has released a special version for the new model based on Kodi 14.1 which will have full support for it out of the box.
A Few Warnings and Notices
This release marks the switch to the new name Kodi. When you install this releases , your library and add-ons will be moved to Kodi, making reverting back to 13.2 fairly difficult. As such, it is recommended that you back up your library as well as your settings before installing Kodi.
If you are using a skin other than the default Confluence, it is possible that you may find the software keyboard blank as a result of the previously mentioned keyboard layout upgrade. If so, you need to either switch to a new skin, or see if your skin has a Helix update. While Kodi automatically checks for addon and skin updates, you can speed up this process by visiting the addons browser from the settings menu and selecting “Check for updates.”
Also, as Kodi is an unsigned application on OSX, you may need to go through a slightly different process to start it the first time. After you have copied Kodi to the Applications folder, you will need to “right click” or “two finger click” Kodi from within the Applications folder and select “Open” and then accept the warning. You should only need to do this the first time you run Kodi.
Finally, there remain a few known bugs in Kodi 14.0 that should affect only a tiny portion of the population. In very rare cases Windows users may experience a Kodi crash. In such cases please disable the webserver in settings. We hope to have these issues resolved by the inevitable Kodi 14.1 release.
Download
To download, please visit our download page. To upgrade from any previous build, just install on top of your current version.
Download here
Multiple XBMCs Throughout the House
This thread will build upon the basics noted in this
The setup of the MySQL server noted in the guide is good, and it's pointless me replicating that good stuff here - so I'll add some more details below, that outline some of my issues, how I've overcome them, and other cool stuff.
Database & Connection
IMPORTANT: XBMC seems to have issues with MySQL 5.6 - use MySQL 5.5 instead.
The <name></name> tag in the advancedsettings.xml file is only required if you want multiple profiles - else it will just use the default naming for the databases (MyMusicXX and MyVideosXX, with a number at the end to denote the current XBMC version)
Here is my advancedsettings.xml file. Note that I use IP addresses for my database host - this is noted as being quicker than using hostname.
advancedsettings.xml
Code:
<advancedsettings>
<videodatabase>
<type>mysql</type>
<host>192.168.10.200</host>
<port>3306</port>
<user>xbmc</user>
<pass>xbmc</pass>
</videodatabase>
<musicdatabase>
<type>mysql</type>
<host>192.168.10.200</host>
<port>3306</port>
<user>xbmc</user>
<pass>xbmc</pass>
</musicdatabase>
</advancedsettings>Sources
The most important thing, when running multiple different OSes, which is what caused me issues for a while, is that the sources.xml file is *absolutely* identical between all machines.
If you're using a Windows (SMB) share and a mixture of Windows & other OSes, then you must create your sources file as follows:
sources.xml
Code:
<sources>
<programs>
<default pathversion="1"></default>
</programs>
<video>
<default pathversion="1"></default>
<source>
<name>TV Shows</name>
<path pathversion="1">smb://SERVER/Videos/TV Programs/</path>
</source>
<source>
<name>Movies</name>
<path pathversion="1">smb://SERVER/Videos/Movies/</path>
</source>
</video>
<music>
<default pathversion="1"></default>
<source>
<name>Music</name>
<path pathversion="1">smb://SERVER/Music/</path>
</source>
</music>
<pictures>
<default pathversion="1"></default>
<source>
<name>Pictures</name>
<path pathversion="1">smb://SERVER/Photos/</path>
</source>
</pictures>
<files>
<default pathversion="1"></default>
</files>
</sources>The "smb:" is required for OSes other than Windows to know how to find the media - if you add the source from a Windows box, then it will add it without the "smb:" bit - which will work on Windows, but not Linux or iOS or Android.
Before I found this out, and had added each of the shares on each machine - I would successfully add media to the library on one machine, and it would then not play on a Linux box. This is because it checks for a file's existance by the *exact* filename.
Scrapers
All we've done so far is tell XBMC where to store details of the files it finds, and where to look for files.
However, all this will give us is a pretty boring file listing - and hey, we may as well just use a file explorer if that's where we're going to stop!
You can "scrape" a large number of types of media into your XBMC library, and download various information and fanart/thumbnails.
The most common things to use XBMC for is Movies, TV Series, and Music. Each of these come with a number of scrapers, which will take information from various different sources, such as IMDB, TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, last.fm, MusicBrainz, AllMusic to name but a few.
Configuring each of your sources to contain a specific type of media (Movies, TV Series, Music) gives you lots of information about the media you've got, and really adds to the experience.
Thumbnails & Fanart
Thumbnails and fanart are important in XBMC - they give interactivity and "wow" to it - without these, it's a boring listing of files like other methods. Because they are loaded when you browse your media, any slowness in loading fanart and thumbnails will be noticed.
It is for this reason I have fitted out my main XBMC PCs with SSD drives.
In XBMC v11 (Eden), your thumbnails will not keep up to date on all systems without some manual intervention. This is because whenever a machine adds a file to the library, it will download the thumbnails, details and fanart. This means that your "secondary" machines will not download the thumbnails.
You will need to keep these synchronised in one of two ways - place the thumbnails and fanart on a network share, or use a utility to keep the files synchronised.
The first option means that you're instantly slowing down the reading of this fanart to the speed & latency of your network, and the speed for the storage system on the shared drive to find and serve the file back.
To set this up, you add to the advancedsettings.xml file the following (between the <advancedsettings></advancedsettings>:
Code:
<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/</from>
<to>smb://SERVER/Software/XBMC/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>(where you substitute the "smb://SERVER/Software/" etc to the correct path you've set up)
In XBMC v12 (Frodo) - things are different.
The fanart/thumbnails are now stored locally on each machine (as per default in Eden), but the URL of the fanart is stored in the database, and each client keeps a local database of which fanart it has acquired - and any new media added to the server (and library) will have the fanart downloaded by each client upon first trying to access it.
This ensures that all machines have the correct fanart, but it's still kept locally, on the quicker storage. You can still, of course, decide to store your fanart on a server (say you have a Raspberry Pi with a 4GB SD Card for the OS - your fanart will grow as your media collection grows, and you may fill the SD card with fanart)
Controlling XBMC
I migrated from Windows Media Center, and therefore I had an official Microsoft MCE remote control and IR receiver.
This is still my primary input device for the box in the living room.
To get this working for XBMC, and not try to run Media Center, you can download and install XBMC Custom Regis. The installer comes with options to configure specifically for Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as return these settings back again. It will automatically install AutoHotKey as part of the install process, and will ensure that pressing the Green Button or any of the dedicated buttons that usually fire up Media Center, will instead take you to the correct section within XBMC.
XBMC v12 (Frodo) also has much better support for gamepads (which is surprising, given it was initially designed for the Xbox), and the XBox 360 pad is now properly supported.
But the real gem comes in terms of being able to control it from devices such as an iOS phone/tablet, Android phone/tablet, Windows phone/tablet, and even any web browser.
I have an Android phone, and my preferred favourite is Yatse (which is available for Android and Windows).
This allows you to configure profiles for multiple XBMC systems, and at a couple of touches, use it as a glorified remote control to navigate the screen, or even browse your library locally on the device before telling the XBMC instance to play it.
It also gives you options in the "Send To" menu, so that you can be browsing YouTube etc on your phone/tablet, and send the current video to your XBMC to watch on the big screen.
To configure this, you will need to enable "Allow control of XBMC via HTTP" ( Settings > Services > Webserver), and "Allow programs on remote systems to control XBMC" (Settings -> Network -> Services) - and select a port to use (I use 8080), then you can successfully connect from Yatse or your preferred remote control application.
XBMC can also be an AirPlay client for those of you with iOS devices - there's options to enable AirPlay in the Settings.
Add-ons
There are a ton of great (and probably even more "not great"!) add-ons which really add to the XBMC experience. I've briefly mentioned Add-Ons earlier when talking about scrapers - the official XBMC Add-On repository is filled with plenty of different types of scrapers, as well as other video/music add-ons, photo add-ons, program add-ons - really it's too much to list here.
I've personally got the Univeral Artist Scraper, Universal Album Scraper, Universal Movie Scraper and Universal TV Scaper enabled, as well as BBC i-Player, ITV Player, 4OD, YouTube, TED Talks, TV Show Next Aired add-ons.
There are additional repositories you can add, which include many other cool stuff, including even some adult-orientated add-ons for those of you without families (maybe that multiple profile thing mentioned in the HowToGeek guide is sounding good now?
) - but these require some additional digging, and due to the nature of this forum (and the fact I don't want this post deleted) - I won't be providing any links to those adult add-ons (but discussion about other "family friendly" add-ons is actively encouraged!That'll do for now - any more questions or XBMC tips please post below!
Last edited:
