It’s been quite a while in the making (and maybe a bit late), but Camelot has arrived for Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBMC Live, and just in time for the holidays. Noteworthy changes include a revamped user interface via the new default skin “Confluence“, DirectX support by default for the Windows platform, a complete reorganization of the settings menus, automatic video information extraction, and smoother video playback. In addition, all scrapers have been updated, new remotes are supported out of the box, and codecs have been updated for more reliable playback. For a full changelog, see the end of this post.

Look to the download page for the good stuff. We wish to thank our community for helping to make XBMC what it is. Several new skins and plugins have been created since Babylon, be sure to check them out as well.

For the developers, this is where the fun starts. To quote the great Linus Torvalds, “A release is not so much of a birth of a new version, it’s more of a laying-to-rest of an old one. It’s also an end to a fairly quiet period.” It’s now open-season for us to start looking forward and begin merging in all those new features that have been brewing. Enjoy our latest offering as we get back to work!

As a brief aside, we’re looking to recruit a talented web developer as well as a graphics designer for a few future endeavors. If you’re interested in more detail and have serious skills (no weekend warriors please), drop us a line.

Update: It looks like there’s a problem with the live installer causing installation to fail. Please hold tight while we look into it.

Update #2: Turns out the live issue was brought on by a last-minute upstream change.  We’ll get this fixed ASAP, though due to the holidays, we ask for your patience.

Update #3: Download links updated for 9.11 repack. Installer should now work correctly.

Read on for the condensed changelog:
Read more…

As the testing portion of Camelot continues, we would like to introduce Confluence as the new default XBMC skin. We have also stopped including the original Project Mayhem III skin (Don’t worry, PM3.HD is still there). It will be added to the gallery soon, but for now you can find it here.

A ‘Confluence’ is the coming together of many things into one point, and the skin lives up to that for sure. Jezz_X started it as a progression of his MediaStream_Redux, but it has evolved into something entirely different from its origins. You’ll surely notice that it shares a home-screen ‘blade’ with MediaStream, a settings screen feel with Aeon, views from many other skins, etc. In short, he’s used ideas from existing skins to make a coherent amalgamation that is both sexy and easy to use. Feel free to visit the gallery for screenshots or the forum to discuss the skin.

Confluence 'Fanart' View

Soft String Freeze

Also for this release, the settings cleanup is in the final stages. For the most part, we’ve reorganized and renamed everything that needed attention. All that’s left now is the finishing touches. As a result, you may notice that some of your settings have reverted to the new defaults. Please double-check this before submitting bug reports.

While strings are not completely frozen yet, we ask at this time that translators begin submitting their translations, paying special attention to the settings and Confluence. There should be no new strings and no drastic changes from here on out, only tweaks where they are needed.

Skin Freeze

We’re introducing a skin freeze for this release in an effort to improve the experience of users and alleviate some of the stress for skinners. From this point on, the XBMC skinning engine should be considered frozen, meaning that only bugfixes will be committed. We ask that all skinners take this opportunity to be sure that your skins work with Beta1. Starting with Camelot, the skin gallery will reflect the skins that work in the current STABLE version of XBMC. If skinners wish to link to skins that work on unstable versions of XBMC, they should make the distinction VERY clear on their skin page and optimally link to their forum for all necessary information. We hope that this will help to clear the confusion for the many casual users of XBMC who don’t visit the forum, but want to see the skins that will work in the latest stable version.

Downloads

As always, head to the download page for the latest stable and pre-release versions. Update: All versions should be up and in working order now. There was a packaging accident which disabled vdpau in linux builds. This has been fixed, and PPAs and Live builds are now ready.

Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release.

Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as such. While it’s not likely to burn your house down or eat your pets, it’s likely that testers will run into a few bugs. If this happens, please search TRAC to see if someone else has already reported it. If not, you may submit a QUALITY bug report. Keep in mind that the reason for releasing alphas/betas is so that we can get a better feel for what bugs are out there. If you don’t report them, we can’t fix them.

We are also still working hard to clean up the settings. Many useless ones have been removed, but there’s still quite a bit of rearranging to do.

There are a host of new features in this release, far too many to list here. The highlights are:

• DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
• Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
• Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
• Switch to Core Audio on OSX
• Many VDPAU improvements under linux
• Many platform-specific customizations
• Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.

Known Issues

• Windows: DirectX runtime and Visual C++ 2008 runtime(x86/x64) are required. The installer will be updated to check for these.
• Windows: ‘Windowed’ shortcut opens in full screen
• Windows: Non-functional brightness/contrast
• Windows: Discs inserted before XBMC is launched may not appear correctly
• Windows: Some videos may not play back as smoothly as on other platforms
• Linux: VDPAU de-interlacing is known to be broken

Note: Many of these problems have already been fixed since the alpha1 tag and should be resolved in the next testing release.

Download

If you like living on the edge and would like to try the alpha, head over to our download page. You will always find the most current official builds there. AppleTV users may update via launcher’s downloads.

Update: The Ubuntu PPA and XBMC Live are now up.

MiniMeedia has now been added to the Official XBMC Skinning Project SVN so that anyone can now download the project files (including all the textures etc). You can find out more details about the XBMC Skinning Project here.

The code added to SVN is the same as the 0.95 version that was released last month with a couple of small tweaks to the languages folder and a new linux build script (untested).

I may finally be getting some time to look at polishing the skin and getting the v1.00 release ready over the next few days and weeks.

It has come to my attention that over the last few years of development by jmarshall of the XBMC skinning engine we have come very far.  The problem is with progress comes change,  change is good (in some ways) unfortunately moving forward also mean sometimes breaking the old.  You just can’t keep constantly maintain backwards compatibility,  it slows things down and means extra legacy code to do the same thing that new code does better.  

So with that in mind I have decided to go through and update some of my older skins to work with the newer versions of XBMC.   I won’t be adding anything new to them but just making them work again.  With that in mind here is the first to fall :)

Xbox-Classic  

I know its not real modern looking and is a complete rip off of the original Xbox 1 dashboard but hey that’s what it was supposed to be :) Originally made by Blackbolt many a year ago It was updated by me (Jezz_X) a long time ago to work with XBMC changes and now I update it again :)

You can download an updated version from here

You can also get the skin from the XBMC skinning SVN at  this address