This is just a quick note for addon developers. A recent change to the codebase from the August cycle has added a new “content_type” parameter. With this parameter, addons that provide access to content that includes both audio and video (like the Internet Archive) can now be limited to only one content type, depending on where it is called from. So if the addon is called from Video Addons it will only list videos, and if it is called from Audio Addons it will only list audio tracks.

This change has the potential to cause addon breakage, so it is recommended that you check your addon against the current code base to make sure everything is still in working order.

Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe it was because of the hundreds, if not thousands, of demands on Twitter, in blogs, on Facebook, in Reddit, and in Kickstarter comments. Maybe it’s because many of Team Ouya support XBMC, and nearly a third of Team XBMC members are Ouya backers.

Regardless, we are delighted to announce that XBMC will be working with Ouya to ensure that XBMC works well on the Ouya platform. Ouya’s Android underpinnings and XBMC’s work on Android (soon to be merged into master, pending final sign-offs!) will dramatically speed up that effort, as will early XBMC dev access to Ouya prototypes.

The conversation between our two teams is young, but talk is ongoing and positive. We look forward to providing more exciting news on this front as it develops.

To see what all the Ouya fuss it about, check out the link below.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console/posts/283033

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the June Changelog.

Airplay Updates

Two major updates have occurred on the Airplay side. First, AirTunes have finally been implemented on the Windows side. This means you can send both music and video from your iOS and iTunes devices to XBMC for Windows.

Second, when sending AirPlay music to XBMC, XBMC can now read the metadata sent in the stream and display the music information (e.g. title, author, coverart, etc.) on the screen. Unfortunately, this is only possible when sending audio from iTunes. iOS devices use FairPlay encryption, which XBMC is not totally compatible with at this time.

GSOC Updates

The efforts of our GSOC students are beginning to come to fruition. Montellese has been working over time to make the XBMC library faster and smarter. This month he has managed to push two fixes/updates to the library. First, movie sets now sort in a manner that better fit the rest of the library. In the past, movie sets were simply listed at the front of the movie library, like folders in front of files. Now, they are sorted based on the category. For example, the average rating of the movies inside the set would determine where the set would reside in a “sort by rating.”

A second new GSOC feature by Montellese should drastically speed up movie listings over JSON-RPC, which will greatly benefit mobile remote users and anyone else accessing the library from non-local devices. In the past, every call to XBMC’s movie library required spitting out every item in that library, even if the remote device was only looking for a few items. Now, a device can just pull those items it needs at any given point, for a massive time saving. Read more…

As you should all know by now, Team XBMC does not maintain a build for the original Xbox. With that said, a few valiant souls have continued to port over some of the more beneficial lines of XBMC code and done other bug fixing the keep the aging Xbox as a valid option for many people out there. To this day, though more than 10 years old, the Xbox 1 remains one of the best boxes in the world for gaming, pictures, and SD video playback.

Unfortunately, the dev team at our sister site XBMC4Xbox is currently dealing with some hosting problems. So for now, those of you still benefitting from your old Xbox may find them at their new site xbmc4xbox.org.uk until the hosting problems have been resolved. Plus, if you are still updating your old Xbox, it may be worth noting that their donation page is only a click away.

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the May Changelog.

AudioEngine

As many of you no doubt already know by now, the really big code update this cycle was the inclusion of AudioEngine, led by gnif, into XBMC proper. For more information on this massive code shift, visit this post or check the wiki.

Hi10P

On an only slightly less frequently requested note, anime fans will be happy to learn that elupus has incorporated Hi10P playback into XBMC. A massive caveat to this development is that, in order to play back 1080p 10bit video, you are going to need an incredibly powerful machine with a very fast CPU (we’re talking desktop grade hardware). Users are reporting that 720p video appears to be at least workable on your lower level CPUs, but any expectations for silky smooth playback on something like the NVIDIA ION platform will almost certainly be met with disappointment. With that said, if you are currently running a fairly powerful machine, XBMC is finally ready to play your anime.

BR & DVD

In the steady march toward full unecrypted Bluray playback, elupus has also incorporated a virtual directory for Bluray files. While XBMC is still only able to display and navigate native HDMV Bluray menus (and not the common BD-J menus), users will be able to view a list of video files that display the video duration in the folder and select whichever video he or she would like to watch.

For users who typically watch DVDs recorded in a non-native default language, developer Montellese has subtly altered the way XBMC picks the appropriate audio language from among multiple options. Rather than simply picking the audio that has been flagged as “default,” XBMC will attempt to match the language of the XBMC installation with the audio language. So if you are running XBMC in German, and you attempt to watch a movie that typically would default in English, but happens to have a German track, XBMC will attempt to recognize and then select that track for you.

In addition, after selecting the appropriate language, XBMC will now make its audio selection based on the “best” track, rather than the first track listed. So in the past, there may have been 3 German language tracks listed in the following order: DTS-HD, MP3, and Dolby Digital. If XBMC was unable to play the DTS-HD track, it would default down to the next track and pick MP3. Now it will pick the next best track, and default to Dolby Digital.

Image Caching Improvements

One major area targeted for improvement for Frodo is the XBMC library. In particular, we are focused on making the library faster and smarter. The first step in this process, led by Jonathan Marshall, is a dramatic improvement in the way the library handles images. In the past, images would be cached in a local file and XBMC would have no knowledge of where that local file came from or what it was for. Now, XBMC will log where an art file comes from and where it is cached. In addition, XBMC will log what kind of file it is, whether it is a poster, a banner, clearart, or whatever.  This means, as this framework is extended, skinners will be able to use locally cached art in numerous different views, regardless of whether the art type is banner, thumb, or other. Users will be able to change the art, simply by placing a new art file in the folder where the media is located and letting XBMC automatically note that the file has changed. And MySQL users will no longer have to worry about pathsubstitutions, as each client will maintain its own thumbnail cache that gets registered in the bigger database.

This means XBMC needs to recache all your lovely art, which will be done as you browse each item in your library. You’ll notice the first time you browse a listing the art will take a bit longer than usual to come in, but once recached, everything will be nice and snappy again. At the moment, only the smart links to your various image files are part of the May Cycle; however, as XBMC starts to take advantage of these improvements, libraries and skins should experience dramatic improvements in the months ahead.

Confluence Updates

In the shift from Dharma to Eden, Jezz_X was tasked with making media more easily accessible from the home screen with Confluence. Now, as more devices like the Raspberry Pi become available, the goal is to make the default skin Confluence as streamlined and efficient as possible, while continuing to make the media quickly accessible. To that end, you’ll note a number of changes this cycle. First of all, throughout XBMC, users will be greeted with a single, uniform, clean background image that may be altered at the user’s preference (Note: the code to change the background image is not available in this snapshot, so keep an eye out for nightlies and the June cycle). The default font has been switched to Android’s Roboto font. Weather forecasts as well as the home screen “recently added” lists have been bumped up to 10 scrollable items, and the Music category has gotten “recently added” albums. Finally, a “global search” bar has been added to the home screen so that those who have a lot of media can go directly to whatever they are looking for. (At the time of this writing, however, the global search bar has been know to cause some issues, at least on the Windows side, so be careful when trying it out.) Update: At the time of this writing, in order to use global search, users must install it as an addon in Addons->Program Addons.

Our first second 64bit platform

On the platform side, Davilla has drastically updated the build process for OSX. As of this cycle, XBMC for PPC is no longer available. On the upside however, XBMC is now a 64bit program in OSX and users may feel a measurable performance increase. Given how long XBMC4Xbox has lasted, PPC holdouts should probably not fear too much about this shift, as, if demand continues to exist, I have no doubt that a builder somewhere will continue to build XBMC for PPC. Note: while this transition has occurred in code, the automated alpha build available below is still only 32bit. Keep an eye out next month and in nightlies for the first build by our buildbot in 64bit. Update: It appears that 64bit Linux users have actually been enjoying 64bit XBMC since 2008, thereby making OSX our second 64bit platform. Apologies for the earlier misstatement.

Conclusion

That covers some of the more notable and easily visible changes in this cycle. For a full list of all the May changes, feel free to take a look at our list of May milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the June Cycle. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading now! At the moment, builds available are on the Windows and OSX platforms. Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for iOS and Linux are not yet available.

As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization will have a more stable and predictable development cycle. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. For example, the iOS build will not be available this round. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the April Changelog.

First on the list is a major reshuffle of XBMC settings. In the past, many of the controls for allowing XBMC to interact with your network were found on the Network page. Because the Network group was primarily being used for interacting with various external services, the Network page has been entirely replaced with a Services page. The “Internet Access” setting, which was the only other purpose of the Network page, has been moved to the System page.

XBMC has quite a lot of services to deal with these days!

Next, extending XBMC’s default ability to scrape sets, we’ve now added a new “Sets” submenu item.

For all you iOS users out there, we have an even more exciting announcement. Those of you with iPads, recent iPod Touches, and recent iPhones that are running XBMC will now be able to switch your screen from the local screen to your TV using one of the available TV Out cords provided by Apple.  Then, you can use your local screen as a remote control. Or, to put it more succinctly, mirroring for XBMC is now enabled. For a video on how this works, see below. (Note: as already mentioned, the lack of an iOS build for April means this feature will not actually be available until iOS nightly builds start back up again. Keep an eye on our social network pages, as those will likely be the first places with news on the builds.)

On the library front, in addition to Names, Year, Runtime, and many others, a new Date Added sort field has been enabled. This field works slightly differently than the old “Recently Added” sorting. Rather than sorting the files by how recently they’ve been added to XBMC, the files are now sorted by when they were added to your local computer or server. This way, when refreshing an old show, that show won’t suddenly take up all the spaces in your Recently Added field. Instead, Recently Added really will only show items that you have recently added to your collection.

Finally, Addon, Remote Control, and Skin Developers will be happy to hear that yet more json-rpc controls and websocket support have been added, along with PictureInfo tags.

Conclusion

For a full list of all the April changes, feel free to take a look at our list of closed April milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the May Cycle. Our developers are working extra hard to hopefully include one of the most requested feature additions of the past two years. Feel free to make some guesses as to which feature that is in the comments. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading now!

In a continuation of the series begun with our write-up of the USB-CEC adapter, we would like to take the time today to highlight another adapter out there that makes controlling XBMC dramatically easier. This week, I’d like to introduce Chris (psuedo7 in the forum), who will be telling us a bit about the project FLIRC.  I’d also like to invite any other software writers or manufacturers to contact me in the forums at username natethomas, if you have come up with a new and unique method for improving the usability of XBMC and would like to share your project.

Take it away, Chris.

Hello XBMC.org Readers,

My name is Chris (or pseudo7 on the forums). I’ve been an XBMC user for about 3 years, firstly using my mac then using a shuttle box running Openelec (so I didn’t have to keep connecting/ disconnecting my MacBook Pro).  I love XBMC: the application, the project and everything it envelops.

(Disclaimer – whilst I am “staff” (Read: a forum moderator) on the FLIRC forums I am not employed by Flirc and do not benefit directly, financially or otherwise, from the project I am about to discuss.)

I have recently come across a product which has enhanced my XBMC experience, and I wanted to give back to the community and share my findings about Flirc.

Much like the previous Pulse-Eight article, my intention is to highlight what I think is a great product that many users may not have heard about that dramatically simplifies the process of building an XBMC htpc.

What is Flirc?

Flirc allows you to pair your same television remote to your computer with easy one-time setup software.

Flirc is a small USB infra-red (I.R.) adapter that receives I.R. commands from a remote control. Read more…