We have been keeping a little secret.. the kind that is so much fun to share when the time comes.

Today we announce XBMC for Android. Not a remote, not a thin client; the real deal. No root or jailbreak required. XBMC can be launched as an application on your set-top-box, tablet, phone, or wherever else Android may be found.

The feature-set on Android is the same that you have come to expect from XBMC, no different from its cousin on the desktop. Running your favorite media-center software on small, cheap, embedded hardware is about to become a hassle-free reality. And as Android-based set-top-boxes are becoming more and more ubiquitous, it couldn’t be a better time. In fact, primary development was done on a Pivos XIOS DS set-top-box. And that is no coincidence, you will notice that Pivos is now listed as an official sponsor (more on that later). XBMC is stable and works great there, as well as on various tablets and phones. Though with Android, as many of you probably know, that is only the beginning of the story.

Enjoy the stereotypical dev-shot low-quality demo video. More video, including phone/tablet usage in the next post.

So what’s the catch? None… in time. Currently, for most devices only software decode of audio and video is hooked up. We considered waiting until universal hardware decode was ready before making our announcement, but in the end decided that in the spirit of keeping things open and working with our ever-expanding community, it made sense to open up sooner rather than later. We are confident that an OpenMax-based player (similar to the one used for the Raspberry Pi) will spring up very quickly. That said, software playback of most media plays quite well already.

Though, there is one exception. As Pivos sponsored a large portion of the port, we were able to work with their vendors to achieve buttery-smooth hardware-accelerated playback on the XIOS DS. It remains to be seen if such hardware-specific features will make it into XBMC mainline or exist as patches for vendors to integrate.

While, as you can see in the video, the port is fully usable and lots of fun to play with, it’s not quite ready for prime-time. We will begin releasing apks for interested beta testers in the coming weeks. But for those who are up to the task, as you would expect from XBMC, the source code is available. We have decided not to push to Google Play until we are satisfied that users with all kinds of devices get the same great XBMC experience. We ask that our users stay on the lookout for evil-doers trying to cash in on XBMC’s popularity. If you see anyone masquerading as XBMC, please be sure to let us and Google know about it.

There is also the issue of having a proper UI for small-screen devices. Typically, XBMC skins have been designed for use on a TV, so use on a small phone can be clunky. But there is nothing keeping skinners from creating more functional touch-oriented skins, like the included “Touched” skin from Jezz_X. With the community’s help, we’re sure to have a more refined version available for inclusion by the time we release a stable version.

There are still many details left to iron out, mainly related to the wide variety of Android devices in the wild. We have not yet decided what minimum requirements will be set, due simply to the lack of extensive testing on exotic devices.

As for taking advantage of Android itself, we haven’t even scratched the surface. There are so many interesting features that we could take advantage of: launching apps, location awareness, speech recognition, on and on. Once the core port is finished up, you can bet we’ll be exploring many new avenues.

I could write for days about how the port started, how it was accomplished technically, what tricks were used, etc, but I will save that for a (somewhat more personal) follow-up post. There is much to say about the process that would likely bore most readers, but I will try to answer the questions that come up in the comments as much as possible in that post. The port was a big effort with many contributors, many thanks to Davilla, Memphiz, Phaeodaria, Montellese, Topfs2, and everyone else who was involved.

Full disclosure: I have been working for Pivos for the last few months, where I suggested the port-work and XBMC sponsorship. I hope our users join me in a thanking them for supporting XBMC and allowing me to work on the port (among other things) during the day. Be sure to check out the Pivos forums, where discussions and unofficial builds are bound to spring up quickly.

There is lots going on in XBMC-land, so now seems like a good time for an update on all fronts. I’d like to touch quickly on several areas, there are sure to be some follow-ups coming soon.

We’ve been busy

This was mentioned a few weeks ago on the forum but was never brought up here: In a recent presentation to the Linux Foundation, XBMC was listed in the top 50 live projects (gleaned from Ohloh’s statistics). It is truly an honor to be among the others in that list!

Releases

We have struggled in the past to put out timely releases, because it’s hard to get everyone to quit adding new features long enough to freeze for testing and go through the release motions. To counter that we have borrowed a page from the Linux kernel’s development flow, and added our own touches. We consider this an experiment and we’re not sure if this will be what we settle on going forward, but it’s certainly a start in the right direction. Here’s how it works:

For each major release, we will have monthly merge windows. For roughly a week we will furiously merge in the approved features that have been queued up in the form of pull requests at Github. That leaves the rest of the month for testing and bug-fixing. Then we’re back to a fun new merge window. After a few of these cycles, we will do a hard freeze and enter the Beta/RC stage, followed by release. The hope is that we can move away from a model of constant code-churn to one broken into chunks of stable/unstable periods.

So there it is in its theoretical glory. There are still lots of details to work out, but so far it has been working well. Having features queued up gives us a more clear way to discuss what is going in, and for users to know what to expect. For now, we are using issues at github to manage milestones as it provides a nice interface for discussion (and even a shiny green ‘merge’ button). It will take a few of these merge windows for us to get a feel for things, and from there we’ll begin charting out the Frodo release schedule.

Nightlies

As the April merge window is closed and things have settled down, nightly builds have resumed. It remains to be seen if it will make sense to host nightly builds during the chaotic merge windows.

A few things are up in the air for the Ubuntu PPA, since we have now been accepted into the official repositories. We want to be sure that nightly users have seamless transitions to official releases if they choose, so unstable PPA builds are still on hold. Also, due to some issues with iOS5, ios/atv2 nightly builds are on hold as well.

GSOC

We have 4 students participating in GSOC this year! Congratulations (and thanks) to Tobias Arrskog, Sascha Montellese, Andres Mejia, and Alasdair Campbell. We’ll certainly dedicate a post in the next few days to their projects, for now their proposals can be seen on the clunky GSOC Page.

Linux users rejoice! Thanks primarily to the hard work of Andres Mejia, XBMC has been accepted into the official Debian distribution! In the past we have been unable to make it into Debian as the sheer size and complexity of XBMC made the review process so difficult, so Andres, an XBMC developer who was working to become a Debian Developer already, volunteered to maintain it himself. Yesterday, his Eden packages were accepted. For those unclear about what this means, Debian unstable users will now be able to install XBMC without using any third-party repositories.

We have already been included in several major Linux distributions, but Debian is a big target because of the size of the community around it. As most Linux users are probably aware, other major distros such as Ubuntu and Mint derive (or derive indirectly) from Debian, and sync their packages regularly. Andres succeeded in requesting a sync to Ubuntu in time to hit Precise Pangolin, so users of this next LTS release will be able to install XBMC with just a few clicks (or an apt-get). We hope this will lower the barrier to entry for many users who are not familiar with PPAs.

There are a few notable differences between the packaged Debian/Ubuntu versions and the ones from our ppa or XBMCBuntu:

• decss support (encrypted dvd playback) is disabled unless libdvdcss2 has been installed from a third-party repo.
• libav is used rather than ffmpeg, as Debian unstable has gone this direction.
• AFP (Apple File Protocol) support is currently disabled due to packaging issues.
• rar support is disabled due to Debian policy, which we hope to resolve soon by switching to libarchive, which Andres is personally working on as well. The guy is a unstoppable!

Now there’s one less step to get to the XBMC goodness…

A quick note to let our users know that we have applied to be a sponsor for this year’s GSOC. Some of you may recall that we were accepted a few years ago, and by proxy thanks to the BeagleBoard project in 2010.

We’re confident that the recent buzz from the Raspberry Pi among other things will help this year, though it’s always a fierce competition. If you are interested in applying, please head to our project page and begin thinking of what you might like to hack on!

We will be changing registrars and nameservers for xbmc.org tonight (US time), which could lead to a brief unreachable period (via DNS) while the records propagate around the net. The move will affect this site, the forum, the wiki, trac, our email, and addons in XBMC itself. No action should be required by users or readers. This move away from our current registrar and to a non-US entity is intended as a small provision should the worst come to pass.

We are hoping for a seamless transition and we don’t foresee any difficulties, but don’t be alarmed by any unexpected results for the next day or so. We’ll update this space when the move is complete.

Update: Somehow, these things never go smoothly. The move is complete, but we did see some unreachable time. Most everyone should be back up by now, depending on your DNS servers. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

You may have noticed that for the past few weeks the Weather section of XBMC has become unable to provide updated information due to our default weather provider moving to a fully fee-based API. A brief scramble ensued, and the change provided the kick-in-the-pants we needed to move weather providers into our add-ons framework so that we can send out updates between releases, and allow users to choose between different sources much more easily.

We have now added the final piece of the puzzle: A default provider who has agreed to sponsor XBMC and its users with all the data we need. A special thanks to Weather Underground for working quickly with us to fill the void. It’s great to work with companies who see the value in donating their services to open-source communities like ours. We hope that they see some extra commercial interest as a result.

Thanks also to ronie for having the add-on ready before the ink was dry.

Users of recent nightly builds have already seen the change, and it will be fully baked in to the upcoming Beta1 release.

Today marks the first step in the long-awaited release cycle for Eden: soft-freeze. Other than what is already slated for entry, no new features may be added unless they’re deemed critical for release. After that comes a hard freeze, when all APIs are frozen and we prepare to release the first Beta.

As always, the schedule will be dictated by our ability to get things polished up for release. So file those bug reports, clone our repo and send a pull request for fixes or translations… every little bit helps.

So much has changed since Dharma, we’ll use this space over the coming weeks to discuss in more detail what you can expect in 11.0. For now, Here are a few things you’re sure to notice:

• A new “Files” view in the video library in order to remove the notion of Library Mode vs. Files Mode that confused so many new users.
• The default skin changed to a horizontal layout allowing for more useful information to be displayed on the home screen (vertical version is still available in Add-ons)
• Efficiency improvements to reduce high cpu/gpu usage
• Much improved touchscreen support to go along with the first major versioned XBMC release for the iOS (iPad, iPhone, AppleTv2)
• Ability to customize the home screen by adding your favorite Add-ons
• The usual smattering of visual improvements, playback improvements, new ways to stream and discover media.. the list goes on.

The last few days have been hectic as the developers have been working hard to get their last changes in, but we’ll be slowing things down now to begin cleaning up for release!