XBMC 11.0 - April Cycle
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!
All great improvement. Keep up the good work
how can i put this into my original xbox?
good job by the way!!!!!!!woohooo
Que, Is there a way to browse by folder on the upnp library. I manage my music using folder structures but when I want to connect to the sever from another dlna client all i see is album, artist, genre, year etc.
Thanks for all the good work
Most requested feature? Gotta be integrated DVR controls. I’m actually building my first HTPC now specifically because you guys are adding this! So excited.
@specter
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org/
as for a guess of the most requested feature I’ll go with Android support :) Since that isn’t going to be it (not really a feature anyway) I would guess subgenres especially for the tv shows.
Bluray menus I’ll bet.
Actually, HD audio (AudioEngine) is lined up as PR….
If this new feature will cure my audio sync issues i will be very happy!
Still on 10.01 which seems to work best for me right now.
Finalized PVR functionality?
New feature has to be DVR controls… please, can it be?
Why do I need to mirror Xbmc from my ipad2 To my apple2Tv, when it’s already installed on my apple2Tv.?
Finalised PVR please :)
Will the Raspberry Pi and PVR branches be merged into XBMC’s mainline source tree any time soon?
XBMC can not without PVR fully compete with Windows Media Center, MediaPortal, and MythTV :(
and the Raspberry Pi code will help other ARM projects better as well when it has been merged :)
In any case it is great to on a regular basis get these types of public updates on what is going on!
xbmc the best
Thank you from the heart
Just to check where do you want issues posted (do you want issues posted) – i’ve very excited by this new release schedule and want to try and help in a pleasant and efficient way.
p.s. @Joey: I don’t think the team care about “competing” with WMC – though I do think XBMC wins easily as it’s available on multiple platforms.
Yes PVR would be very nice to complete XBMC.
@Brian089
It’s a less useful feature then. The feature is more beneficial if you don’t have an AppleTV and you are just connecting your iPad directly to the TV with the TV-out cord.
I hope the “most requested” feature is PVR!
The feature being added is PVR!
Congrats to the Team!
Some things on my mind:
1. On OSX 10.4 PowerPC there is a really annoying bug (on multiple, clean systems):
a keypress randomly gets stuck and repeated until another keypress is made
Could someone have a look into this? May just be a minor regression or something.
2. PVRtesting2 is indeed a nice try – but i hope you reconsider the way it’s done:
either a server-plugin connecting/translating to generic XBMC-PVR
_or_
a specific XBMC-PVR-plugin connecting/translating to tvserver
ATM both is done ATST – why should I need a server-plugin and a specific pvr-addon for watching tv with mediaportal tvs?
–
You are doing a really great job, and I consider XBMC to be one of the best GUI, C++ and OpenSource-apps out there, please continue and don’t go the buggy road of slow.
Keep it simple, keep it fast – and the magic that happened will go on ;)
Do we know it’s PVR for sure??
I would guess Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA support over HDMI, and for those of us stuck on legacy S/PDIF connections, real-time downmixing/compression/conversion of multichannel streams into AC3 (as was available on the original Xbox).
Although PVR/DVR would be an awesome feature, funny enough it wouldn’t be a feature I would use as I don’t see my PC being able to record my HDTV shows with the same quality as my HDPVR boxes. – I believe it’s the only feature that XBMC competition has that XBMC doesn’t have ,,,, yet
the Movieset submenu is awesome, I love that it is now in main GUI and not in an experimental skin.
I think a great feature to ultimately provide would be multi zone/room support from single PC – would save alot of money in the long run if I could run 2 instances at same time or default to different zone (I’d be able to enjoy from Livingroom and kids in Recroom at same time) – I know my system has more than enough ooph to handle
PVR *crossing fingers*
The biggest headache for me is that when the scrapper doesn’t find information on shows, they don’t show up in the library views. Explaining to the family why they have to go check the ‘Files’ view after they are done looking through the library views translates to them as “Only use the files view. Everything else is broken.”
@specter
You cannot. You need to follow the xbmc4xbox team for that. this XBMC is no longer for xbox.
The feature being added now must be the new Audio Engine since there is a already a new pull request for it to XBMC on GitHub
I hope that PVR is coming in the next merge window since PVR is something XBMC as a media center really been missing!
The feature being added now must be the new Audio Engine since there is a already a pull request for it to XBMC on GitHub
I hope that PVR is coming in the next merge window since PVR is something XBMC as a media center really been missing!
Anyone downloaded this yet and able to confirm the new big feature? Can’t wait to try this out when I get home. I now have a new reason to be excited as the end of each month approaches!
I’m praying to the sun gods that the new audio engine is soon to be included. Doesn’t make a huge amount of sense but…. Xbmc works perfectly without it and at the same time, AE is desperately needed :)
Fantastic work as always guys – looking forward to see how the new development model works out for everyone!
@GJLP – keep in mind the hint about the big new feature was for the May merge window, i.e. not in nightlies yet, unlike the other items NateThomas describes. Features to be added in the May merge window need to be in by the 10th of May, with debugging for that cycle going to the end of May. So that’s the likely date you’d see new features in nightlies for that window.
@DDDamian
Great — thanks for the clarification, DDDamian.
Thank you for fixing that “recently added” issue. It was annoying to have XBMC think I added a show again if I just refreshed it to fix/update some info.
Will there be an update for XBMC 11 ? I have a bunch of problems with responsiveness of XBMC on Windows after standby…
None of them appeared with XBMC 10…
Thanks for this release! Is there any posibility to test this release on XBMCBuntu?
Thx for your answer, Yannik
@Mike Lowrey – it’s constantly being updated, and the front page describes the new monthly add/debug cycles. There are the nightlies, which have recently resumed for Win and Linux, soon OSx, and ofc the dot releases every month end should be relatively stable points.
Just watched the video. I would not say that mirroring is enabled on XBMC. Mirroring means what is on your iOS device also shows on the TV but that was not the case in the video. The iOS device sent the XBMC interface to the TV and the device itself just became a controller. Still a nice feature though and good job with it, but it is not mirroring. That would be really nice on Android ;)
I’m hoping for AudioEngine and PVR. Those 2 have got to be the biggest features missing.
Unfortunately, moving from 11.0 to this 12 beta causes XBMC to crash under Windows at start-up.
Log:
…
5:49:31 T:62284 NOTICE: Log level changed to 0
15:49:31 T:62284 NOTICE: Loading media sources from special://masterprofile/sources.xml
15:49:32 T:62284 NOTICE: initializing playlistplayer
15:49:32 T:62284 NOTICE: DONE initializing playlistplayer
15:49:32 T:64160 ERROR: CRemoteControl::Connect – failed to connect
15:49:33 T:62284 ERROR: SQL: SQL error or missing database
Query: SELECT DISTINCT idVersion FROM version
I wound up looking through AppData and found a MyVideos db file that was 0 bytes. Deleting it let it finish.
To put this in other words, with video out enabled on iOS your iPhone and/or iPod touch + HDMI adapter == an ATV2 in your pocket.
@DDDamian
I do understand the blog post. My point is whether there will be minor updates for XBMC 11 e.g. 11.1 …
I absolutly agree, that is not mirroring, so please do not call it that when it is only TV-out, even if that iself is still awesome!
Juat like there is a huge difference between normal AirPlay and AirPlay Mirroring. Apple does not confuse the two so niether should XBMC!
@Mike Lowry – that is essentially what the new model is. The end of the month nightly is the dot release. They are not intended to be stable releases like the major version numbers, but with the 10-day merge window + ~20-day bug-fix/review window we hope they will be. As noted, the intent is to have shorter windows for dot releases, and the ability to merge in large features/changes without waiting for a major release.
So end-of-April nightly might be considered 11.4, end-of-May 11.5, etc. Note that some months may have little in the way of visible changes going in, it all depends. And not all platforms may get a pre-built package. Hope that clarifies a bit.
Nate has undertaken giving monthly updates on what you might expect to see, like above for 11.4 and a hint for 11.5
@Anonymous
I completely agree, this is one of those niggles that is a little frustrating for others, doesn’t affect me too much as I remember to look but for the other members of the family quite often they just assume I don’t have the film on the server. Same thing happens with TV Shows, all bonus specials don’t show up in the library as there is no content to scrape.
please, put back the “ADD MANUALLY TO LIBRARY” function…… XBMC should improve this library management over time, not steping back…
Now the library gets the name of the movie on my language (good job) but…. there is any chance to correct all the other 1500 movies already in library???? only the titles?
Any chance to get posters by language too? or add an option to get posters from google image search (if I type the name [in my native language] of the movie in google images and BIG selected, very good posters appears)
Wonderful news, guys.
I really hope you keep up this path and we start to see more features, at a faster pace.
I’m a little confused with the wording of the post. So is the most “stable” beta version XBMCSetup-20120430-1dd0378-master.exe since it was the last nightly posted in April, or is it the xbmc-12.0-Frodo_alpha1.exe you posted above?
Thanks.
A feature I’d like to see in the User profiles is setting an age restriction up on it so if my nephew comes over he can start XBMC it asks him to log in and because of his age it only show’s him age appropriate content.
I also considered that when the scrapers kick in they grab the certificate information depending on which country your in and the profile filters based on that.
Not being a coder at all, I have no idea how easy it would be to implement but it’s something I’d love to see as I wouldn’t really fancy my nephew clicking on the wrong movie and watching someones head fall off and turn into a spider before being hit with a flamethrower (ala The Thing) or end up watching Lucy Lawless getting nailed by John Hannah.