XBMC 12.0 Frodo - Beta 1
Update: There was a packaging issue with the Beta1 Windows build that caused some scrapers to not install correctly. This has since been resolved, any Windows Beta1 users should grab the repack available at the download page.
It’s been a mere eight months since Team XBMC released XBMC 11. If you’ve been following along with us in that time, you already know about most of the new features, changes, and updates that our entire team has been working tirelessly to put into place. But you also know that all those features have only been available in monthly alpha builds.
Now we are excited to say that we are finally ready to roll out the very first beta of XBMC 12 Frodo.
The Name
In the past, we’ve traditionally named our releases after fantastical places like Camelot, Babylon, and Eden. This time around, on the release set to be titled with the letter ‘F’, we decided to take a slight break from that naming process to honor our roots. Ten years ago, an individual with the username Frodo joined the Xbox Media Player team, bringing along his open source software project called YAMP. With the addition of Frodo’s project the three founders, Frodo, d7o3g4q, and RUNTiME, released the first non-beta version of the Xbox Media Player – XBMP 2.0 – as open source software. Frodo then spearheaded the move from XBMP to the more feature rich XBMC, including acting as the primary author for the initial UI engine.
Today, thanks to the three founders’ decision to release open source, hundreds, if not thousands of people have contributed to XBMC in the form of core code, addons, skins, scripts, hosting, evangelizing, and more. Due in part to its open nature, XBMC has been ported to every major viable operating system and architecture. Skilled skinners have succeeded in making skins that resemble almost every major 10′ UI released in the past ten years, along with dozens of completely unique looks seen nowhere else. XBMC can be had on devices as inexpensive as $25 and can be the primary UI for PCs a dozen times more powerful than the original Xbox was. And for all that, it feels like we’ve only scraped the surface of XBMC’s potential, all because three people decided the project would be better off if it were released as free software.
For that reason – and for so many others – we choose to honor our founders and the past ten years by naming XBMC 12 after one of them. Thanks, Frodo. And thanks d7o3g4q and RUNTiME as well. It’s been a great ten years.
The Features
Thanks to an incredibly successful GSoC experience and numerous dedicated developers who have been working on many projects for years, XBMC 12 figures to be one of the most anticipated feature updates in a long time. Features include…
- HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine
- Live TV and PVR support
- h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
- 64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
- Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types
- Support for the Raspberry PI
- Initial support for the Android platform
- Improved Airplay support across all platforms
- Advanced Filtering in the library
- Advanced UPnP sharing
- Translations now powered by Transifex
Of course, that is merely a small selection of the many changes from the past seven months. For a more in depth look, feel free to review the write-ups of the alphas for each month.
A Few Issues
Needless to say, this is beta software. You should absolutely expect problems to occasionally crop up. At present, we are anticipating a number of issues as we switch XBMC over from the Eden addon repository to a new Frodo repository, including partly broken skins and various scripting/scrapers errors. Please bear with us if these problems do crop up. Additionally, PVR users will not be able to switch channels via the channel up/down buttons using their remotes or CEC due to a slight change in the way PVR keymaps are being handled. We are aware of this issue and should have it fixed by Beta2.
Needless to say, there are several other issues still being worked on, and more will likely crop up during Beta testing. If you would like to report an issue, please search for the issue in our forums first and report any verified bugs in Trac.
As always, if your goal is stability, we recommend that you avoid updating until we have gone gold. If you do decide to install this beta, it is highly recommended that you back up your userdata folder.
Issue Update
Some of you Windows users may have noticed that the scrapers on XBMC 12 for Windows Beta1 were returning an error. This appears to have been an error introduced during the packaging phase that we managed to miss during testing. It appears only to affect users who are doing a clean install and not upgrading.
We are right now building a fix that should resolve this error within the next few hours. Check back on this page, as we will update here when the issue has been resolved.
The fix is now live. Happy downloading!
Conclusion
But enough of all that. Now is the time to get to downloading. Linux users, you in particular will be happy to discover that we’ve finally got our beta PPA up and running, thanks to a number of devs, including our newest team member, wsnipex, and we’ve got an XBMCbuntu iso thanks to the efforts of team member erhnam.
Let us know what you think of the changes in the comments below, or, if you like, via the donation button at the top of the page.
And if you have any problems, don’t hesitate to post about them in our forums and report verified bugs in Trac.
Is anyone else experiencing the issue with the “initrd.lz file not found” error?
Myself and a few other users are having this as per this forum post:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145326
I just downloaded & burned xbmcbuntu-12.00-beta1.iso. Fired up the CD on an old box and got the following error message right out of the gate: ‘Boot Loader | /casper/initrd.lz: file not found’
Any ideas?
Any fixes for the Intel HD3000 issue?
@Montellese: Nice to hear the back-end is there! About the front-end: have a look at the “rule editor” control provided by Apple Mail to specify “Smart Mailboxes”. They are not as versatile to allow all kinds of combinations of AND, OR and NOT. But if you reduce the basic options to “all items must match (AND)”, “any item must match (OR)” and “none of the items may match (NOT AND)” and allow for additional negation in each item, then you already have a pretty powerful tool.
Best,
Jake
Err wait, thinking about it, I think I saw something this already?! In that case, modifying it a way that Brian’s problems go away (i.e., the proper negation) seems feasible.
Best,
Jakob
@Anonymous
Having the same problem, TVDB scraper not working and IMDB not available, no other options. Any update on this? Thanks
wheres the android version at??
First impression – scrapers that I noticed were broken in the alphas about a month ago are still broken when using the v11 Eden version of PM3.HD, my personal favourite skin especially now I’ve modified several of the XML files. For example even though the new “hide progress of library updates” option is deselected and I’m using a new “Frodo only” user profile to prevent conflicts with old userdata, both TV show and movie scrapers miss a load of files (for example there are 82 HD movies in my path for HD movies yet it only scrapes 67 of them). Moving to the bundled version of Confluence allows normal library scraping though, so I guess I can scan the 3TB+ content I have in with that then drop back to PM3.HD when it’s done. A fair workaround, assuming everything scraped still shows up in the older skin.
Woohoo
Tried both 12 beta 1 and the repack. I run windows 7. MY biggest problem was the fact that banners didn’t work for me (instead it looked like it was displaying part of the all seasons cover)
@Ciantm
Fixes for Movie scrapers here! http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145292 Love these guys!
works great except for 1 thing…video’s with audio 2.0 wil only play without sound :S (video_ts files and avi files)….but for the rest 5.1 and hd audio works great :-)
When i downloaded it for mac os x 10.5, xbmc doesnt start, it just shuts down and just keeps on giving me the option to relaunch :(
Hey glad to hear about a new version.
can anyone give me a hint on this way.
i want to increase the buffer size on my xbmc. while i watch a movie from the network share i want the xbmc to cache a bigger amout of the movie. the lag is sometimes really bad.
maybe someone have an idea for me.
thanks.
This is my first time ‘tracking’ a new release for the XX.0’s. I mean no harm in asking, but am curious as to how it works; how many bugfixes do you do before Beta2 comes along, or how do you know for certain there are no more bugs and then make the first Release Candidate?
I get a number of FATAL errors when I try to install the xbmcbuntu version on my Revo, as a result I am unable to install.
I tried to 1080p MKV files encoded with both DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, and the stuttered and did not play any audio. So bit of a problem there :-)
First thing I noticed: XBMC now exhibits thumbnails of some of my movies instead of the covers. After changing all of them back, the same is happening to the Collections, which I can’t change. Back to Eden, for now.
Pop006: Beta2 is planned for a couple weeks from now. Basically we just keep fixing stuff until our release date, then push out what we have. Only major bugs (e.g. crashes, or things that affect a ton of people) will cause us to delay a release.
Already loads of fixes have gone in since Beta1, and quite a few more are still being worked on. I’m sure there’s heaps we don’t know about yet as well that’ll come in over the next week or two.
@YEEE
XBMC v12 for Mac now requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher.
Hi all, I am totally new to linux full stop and have just installed XBMCubuntu 11.0 on a media centre. All looks great but…. how do I put things on to the hard drive.
Ive plugged a usb pen into the machine with films on and the media centre will see and play them but i still dont know how to move files on to the actual media centre’s hard drive.
The installation is fresh with no add-ons…
Any help given will be appreciated.
First of all – GREAT Work – I really love XBMC and there is no software out there that can compete with XBMC. I have one question. Why is the Dolby Digital Plus format not supported? I still have some hd dvd movies that have this format, and these cannot be played because the new audio engine does not support this format. I am just wondering why this is not supported? Anyone know the answer?
Plugins from XBMC 11 are compatible with XBMC 12 ?
12b1 appears to work fine on Linux Mint 12 so far, the Transparency appears to function as normal.
No surprise though that the Youtube plugin is still a dud. It’s getting to the stage where I’m wondering if I’m going to have to code a Youtube plugin for myself to get one that works properly!
…I meant to say “Transparency Skin.” Note, if you’re having audio problems, check the audio settings! The new audio engine means you may have to amend your audio settings accordingly.
Awesome !!!
Running the beta under ubuntu, windows and atv2 and having pvr support compiled in, is so superb.
Thx to the XBMC Team !
@Scope
Same problem here! :(
Any XVBA support in Frodo?
@timwuk
I had the same issue too. Follow post #3 here to fix it (that worked for me at least): http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145277&pid=1238964
Much snappier than before! and Airplay is cool
Although disappointed forced subs are still not supported. There was a patch build for Eden and was hoping it would have been integrated :(
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=128935
Wow guys. Thank you so much for keeping up the great work.
What you are doing is awsome!
Unfortunately tags seem not to work for me. They are in the database, but tags are not displayed in “Movies -> Tags”.
If I try to add one, that’s already there, I get an “Tag already present” error…
Cheers…
Mac mini 10.8.2 – works well with a few small bugs. I get a green line at the bottom of videos which is a little annoying. Also the ‘Default select action’ option from Settings/Video/File Lists has gone. I like to set this to ‘Show Information’.
Really like the new changes and will check back for second beta version. Going back to v11 for now.
@TraySteel
Just fixed both of these with playing around with the settings. Sorry :-(
@Kam
What is the issue with the Intel HD3000 chip?
@Rob
Forced subs are supported, and all the bug reports I could find on the XBMC Bugtracker about forced subtitles not showing up have have been closed as fixed. So if it is still not working for you then please post about this on the XBMC forums and/or Bugtracker so that we can bring it to a developer’s attention.
Congratulations !
I have been with you guys since very beginning and just lately during hard drive cleanup i found those:
XBMP running on moded xbox in a hotel room
http://i.minus.com/ib224taOOm6NJi.jpg
http://i.minus.com/ibcOxFOvWF4mIO.jpg
Working on installing linux on xbox
http://i.minus.com/iNQOr501RAbhr.jpg
http://i.minus.com/ibrrBHKOhLKtn2.jpg
I thought i would share. AudioEngine is greatest thing ever !!!
Next 10 years please :)
XBMC 13.0 Gauntlet
I can’t run XBMC on my Microserver as it requires a hardware accelerated GPU. So I cannot use the uPnP functions :(
The server has a remote access card which doesn’t have any hardware acceleration
My sound stops working if I try to play a movie with “sync playback to display” on. The log says failed to initialize divice and then all sound stops working until I reboot. If I set “sync playback to display” to off it will work, but without the sync. I have an Asrock ION 330HT and did not have this problem with an earlier nightly.
Great, but…
saturday morning, at 11h58 UTC, there’s no windows package for Frodo beta 1 in the download page…
hi all , when i scan my music to the library, i get a lot of missing covers, or in s0me cases when in fullscreen visualization the cover wont show but in folder yes, all my music has a folder.jpg image, it used to be perfect in my last version xbmc installed alpha 3, when a music folder was scanned to the library it would take the folder.jpg right away, not anymore in the beta or latest nightly, please help!!!!! im going insane trying to figure this issue, any insight is greatly appreciated, and once again thanks for all the hard work , xbmc is the best media experience!
Seems like and a few others are still ignored if you put them in advancedsettings.xml.
>.<
@necrosis
skinsettings and viewstates to be specific.
Great version, seems to work very well..
Except for the fact that there are still bugs running on a windows 8 touchscreen. the left pane shows up on every “tap” and there seems to be no way hit OSD buttons while watching a movie. I have to use the stylus to simulate a mouse click to get out of that mode.
2013 would be a great year if XBMC could work with windows touch hardware !
Is there a Version for Ubuntu Lucid too?
I would appreciate if somebody could compile it for Lucid.
I was exited to try out the updated Airplay support, but it seems to have the same issues as Eden. Videos taken in portrait mode appear rotated 90 degrees in XBMC, and there was no audio. Are those issues still being worked on?
thanks for all the great work. I am still having some trouble with covers on atv. Anyone know how to downgrade to Eden on atv?
@android
Im not 100% sure, but I think I saw the “XBMC for Android” version on the roadmap for the next release starting with letter “G”. As well as a “XBMC for BSD” version due at that time too. Android version is still not mature enough for the mainstream.
@webrat
Frodo for Lucid: https://launchpad.net/~nathan-renniewaldock/+archive/xbmc-nightly/
@CRoCWare
Yes there is, I’m looking right at it. If you want a direct link: http://mirrors.xbmc.org/releases/win32/xbmc-12.0-Frodo_beta1-repack.exe