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.
@JayV
Not in official Frodo, but the Xvba branch will continue till its merged
Where is XBMCbuntu 12: Beta 1?
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 :-)
+1
Sorry if this has been mentioned but what is the status of AMD Fusion XVBA support in Frodo B1?
I updated to the latest nightly and it works now :) So if anyone else is having the same issue, you can try this and see if it helps. I am running todays nightly (compiled the 19th) from the nightlies ppa.
Android .apk anywhere? Is stylus support for Samsung galaxy note 1/2 in?
Thanks a lot!
@ubuntu-user
Where are you people looking? It’s right on the download page.
Great th are work on Ios or win 6
Tested 12.0 beta 3 days ago.
2 issues;
1) I have a problem with playing x264 sd video on a amd fusion m350. Video playback gives annoying blocks in the screen. I hoped this bug will be fixed soon. I found on the internet that i was not the only one.
2) eject button still missing. Why? One of my htc has no hardware-eject button. I don’t understand that in upgrade a important feature dissapeared. “That’s not very logical, captain”. Please returne the eject button (specially in pm3.hd) withoud very difficult hacking and make a lot of people happy.
I hope the pm3.hd skin will continue.
With kind regards,
Rene Wennekes
@nedscott
Been looking at that for days….. Just took a closer look and it turns out that my default mirror sunet.se is not uptodate.
Whoops. Sorry about that. I’ll let the team know that one of the mirrors is bonked.
Figured it out for anyone wanting XVBA support on Fusion systems.
ssh into your XBMCbuntu system using the username/password created during setup.
#add wsnipex XVBA repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wsnipex/xbmc-xvba
#run update command
sudo apt-get update
#install XBMC from repository
sudo apt-get install xbmc
Can I run XBMC from my PC/jailbroke iphone to my TV using DLNA/UPnP in frodo?
@Bkam
I posted this quite a few comments ago, but check out post #3 at this link:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145277&pid=1238964
I had the same issues and that solved it for me.
i can’t install other skins with the beta. i assume you know that..:)
I have no problem with sound on mu AMD Fusion M350 (think idd 6310 built in videocard).
It’s just when playing x642 codec based video with a small resolution (480 lines or less) in the pictures appears many large blocks when changing the image. But the sounds is ok.
Disable the dxva in the system will solve the problem, but then it’s impossible to play all other videos. It’s not convenient to change everytime the dxva setting everytime when i want to see those few video where the problem occurs.
It would be better to set the dxva seperately for each movie like the screen-settings but this seem to be impossible. Although the option is available in the screen-setting each movie, you cannot chang it.
When I goto “get more” for skins there are no avaliable skins to download and install? is this a known problem?
Yup. Until skinners switch their skins over to Frodo, the repo will be pretty empty. They should start getting added in fairly soon.
I hope the eject button returns ……
Where did the Confluence Settings screen go?
Did it get removed when the Live TV screen showed up?
I normally just install over a previous install, but, this time, I deleted my profile and uninstalled, first.
I noticed it when I tried to add the weather to the top-left corner of my home screen and couldn’t.
JJ
It’s actually in settings-> Appearance now, underneath the word Confluence. Since that’s a pretty big change, I may need to mention that in the next update.
This is the first version of XBMC that has re-encoded AAC to AC3 without stuttering on my Intel E5200 CPU!!!
Thank you for your work on the new audio engine.
JJ
Can this Frodo version support BDISO and BDMV viewing yet? Does it support BD Menu feature yet?
Installed Frodo 12 – Got no sound – Picture was delayed from Wireless – Tried LAN still same
Please has a look
No sound with dolby, dts or aac files tho old .avi files did. using xbmc windows version
@Wasi
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145277&pid=1238964
Post #3.
Hmm…
Even though language is set to U.S. English, under Live TV it says “Programme info”….
“Programme”??
do you guys have a tv server control yet for the pvr add ons? such as mediaportal 1.2.3 and 1.3.0 if so where are they thnx
I installed XBMC Eden, OpenELEC on BioStar H67MH with BioRemote from Biostar. Everything work perfectly, except hdmi sound. Someone have info about Intel HD hdmi and sound in xbmc v12?
Thanks.
@wsnipex
will there be XBMC iso for Xvba branch with Frodo?
Live TV XBMC virtual backend doesn’t work
This version feels so unbalanced.. I cant put my finger n it but something just doesnt feel right
On frodo AdvancedLauncher does nor work. Cannot go into any launcher. When force items detection in a launcher and trying to run one, it shows “addon.py error”
Reverting to eden all works ok again without modify any configuration
it’s running on Ubuntu 12.04
hi,
when playing a hd movie (x264 + DTS or AC3) the Volume is very low, no change possible with Volume Amplification, it does not work.
I installed XBMC Frodo Beta 1 via unstable PPAs over XBMC Eden based XBMCBuntu. Everything went better than expected. Nice job :-)
Is XBMCbuntu 12 based on Ubuntu 12.10? I’d like to install Steam within it to run from the lubuntu desktop without having to do a full ubuntu install. I attempted installing Steam on XBMCbuntu Eden but the prerequisites couldn’t be met; it needed at least 12.04.
For anyone having problems with HD Audio on AMD Fushion I had the same problems of stuttering and no sound but managed to get it sorted. I’m using an AMD E350 with Windows 7. I uninstalled the Relatek drivers and rebooted. on reboot it installed MS drivers. I then updated the driver and searched manually for the AMD folder. It then installed AMD drivers. Then go into XBMC and change the audio options to use WASAPI. After that perfect bluray playback with HD audio passthru
will not run properly on my dell vista pc.
mp3 files just ’stick’ at 0:00
Hi guys, is it possible in the feature versions to include a PIP function. (i.e. I watch a video on youtube or listen to a radio station while in the PIP window I’ll set up a live TV channel and I’ll not miss my tv program). Thanks Joe
@Servis racunara
Can you provide more details, please?
Since I am unsure what you’ve already tried, I’ll start with the obvious… :) We can continue from there, if nothing resolves.
What is specfied at: Settings > System > Audio > Audio Output Device
Can you set it to something resembling your HDMI output?
Can you drop to a prompt and run: aplay -l or aplay -L
(they give the same information, but in different formats that can be helpful in some cases)
Frodo is not quite as flexible as I would like in this respect, because there’s no EASY way (via UI) to input a custom Audio Output Device (as in Dharma, for instance)… but maybe this process will help.
@Chris
Hi Chris all fine, but i don’t use an AMD Fusion xxx APU,
System specs (if matter)
ati radeon hd 5670 only using hdmi for video content, no audio (latest drivers used)
onboard audio realtek hd audio (optical output) latest drivers used
xbmc 11 works fine with all settings 12 however won’t, even the nightly versions, won’t no matter witch setting i try/use
@LennY
I’m not too sure then. I had an issue with no audio and extremely choppy video playback, which I resolved by tweaking those settings. Stupid question (only because I’ve done it before), but is it possible your optical audio isn’t the default sound device in Windows?
no sound (audio device not recognized) and jerky video..
@XBMC forever
If you’r asking “In future version?” I can certainly say, yes it’s possible!