XBMC 9.11: Alpha1 ready for testing
Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release.
Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as such. While it’s not likely to burn your house down or eat your pets, it’s likely that testers will run into a few bugs. If this happens, please search TRAC to see if someone else has already reported it. If not, you may submit a QUALITY bug report. Keep in mind that the reason for releasing alphas/betas is so that we can get a better feel for what bugs are out there. If you don’t report them, we can’t fix them.
We are also still working hard to clean up the settings. Many useless ones have been removed, but there’s still quite a bit of rearranging to do.
There are a host of new features in this release, far too many to list here. The highlights are:
- DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
- Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
- Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
- Switch to Core Audio on OSX
- Many VDPAU improvements under linux
- Many platform-specific customizations
- Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.
Known Issues
- Windows: DirectX runtime and Visual C++ 2008 runtime(x86/x64) are required. The installer will be updated to check for these.
- Windows: ‘Windowed’ shortcut opens in full screen
- Windows: Non-functional brightness/contrast
- Windows: Discs inserted before XBMC is launched may not appear correctly
- Windows: Some videos may not play back as smoothly as on other platforms
- Linux: VDPAU de-interlacing is known to be broken
Note: Many of these problems have already been fixed since the alpha1 tag and should be resolved in the next testing release.
Download
If you like living on the edge and would like to try the alpha, head over to our download page. You will always find the most current official builds there. AppleTV users may update via launcher’s downloads.
Update: The Ubuntu PPA and XBMC Live are now up.
Great release, and generally working very very well, just a little feedback on the problems I experienced with the LiveCD.
Installing it on my Acer Revo was problematic, kept getting read errors for some strange reason, the ISO was OK as I tested it on a virtual PC. This maybe due to the way I burnt the CD used the inbuilt Windows 7 burn ISO option, eventually it work.
Issues with HD content stuttering appear to have been resolved, so thanks.
Previous problems with Audio music playing back too quickly is resolved all my MP3’s and music video’s play at the correct speed.
Strange problem with an ISO movie. BOLT when starting the movie in previous versions the opening DVD menu would be display perfectly in this version I had a black screen with white box highlighting the options, not graphics or text display just black background with white box, selecting ‘OK’ the movie started OK. Whilst the movie played approximately every 10min there would be a 1 second where the display & audio would become corrupt/distorted, this was constant throughout the film and lasted just 1sec. I’ve checked CPU load and networking and they are all normal, it doesn’t happen on other films even HD’s
Feature request, can AVHCD format films be supported, the currently versions play the individual media files in the STREAMS directory but the film stops at the end of each file and you have to restart the next stream manually.
Thanks for all your hard work, it working great.
Hi, I am running vista home premium x64. It is impossible to install DirectX 9 that XBMC requires. I ran xdiag and vista already comes with DX10. If I try and download dxwebsetup, it fails saying “a cabinet file necessary for installation cannot be trusted” and fails. I have admin priviledges
I tried several things:
a) cleared my temp,etc and re-downloaded to eliminate download corruption
b) tried stopping and re-starting crypto service
finally, I came across a few sites where some MS MVPs explictly mention that vista DX cannot be downgraded.
XBMC seems to rely on a specific DLL version so it does not work with DX 10.
Any help?
The reason I want to upgrade is because the new XBMC displays my canon CR2 raw files while the current stable one does not (I can’t compile from source – I use the binary distro)
Can i Install this version on my Xbox 1?
How?
:D
guys,
what do you think the forum is for? this here is only for commenting the article, not for bug reports and moaning ;)
You are not downgrading anything and that you have dx10 or even dx11 has nothing to do with the fact that you have to update dx9.
Try downloading the redistributable dx updater: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04ac064b-00d1-474e-b7b1-442d8712d553&displaylang=en
Alpha 2 is it comming soon ? (svn 24539)
@JCLM
I’m updating to Alpha 2 right now through apt-get on Ubuntu 9.04, so I guess the answer would be “yes” :-)
Looking forward to see how everything works out now!
Installed the Alpha 2 Live on my HTC. Works very fine. The only thing is that the startup takes much much longer then the 9.04 version. Does anybody have the same?
Have you thought about adding voice control to the software? Something like:
One Voice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNGqJwjKFtg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMCSaMXHI_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWUGKCkcehY&feature=PlayList&p=2183019562D72DFE&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=95
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ac-iWZOzw
& have you thought about a GPS Software integration, or a way to embed a GPS app?
The One Voice VOIP option is cool, but you can only use Skype with it.