Finally out the door: Dharma Beta1
Today we announce the first beta in what we hope is a very short pre-release cycle. Dharma has been in development for over 9 months now, and we’re quite happy with the result.
The improvements are too many to name, but head over to the milestone page to get an idea. By far the biggest new feature is the Add-ons system. Our community is full of talented script-writers, skinners, and designers; we wanted XBMC to display their full potential. The result is a powerful and flexible system that allows for complete customization of the XBMC experience. Gone are the days of digging for the latest version of buggy plugins, or incomplete skins in our forums. Most of our users probably never even made it that far.
Currently available video sources.
We have refactored everything that doesn’t belong inside the core of XBMC to be an addon. So in the future, your scrapers, visualizations, skins, etc. will update automatically (unless disabled). Since opening the xbmc.org repository a few weeks ago, submissions have been pouring in. We expect to have a very nice collection by the time we reach our final release.
But don’t let the add-ons take away from the loads of other features (hardware acceleration, anyone?) that have gone into XBMC in the last 9 months. We’ll be sure to hi-lite some of the other big features in the coming days/weeks.
Install new skins from inside of XBMC
For those brave users, please give beta1 a shot. Builds are ready for all OSs, visit the download page to grab them. If you stumble upon any nasty bugs, be sure to send us a QUALITY bug report. Beware of (at minimum) the following:
- As always, treat this as beta-quality software. Be sure to back up your profile in case you decide to roll back.
- The clunky old web interface has been removed. We’re working hard to have a new one ready for final release.
- svn-ppa users may have to remove old xbmc packages before installing Dharma.
- You may have to reset your screensaver and visualization settings after upgrade. These are now addons.
- Pre-Dharma scripts/plugins/skins will NOT work with Dharma, but most have been updated accordingly.
Enjoy. And to the add-on creators: keep the submissions coming!
Awesome! I’ve been looking forward to trying out the beta.
Congratulations XBMC!!
A major milestone with major enhancements. Thanks to all Devs and contributors.
Wulfsdale
Choice Bro! Keep up the good work!
Can’t wait to give it a shot this weekend, great work!! Congrats!
Sweet. Going to try this out immediately.
Noob question.
Running the previous stable XBMCLive release. How do I upgrade to this beta? An Apt-update/upgrade/install XBMC said I have the latest.
Great work guys!
Installing!
I love you guys and want to have all your babies!
Awesome. Here’s hoping for a short beta.
When the final is released, can we just update over that, or do an apt-get upgrade, or will it require more work?
@Francis: I would just install clean, as there are SOOOO many changes.
Nice!. Will try first thing when I get home from work!. Thnx to all developers!
I’ve always been very impressed since the day I used this on my xbox! I’ll continue to share xbmc with all I know!
Installing now, very excited. Thanks everyone!
rubber dinghy rapids bro!
Nice, can I exclude folders from libary in this beta?
I’m as new to xbmc as one week, introduced to it by my friends, I dropped MCE as soon as xbmc booted up for the first time out of one of last weekds nighty builds. I’ve heavily used it in the weekend, and I’m very pleased.
Great work, thanks so much!
Nice! Looking forward to start testing this.
As someone asked before. If I upgrade from Camelot, is there anything special I should remove first?
I suppose doing a clean install would be the best, but I really want to keep my library intact, with watched statuses, etc.
Excellent news.
Have been using for a couple of weeks now, and have found Dharma to be as steady as a rock (no crashes whatsoever).
You guys are the mutts nuts!!!!!
Thanks guys, amazing realese. DXVA finally works !!
And addons is really great as well .
The best HTPC software in the world just got a whole lot better! Well done!
Great job! Looking forward to wrapping my head around this beta :)
An upgrade over Camelot *should* work just fine – at least we’ve tried hard to make it upgrade seamlessly – you certainly shouldn’t need to remove anything prior to upgrading.
Does cancelling a network operation from a script now work instantly, instead of locking?
Nice work guys!
Congratulations on the hard work guys !
I’m sure the new addon system will give XBMC even more of the attention it definitely deserves.
Congratz!
Excellent news, will give it a try tonight!
Great news, and thanks to all involved! I’ve been eagerly awaiting the next update to XBMC and more specifically the fully supported h.264 playback. Hopefully the full release will come just in time for me to move into my new house and get my new entertainment set-up up and working! Thanks once again!
What is the upgrade path if you installed the LIVE distro to the hdd?
Do I upgrade to 10.04 then change the ppa?
@jmarshall
That´s good to hear! Thanks for confirming.
Sweet, looking forward to it!
Maybe the devs should add “Dharma Beta1″ as an option when reporting a bug?
There are news and there are GOOD news.
Congrats to the XBMC Team
You just made my day!
I’m so excited! You guys are awesome! Jeep up the incredible work!
Testing soon…
^
I meant “keep up the good work”
:P
Congratulations! Looking forward to play with this new version!
The add-on system is awesome. Is there a place to be warn for the new addons or updates ?
Awesome!
Cant wait to try that out ^^v
Well done getlemens.
It’s nice to see that you’re heading the right direction. It’s like with those silent update in Chrome. Most of the people doesn’t need to know about updates.
Great, Thanks for the Work.
Great! i’m ansious to try it and of course wainting even more the final release! Hardware Acceleration is my most wanted improvement. Great Again XBMC!!!
the skins are hard to use. it is troublesome to know what you’re getting, so you have to try them all and even then you’re not sure if it is working properly.
so you cant tell if the skin will work well or not. they dont even say what resolutions and system configurations they support. how do I know if it is a 4:3 skin? 16:9? 16:10? 5:4? which ones support the mouse? which ones are missing library display options?
DOOOPE!
@ awikatchika; there’s a node in the root of the add-on browser if updates are available. alternatively you can enable auto-updates in the left hand side menu in the browser.
Thanks devs!!! I’ll try it this weekend!
Fantastic. Already tried the nightly SVN and the add-on system is super sweet!
Thanks to all the dev’s for their hard work! Keep it up.
@skins
I think the skin system works fine…but I admit it would make a whole lot of sense if they were to list supported resolutions, mouse/no mouse, etc
@Anonymous
Not a bad idea. Currently we would hope skinners would list this info in their skin description. But it would be reasonable to ask them to fill in some metadata that we could display in the addon dialog.
Really amazing work! Well done! Not that I manage to figure out how to view the music visualizer without any gui stuff infront of it.
Testing it right now.Until now it feels blazing fast on my htpc.Wanna ask if pvr is integrated in this release
Just tried the Beta in Windows, keeping my 9.11 Live installation as is.
A Great improvement in concerns of speed the new version is.
@mushroom: No PVR in this release.
A great piece of software, thank you for all your efforts!
I have one problem though, I lost my library again :( I did a backup of my userdate map and I exported my library to a single file. However XBMC won’t import my files.
It opens the xbmc_videodb_2010-08-31 folder, yet it only sees the folders movies, , tvshows, actors,musicvideos….
Hope anyone can help me?
Thanks in advance.
Chris