It's been about 15 months since the launch of the previous major version and we already have the new one here. Kodi Team has released – yes, the splash image is that blurry – Kodi 21.0 Omega, and comes with a list of new features that highlights support for FFmpeg 6.0. V7.0 of the famous multimedia library is now available, but, as is usual in these cases, we choose to include something more mature and not newer software that may contain bugs.
Among the new features, news: the development team He decided in March discontinue repository for Ubuntu. The reason is that this repository is only compatible with a group of Linux distributions, and the Kodi Team is going to focus its Linux efforts on developing and maintaining the flatpak version. It is a logical decision that Ubuntu users will not like so much. Although flatpak packages are liked, it is still true that they require dependencies that increase the weight of an application, at least in the first installations.
Most notable new features of Kodi 21.0 Omega
- Improved representation of label texts.
- Removed forward declaration from FlatBufferBuilder.
- Subtitles:
- Added support for font collection (.ttc).
- Enabled bidi parentheses for adapted subtitles.
- Avoid calls to virtual methods in destructor.
- Improvements to the audio sink in webOS.
- Synchronization of addon metadata translations.
- Management of Page Up/Page Down, etc. in settings.
- Maintain selection position after end of playback/observed state change.
- Estuary:
- Reset timer 1110_seekbar in searches.
- Also start timer (with reset) in searches.
- Reset timer while osd is displayed.
- PVR.
- Timer Settings Dialog: Set certain default settings when changing timer type.
- Dynamic timer types.
- Fix some CPPCheck and clang-tidy warnings.
- Fix seen/unseen filter not working when creating plays.
- Updated translations.
- Fixed autoplay of next video not working from inside the video info dialog.
By platforms
- Windows:
- Add DXVA Video Super Resolution upscaler.
- DXVA: Check if HDR10 color spaces are supported by the video processor.
- Remove unnecessary logging for Intel without super resolution scaler support.
- HLG > PQ HDR Playback fixes.
- Disable processor tone mapping for AMD and HDR to HDR.
- Add render method information to the debug OSD.
- Refactor the video processor code.
- Distinguish between host/native download/tools for windows build.
- Remove solution for Super Resolution Video.
- Test video processor support for SDR to SDR conversion.
- Update libass to 0.17.1.
- Add "Graphics" registration component for Direct3D.
- Make HiDPI more generic/platform agnostic.
- Setup for high precision processing/HDR tone mapping.
- Refactor DXGI_FORMAT to std::string to debug OSD information.
- Refactor Super Resolution Video.
- Remove unused code in DeviceResources.cpp.
- Remove extra unused frame rate mirroring for interlaced resolutions in CVideoSyncD3D.
- Fixed: Display 119.88Hz and future higher refresh rates correctly.
- RetroPlayer: Fix blue/pink colors on 10-bit screens.
- Refactor CProcessorHD/CEnumeratorHD to remove direct access to the D3D enumerator interfaces.
- Fix confirmation dialog not showing when moving to full screen.
- MacOS:
- Compatible with HiDPI (retina) displays.
- Support full screen movement/Fix lost screen.
- Default native window.
- Check and update monitor settings at startup.
- Android:
- Adjust macros according to the API they are targeting.
- Remove unnecessary constants
if
yuse
MediaFormat. - Prefer Google raw decoder to MediaTek on older devices.
- Linux:
- Added –audio-backend=.
- Simplified thread priority configuration.
- Using XB_FMT as enum in threads.
- Pipewire: Catch exceptions in CPipewire::Create().
Now available
Kodi 21.0 Omega will be officially announced soon and can now be downloaded from your official website, at least for Windows. Linux users will have to wait a little longer. As we have explained, now the official version is the flatpak package, and for it to appear as an option it has to go through a review process. In the next few hours it will also appear in the official repositories of some Linux distributions. The approximate time will depend on the update philosophy of each project.