Kodi 18.0 Beta 2

Kodi

Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), is an award-winning free and open source cross-platform software media player and entertainment hub for digital media for HTPCs (Home theater PCs). Its graphical user interface (GUI) allows the user to easily browse and view videos, photos, podcasts, and music from a hard-drive, optical disc, local network, and the internet using only a few buttons.

Kodi can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. Use your media as-is: Kodi can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, almost all popular archive formats from your hard drive. Kodi will scan all of your media and create a personalized library complete with boxcovers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox.

Kodi 18.0 Beta 2 changelog:

Gaming (Games interface and Game Clients)

Added a RetroPlayer player core supporting game clients as well as emulator cores via libretro API
Added extentions to Kodi's Addons AP to support Game Client Addons, supporting Kodi's VFS (Virtual File System), etc.
Added support for Game Client Addons as new type of addons with just-in-time emulator installation
Added a Games window and Game OSD (On-Screen-Display) entries to the GUI
Added a gaming and game configuration interface for Game settings to the GU
Added support for Game Info Tags (game info tag) and exposed properties to Python list items
Added a savestate (savestate) manager to Kodi for games
Added initial support for basic gameplay persistence (auto-save & auto-load)
Added support for in-game (save RAM) saves
Added support for Keyboard players via Joystick Emulation
Added support for libretro API and game cores (emulators and games) that support it
Added game clients addons for many popular third-party game console emulators and native open source games
Game clients addons for Kodi is changing quickly so checkout the game clients addons article for a current list

Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder)

Major GUI actions refactoring to eliminate duplicate and dead code. Add context menu support for Estuary PVR home screen widgets
Guide window: Get rid of obsolete views "channel", "now" and "next"
Core: Refactor and fix "play minimized" settings handling
Guide, channel, video fullscreen, music visualisation window: Direct channel number input.
Settings: Remove setting 'hide connection lost warning'
Search dialog: Refactor and complete implementation of EPG search filter
Timer settings dialog: Prefill recordings folder with timer title
Recordings window: Content view filter
Settings: Remove non-working recording settings defaults
Guide window: 'Smart selection' of epg events.
Channelgroup manager: Add support for radio channel groups
Guide window: Add possibility to switch between horizontal and vertical epg grid view
Search window: improvements and fixes
Estuary home screen: Add Info support to recently played channel widget
Estuary: Add episodename to live tv and recordings osd sub label, cleanup seek bar for live tv
Estuary: PVR info dialog, recordings window: cleanup and extend
Drop 'channel guide' button from epg event info dialog, add 'channel guide' to context menu
Settings: Introduce new setting 'Startup action' and add 'Play TV/Radio
Settings: Make 'epg.lingertime' an official setting, remove the respective advanced setting
Setting: Remove obsolete and unused setting 'pvrplayback.scantime'
Core: Fixes/Improvements for multiple enable PVR client addons
Core: Fixes/Improvements for subchannel numbers support (ATSC)
Core: Global direct channel number input & global unique channel numbers
Database: Fix error "Abort due to constraint violation. Query: INSERT INTO channels..."
Estuary: Rework PVR seekbar + Fix PVR info dialog
Core: Make next/previous chapter work for PVR recordings
Direct channel number input: No delay on switch to previous channel with key 0
Settings: Make shared channel selection optional
Estuary: PVR info panel cleanup [full changelog]