XBMC is officially changing its name, meet Kodi

XBMC has gone through many iterations over the 12 years of its existence. The program, which now powers a number of home theater computers, began life as Xbox Media Player, then morphed into Xbox Media Center, before finally settling on the shorter abbreviation of XBMC.

But the platform has moved so far off from its original Xbox beginnings that it has announced it will get away from the old name as well.

"Six years have passed since the Xbox Media Center became XBMC, and simply put, 'XBMC' fits less now than it did even in 2008. The software only barely runs on the original Xbox, and then only because some clever developers are still hacking on that platform. It has never run on the Xbox 360 or Xbox One", says the service's Nathan Betzen.

The change is not immediate, but will take place with the new version, which is set to come out this year and is number 14, ironically enough. It will replace the current 13.1.

There is a more serious reason than simply having moved on from its original pigeonhole as a media player. The fact that Xbox was part of the name meant the project never had legal control over its name. "In the past few years, we have seen the mass confusion that resulted from this lack of control first hand. Users have been fooled into wasting money buying boxes running hacked and typically broken versions of XBMC", Betzen explains.

If customers want to check out the version, which is named "Helix", then the second Alpha release is currently available from the site for download.