Kodi 21 'Omega' hits a major development milestone -- download it now! [Updated]

Kodi 21 -- codenamed 'Omega' -- is the next version of the hugely popular home theater software. The Kodi Foundation released the first beta version of the program two months ago, introducing a number of new features, fixes, and cleanups.

Today, a brand new build arrives, which will be much more appealing to those users seeking greater stability from the software.

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Kodi 21 'Omega' Beta 2 is available for download now, bringing the finished version ever nearer.

The team says:

The Beta 2 pre-release build has become available because we think it is ready for wider testing and usage. It also means we are getting closer to a stable release of v21.

Here's what's new in this release:

Build/Dependencies

• A few dependencies have been bumped (openssl, python) as part of the normal update process.

Estuary, Estouchy

• @jjd-uk has made a fix for Shift view overlays (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24168).
• Media flags for music have been added to Estuary by @jjd-uk as well (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24162).

General

• A change was made by @CastagnaIT that narrows the scope of the optional track title providing language specific audio track data. Information regarding this advanced setting can be found on the wiki at https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings.xml#languagecodes.
• @rschupp has contributed to the removal of Kodi's use of the library pcrecpp. The use of this was changed to use C++ standard library capabilities.
• A fix has been made for when some XML files written by Kodi would add a trailing null character, therefore making the XML invalid.
• Several users contributed to compiler warning fixes affecting multiple platforms. Thanks to @CrystalP, @fuzzard, @thexai.
• @Rechi has made further fixes to satisfy more static analysis based fixes/warnings.
• The FFmpeg library has been updated to 6.0.1 for all platforms that don't use a system-provided FFmpeg version.
• @rmrector continues to improve artwork cache handling. PVR images are now handled like most other image types for the caching system.
• @ksooo has been fixing further context menu fallout as he endeavors to improve the maintainability and consistency across Kodi's context menus.

Network

• A couple of fixes to IPv6 usage by @joseluismarti.

Platform Specifics

• Android:
  • More Dolby Vison updates have been submitted by @quietvoid. The latest fixes playback when some data is not provided by the FFmpeg library, and we would incorrectly categorize it as a different Dolby Vision profile (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24172).
• Linux:
  • @smp79 has submitted a fix to VDPAU HQ scalers.
• macOS:
  • @kambala-decapitator has updated the macOS signing tools to use Apple's newer notarytool. The previous usage of altool was deprecated/shutdown by Apple in November.
• Windows:
  • The much-awaited HDR10 support was added for Xbox (@thexai https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24083).
  • The crash with VC-1 and some MPEG-2 videos when using DXVA decoding was corrected (@thexai https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24085).
  • A crash when closing Kodi on Xbox has been fixed by @thexai.

PVR

• @ksooo continues to fix/improve Kodi's PVR system. Multiple fixes for different race conditions were merged for Beta2.
• Fix recordings with a path containing a ':' not displayed in recordings window.

Python

• @the-black-eagle has added songVideoURL to the InfoTagMusic interface.

Skinning

• xbmc.gui version has been bumped to 5.17 (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23926).
• @DeltaMikeCharlie has added infolabels for locale based information (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24028).

UPnP

• @enen92 has continued making improvements in the long neglected UPnP feature of Kodi. The ability to serve smartlists via UPnP was added in https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24008, as well as a fix to the case where sometimes some UPnP usage to stop before it was started (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24201).

Videos

• @thexai has upgraded what was traditionally an advanced setting regarding Caching to a category in Settings > Services, containing the buffering fine-tuning settings. If you previously used these advanced settings, you will need to make the changes in the normal settings windows to make use of them now. The settings made in advancedsettings.xml are no longer handled (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24049, https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24117).
• More settings were added to control the NFS and SMB chunk size (@thexai https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24019).
• The setting Player > Videos > Use Display HDR capabilities was renamed to Adjust display HDR mode and moved next to Adjust refresh rate (@crystalp https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24100).
• After playing more than 5 seconds in a chapter, the Previous chapter action rewinds to the beginning of the chapter for a more intuitive behavior (@crystalp https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24066).

Known Issues include:

You can see open issues on the Kodi 21 tracker at https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues. However, to call out a couple of specifics, please be aware of the following if you're planning on upgrading:

• There are seek issues with multi-part MP4 files on Android (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/23673).
• Team Kodi has had reports that the new splash screen looks like an OpenGL corruption; it's not a problem, so don't panic. The team would be happy to have artwork contributions if you'd like to work on an alternative.
• If remote sources are unavailable at startup, users are seeing large delays of startup (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/23958).

You can get Beta 2 from here. Select your platform of choice, and grab the new build from the Prerelease section.

Image credit:  boggy22/depositphotos.com