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XBMC Media Center 12.0 "Frodo" has been released today with HD audio, Live TV and PVR support and many other enhancements. Also, the application is now available for Android and Raspberry Pi (although there are no official Raspberry Pi builds provided by XBMC).

Xbmc 12.0 Ubuntu


Here are the new features and improvements in the latest XBMC 12.0 "Frodo":
  • Support for Raspberry Pi, but no official builds are provided: you can use OpenELEC, Raspbmc, Xbian or Raspbian. Downloads here;
  • Android support - official builds are now available for download, but only from xbmc.org (XBMC isn't available in the Google Play Store yet);
  • Live TV and PVR support. This allows users with a TV tuner to watch live TV, listen to radio, view an EPG, schedule recordings, etc. Supported backends include: DVBViewer, MythTV, Tvheadend, VDR, Argus TV / ForTheRecord, NextPVR, Njoy Digital, MediaPortal and more;
  • HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD;
  • New unified "AudioEngine" audio abstraction framework with an API and platform sinks;
  • h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime;
  • Improved AirPlay support;
  • Improved controller support;
  • Video library tags and advanced library filtering;
  • Advanced UPnP sharing;
  • Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc media;
  • Added Bluray HDMV menu support (but not BD-J / BD-Live menus);
  • Improved Bluray playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus;
  • Added option to set a default preference for subtitles and audio tracks based on language;
  • Added HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and M3U8 (Extended M3U) playlist support;
  • Linux: improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) and VDPAU (Nvidia) support;
  • Linux: added dedicated AMLPlayer and OMXPlayer video players for hardware accelerated video decoding on AMLogic devices and OpenMAX IL API;
  • more

Below you can see a few screenshots featuring the latest XBMC 12.0, running in Ubuntu:

Xbmc 12

XBMC 12

XBMC 12

XBMC 12

XBMC 12.0 PVR



The default Android skin isn't optimized for touch devices but you can change to a touch-optimized skin from the XBMC for Android settings (set the skin to "Touched"). Here are some screenshots with the default Android skin:

XBMC for Android - default skin

XBMC for Android - default skin

And with the "Touched" skin (using XBMC under Android):

XBMC for Android - Touched skin

XBMC for Android - Touched skin

XBMC for Android - Touched skin


One note about XBMC for Android though: it looks like the official XBMC addons aren't available in the application, even though the XBMC wiki mentions that the addons should work as long as they aren't platform-specific. But maybe this has something to do with today's release and their servers being slow (although the addons are displayed on my computer). Update: it seems it was indeed a server issue because the addons show up just fine now in XBMC for Android now.


Install XBMC 12.0 in Ubuntu


To add the XBMC stable PPA and install XBMC 12.0 in Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10, 12.04 or 11.10, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc

For other Linux distributions, Windows, Mac OS X, ATV/2, iOS and the newly added Android and Raspberry Pi, see the XBMC downloads page.