Kodi 18 released after a two year development contains a DRM decryption tool, allowing you to stream media content from third-parties within Kodi, an upgraded music player and Google Assistant integration on its Android TV version. Kodi 18, codenamed ‘Leia’, is available on Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi and various Unix variants as a free download. The media player formerly known as XBMC has in the past found itself in the centre of controversy over copyright protection as it was often bundled with pirated content by 3rd parties.
New features of Kodi 18
Retroplayer gaming and associated game control support
- Support for gaming emulators, ROMs and controls has been added giving you the whole world of retro gaming at your fingertips, all from the same interface as your movies, music and TV shows. Kodi has also introduced support for joysticks, gamepads, and other platform-specific controls, so the games will work just as was intended.
Digital Rights Management decryption support
- Kodi can now access external DRM handlers and then play subscription content just like any other local media subject to appropriate licensing. This opens up the possibility of being able to play streaming content such as Netflix or Spotify within Kodi without having to go to their dedicated app. A recent example of this type of functionality is the incorporation of Tidal within the Plex media player.
Music Library – new ways to explore and enjoy your music collection
- Significant improvements have been made to the music library including better filtering (media source, artist gender, type etc.); artist sort name; enhanced artwork; faster API access (particularly useful when controlling Kodi by remote with the TV off).
Live TV improvements, including support for new back-ends
- Support for RDS (Radio Data System), automatic selection on startup (“boot to live TV/radio”), improved OSD (on-screen display) and PVR (personal video recorder) information, enhanced EPG and PVR actions.
Android Leanback and voice control
- Kodi can now show its library contents on the main Android TV interface, with full voice functionality: unwatched random movies and unlistened-to albums and binge watch suggestions. Voice integration permits searching for content with Google Assistant, using the same feature for ‘voice typing’ wherever you see the traditional Kodi on-screen keyboard.
Playback improvements (audio and video), including improved Blu-ray support
- Enhancements to the playback of 4K, 8K, HDR and additional CODEC support. Blu-ray disc detection and metadata is also improved as is support for all types of audio playback systems such as ALSA, PulseAudio, OSS, Pi Audio, DirectSound, WASAPI, Darwin and SndIO
Binary addon support and the binary addon repository
- Under the hood modifications to a more modular architecture which will enable developers to pick and choose which functionality they wish to add to a specific platform version.
The release sees many other improvements a lot of which are only of interest to developers but can be found in the Kodi 18 changelog here.
To download Kodi 18 go here.
