Available for download the first Alpha version of Kodi 19 “Matrix”, a version change that imposes important new features on a technical level. The most profound change in the addon scope where it jumps to Phyton 3 and this will block all add-ons that are not updated, something that will certainly generate several problems. On the other hand there is more control over addons that will block the ability to overwrite official repositories.
In addition to this internal change KODI 19 Matrix receives improvements to play content based on the AV1 codec, it is now possible to decode this format by software. You have in this article the complete list of changes of this new version that represents the future of KODI for the next years.
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Download
- Download installer Kodi v19.0 Alpha1 for Windows 64bit, for all current PC’s.
- Download installer Kodi v19.0 Alpha1 for Windows 32bit, for very old hardware.
- Download apk Kodi v19.0 Alpha1 for Android 32bit ARM V7A, compatible with all TV-Boxes
- Download apk Kodi v19.0 Alpha1 for Android 64bit ARM V8A, only compatible with NVidia Shield TV, Realtek and some Rockchip SoC’s.
Changelog
Audio/Music
- Improved handling of multi-disc CD sets and box sets
- Additional metadata tags
- Improved handling of album release dates
- New setting to open music full screen/visualization window automatically when playback is started
- A new, Matrix-inspired music visualization is now available to install – great care has been put into making this perform well on lower-end systems
Video
- Software decoding of the AV1 CODEC
Subtitles
- Subtitle opacity can now be changed
- New dark grey colour for subtitles
Estuary Skin
- Redesign of the music fullscreen/visualization window to match other fullscreen windows – allows fanart and visualizations to be shown without coloured overlays
- Additional media info flags added to music fullscreen/visualisation window info display
- The default Playlist view now uses the Widelist view format with options on the sideblade menu as in other areas of the skin
- A new “Now Playing” view added for music playback, showing media details for both any selected song in the playlist and those for any currently playing song
Games
- iOS now supports game controllers (Xbox/PlayStation/other supported Bluetooth controllers)
Platform Specifics
- Darwin (Apple) platforms:
- Objective-C code migrated from manual memory management to ARC
- iOS:
- Added showing total/free space
- Kodi log can now be shared using native sharing sheet
- Kodi GUI is no longer obscured on devices with notch
- macOS:
- Blank Other Displays setting no longer requires app restart
- “Toggle fullscreen” now uses default macOS shortcut
- Android:
- Static HDR10 support for all source types (if supported by the device)
- Dynamic Dolby Vision HDR support for streaming services (if supported by the device)
- Windows:
- Static HDR10 support for all source types (if supported by the GPU)
Information Providers (scrapers)
- New python scrapers for music – available in repo as Generic Album Scraper and Generic Artist Scraper
- New python scrapers for TV & movies – available in repo as The Movie Database Python and The TVDB (new)
PVR
- PVR reminders
- TV and radio channel groups and Estuary home screen widgets
- Group manager usability enhancements
- Channel manager usability enhancements
- Guide window navigation controls
- Estuary PVR information dialog enhancements
- Setting ‘Switch to full screen’ now supports channel types
- Playlist context menu items for recordings
- Dynamic PVR categories for Estuary home screen
- Ability to sort channels and EPG by the backend order of channels
- Support group specific channel numbering and option to start group number locally from 1
- Support for starting EPG entries as live
- Support displaying recording sizes and being able to sort by them
- New, Live, Finale and Premiere for EPG, recordings and timers
- Guide window performance improvements
- Search window performance improvements
- EPG performance and memory usage optimizations
- C++ API for PVR Add-on development
Network
- Improved information around the security implications of enabling external interfaces
- Added default-on switch to require a password for the web interface
Addons
- Probably the biggest change: with this release, we move to Python 3 for add-ons (see note below).
- Kodi will now enforce the origin of installed add-ons and their dependencies. This has been implemented to prevent third party repositories from overwriting code of unrelated add-ons, which was the cause of numerous error reports in the past.
