KODI 20 Nexus Alpha 1, available for download and install

Available for download and install, the first official version of Kodi 20 “Nexus” Alpha1. A version that is the first official step to the final version in a few months, but may be unstable.

For now the changes of Kodi v20 Nexus are few at the aesthetic level as we can appreciate, and it seems a fairly continuist version in this aspect. Internally, we have the official changelog published for more details. In any case, we have versions available for Windows in 32 and 64bit compilations in addition to the compilations for Android in ARM V7A format for greater compatibility and ARM V8A for Shield TV or similar.

- SOME ADD-ONS DON’T WORK WITH THIS VERSION, downgrade and install KODI 18.9 to solve problems.

You can compare this SoC with our recommended TV-Box models to know alternatives.

Download KODI 20 Nexus Alpha 1

Download installer Kodi v20 Nexus Alpha1 installer for Windows 64 bit, recommended for any PC.
Download installer Kodi v20 Nexus Alpha1 for Windows 32 bit, very old devices.
Download apk Kodi v20 Nexus Alpha1 for Android 32 bit ARM V7A, compatible with all the TV-Box.
Download apk Kodi v20 Nexus Alpha1 for Android 64 bit ARM V8A, only NVidia, Realtek and some Rockchip SoC’s.
NOTE DOWNLOAD: there are browsers that block EXE and APK download, use right click “Save link as”, then in the download tab below click on the little arrow above next to “Discard” and select SAVE.

Changelog

Video

AV1 hardware decoding for Android.
AV1 hardware decoding for Linux via VAAPI
Bump to FFMPEG 4.4

Subtitles

Add new font style settings such as border size/colour, background type/colour/opacity, shadow colour/opacity, and blur
Add support to display subtitles with dynamic positions which make use of position tags
Add underlined and strikethrough text style support
Add a new wide colour palette in colour settings
Add a new setting to change text alignment for closed caption subtitles for a better reading
Add a new setting to override subtitles metadata like style and position
Improved font size that now match the point/pixel proportion
When Kodi is in windowed mode subtitles are now always displayed correctly
Improved VPlayer for better reading of multiline text
Improved SAMI format to better support multiple languages
Improved TX3G format to support multiple styles, colours and alpha channel
ASS/SSA subtitles are displayed without flickering
Improved image-based subtitle rendering to keep a better aspect ratio
Add support to the WebVTT subtitle format type
Improved font list setting – the actual names of the fonts are now listed
Add support to OpenType font type (OTF)
Improved calibration window, so it’s now possible to also reset the calibration settings
Subtitle settings can now be changed while in playback without side effects

Discs

Fix resume of Blu-Rays and DVD ISOs in file mode (not in library)
Fix playback of some optical discs on Linux due the incorrect mapping of mountpoints
On Linux optical media is now mounted by default (via udisks)
Partial code cleanup and platform split of disc drive handling
Skin cosmetics
Fix duplicated context menu items

EDL

Fix EDL mute sections and EDL cuts

GUI

Fix wrap lists
Fix hitrect on auto sized buttons
Fix some context menu options not triggering the respective builtin action
Independent volume setting for GUI sounds
Password reveal button in keyboard dialog

Input

Added Steam Deck built-in controller support

Skinning

Add a new Colour Picker window dialog to allow display a colour list
Improved image control to support read dynamic $INFO data to “colordiffuse” tag
Improved Player Process Info window – new information has been added and grouped by context
New media flags for HDR videos: detect, store and process the type of HDR in a video file
Skinners can now define modal dialogs if its visibility depends on Boolean condition evaluation
Deprecation of old infolabels with the introduction of new generic ones (e.g. Player.Editlist, Player.Cuts, etc)

Estuary/Estouchy

Estuary PVR Home Screen: New widget for timers (replacing old current/next recording widget)
Estuary PVR Home Screen: Add percentage played progress bars to Recent Channels and Recent Recordings widgets
Estuary PVR Home Screen: Change default click action to open the Guide window
Improve display of EDL markers on the default skin (EDL mutes are now shown, cut sections are also identified)

Games

Savestate manager for Retroplayer with captions describing the state of the game
In-game Port Setup dialog to change between game controllers

Platform Specifics

UNIX Family Platforms:
- Implement WS-Discovery (SMB discovery) for *ix platforms (Android/Linux/Apple)
iOS/TVOS:
- Improved Siri Remote handling
- Improved “Now Playing” info
macOS:
- Initial support for M1 native including native windowing/input handling NOTE: We do not provide prebuilt M1 dmg’s. Any devs willing to work on ironing out the many corner cases of the native windowing implementation, don’t hesitate to ping @fuzzard on the forums if you have any questions.
- Extend GameController support to OSX
- Many code cleanups/refinements/refactors
Android:
- Update Android build to use Gradle for signing/aligning/packing
Linux:
- Add ACES/Hable Tonemapping for GLES
- More BiCubic Shaders for GLES
- Pipewire support
Windows:
- New setting to use 10 bit swapchain for SDR videos. Improves video quality and more precise colour conversions: YUV to RGB, limited to full range, shaders, etc. This is true even if video output is limited to 8 bit RGB by system or graphics driver.
- Improved DXVA2 (HW video decoding) performance by sharing decoding and rendering surfaces. Avoids video copy operations and drastically reduces video memory usage on NVIDIA and AMD graphics using recent drivers.

i8n support

Harfbuzz rendering for scripts with open type font shaping features

PVR

Channels and Recordings can specify a provider
Read-only recordings supported
EPG Search: Add Saved Searches, incl. new Estuary PVR Home Screen widget
Channel Manager: Add possibility to refresh all channel logos
Settings: Add possibility to specify which data to delete when resetting PVR database
Automatic cleanup of cached PVR images (texture.db and cached image files)
Functional Improvements for multi PVR Add-on scenarios
Performance improvements, esp. for large number of channels

Build System/Dependencies