After more than a year of development, the release of the open media center Kodi 21.0 took place, previously developed under the name XBMC. The media center provides an interface for viewing Live TV and managing a collection of photographs, films, and music. It supports television navigation, works with an electronic television guide, and organizes video schedules. Ready-made installation packages are available for Linux, FreeBSD, Raspberry Pi, Android, Windows, MacOS, TVs, and iOS. The project code spreads under the GPLv2+ license.
Initially, the project aimed to create an open multimedia player for the Xbox gaming console. However, during development, it transformed into a cross-platform media center working on modern software platforms. Based on Kodi, about a dozen commercial television sets and several open branches are developing, such as Boxee, Geexbox, 9×9 Player, MediaPortal, and Plex.
Of the interesting functions Kodi offers, include:
- Support for a wide range of multimedia file formats and hardware acceleration of video decoding.
- Support for remote control.
- The ability to play files by FTP/SFTP, SSH, and WebDAV.
- The possibility of remote control through the Web interface.
- A flexible plug-in system implemented in the Python language and available for installation through a special add-on system.
- Preparation of plugins for integration with popular online services.
- The ability to load metadata (lyrics, covers, ratings, etc.) for existing content.
