The Third Alpha Release of Kodi 19.x “Matrix” Is Out
- Kodi 19.x “Matrix” has released Alpha 3, bringing a host of additions and all-around improvements.
- This is another important step towards releasing Kodi’s next major version, but it’s still an unstable version.
- The users who want to test “Matrix,” find and report bugs should pass from Alpha 2 to Alpha 3 now.
The XMBC team is on a spree, as only a week after the release of the last stable Kodi “Leia” and a month after the Alpha 2 of the upcoming Kodi “Matrix” version, we now get the Alpha 3. This is still a beta, so we’re not promoting it as a stable version that you should all grab and have fun with. Considering how many users are willing to test the upcoming Kodi release, this is a good point in the development process.
Here’s a list of the new stuff that has landed with the Kodi 19.x “Matrix” Alpha 3:
Music Library
- Small fixes to album duration for music in unusual folder layouts and triggering re-scraping of a single artist or album.
Music Videos
- Fetch related album and artist info (including art, bio, review, etc.) from the music library where appropriate.
- Display all music videos for an artist, not just the ones related to an album, when navigating by artist.
- Searching from the info dialog for an artist now includes all of the related library albums, as well as any videos.
- Possibility to use .nfo files so that the artist list can now show all performers from music videos, not just the main artist.
- Info dialogs will display data from the music library where there’s a corresponding artist and/or album.
- Fix the same director search for music videos.
Playback
- Correct the color mapping of HLG HDR playback in SDR mode on Windows 10.
- Add HLG HDR playback as HDR10 on Windows 10 (as Windows does not support passthrough of HLG).
- Added support for more OpenGL bicubic scalers.
Skin/Look-and-Feel
- [Estuary] Add chapter info from music videos to OSD.
- [Estuary] Improve the next item in playlist info for music videos by adding artist/album details if available.
- [Estuary] Improve the Now Playing info for music videos when not in a full-screen video by adding artist/album details if available.
- [Estuary] Optional poster for music videos.
- Behavior changes to DialogAddonInfo buttons (e.g., contextual focus defaults to install, update, configure, etc.).
- Add PVR.TimeShiftSeekbar infolabel to expose seekbar outside of the SeekBar dialog.
Games
- Implement integer scaling support to improve the viewing quality of Pixel Art games.
Information Providers/Scrapers
- New default Python metadata scrapers for movies and TV shows (replacing old XML scrapers).
API/JSON-RPC
- Add the ability to apply a new subtitle URI to the player, - e.g., URL, local file, etc.
- Updates to allow VideoLibrary.Clean by directory.
- Improvements and fixes around PVR handling via the API.
PVR
- Remember last opened (vs. current last played) TV/Radio group across restarts.
As it becomes apparent from the above, the additions are covering a wide spectrum of Kodi’s functionality, user interface, and technical capacity. Thus, there are bound to be quite a lot of bugs here and there, which are to render the software unstable or even unusable.
Those of you willing to accept this and take the Alpha 3 for a spin, you should report any issues you discover or face back to the developers, as this is the best way to ensure that you’ll get a bug-free release when stable 19.0 is out.
Remember, Kodi is a free and open-source media player. Its development is based on voluntary contributions, community bug reports, and whatever can be covered through donations to the XBMC Foundation.
If you are using Alpha 2 for the purpose of helping with the development, go ahead and grab the Alpha 3 now. If you need to enjoy a stable Kodi experience, skip this news and keep “Leia” until “Matrix” is ready for the prime-time.