Jools

A late Happy Xmas to you all, and wishing the best for the new year. What better than to give you a new XBMC4XBox release to test though. Just in time

The 3.5 Beta 1 release has seen a massive amount of work from the last stable, and includes all fixes from 3.3.3, but has been ongoing in development since the first 3.3 release. Released now as a Beta 1 as it does require some further testing, and there may be new issues or regressions, but I would encourage people to try it alongside the current stable and feed back any problems via the forum or bugtracker.

Changes include:

• Python 2.7.5 – includes working libraries for sqlite3, and fully working ssl. This brings far better compatibility with upstream XBMC plugins, and logging in on YouTube etc works, which it never did on the previous Python 2.4. This took many hours of work to do including building working python libraries compatible with the XBMC4Xbox architecture. Bugs may remain, but I hope it will be an improvement for most people.
• DVDPlayer has been updated to the FFMPEG 1.2 libraries which brings improved codec support, and new features. We still include two sets of FFMPEG libraries, one for the most common formats, and another which has everything.  Webm and XMV support is now added to the smaller library set, but please do report any issues/questions on the forum.
• Skin changes from XBMC to make backporting of xbmc skins easier.
• Many bug fixes and other improvements – you can always check on development activity via the Redmine activity page.

Many thanks as usual to the XBMC project for without their support and open source licence, we could not exist. Many congrats to them on the release of Frodo 12.3, and we are all exciting about their upcoming Gotham 13 release too. Cheers

Big thanks to all contributors, including a special thanks to Dan Dar3 for many bug fixes and his ongoing work on XBMC4Xbox Remote, to the many people who help in the of the running the forum, and those who have contributed financially to the project. My personal thanks to XPhazer, Ghostly, Xman, and co for moral support, and to Dom, Byron and others for providing users with skin customisations.

If you enjoy using XBMC4Xbox and want to show your support for the ongoing development please consider making a donation to the project. Please also do join in the discussions over at our Forum.

See the development page for links to the source code and the svn repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page.

XBMC4Xbox 3.3.3 has been released. It fixes problems with scrapers (TMDB scraper broke due to http://www.themoviedb.org/ deprecating their old xml API), as well as an issue with thumbnailing images that were not in JPEG format.

Fixes:

• Updated TMDB scraper (based on scraper from xbmc mainline), which now uses their v3 JSON API. Also has some additional settings for language now.
• Fixed issues with thumbnails / movie posters and IMDB / MoviePosterDB scrapers.
• Fixed thumbnailing of images not in JPEG format (A regression from an earlier release due to thumbnail / cache code cleanups)

Thanks to all those who reported issues, Foresto for the IMDB / MoviePostDB scraper fixes and http://xbmc.org for upstream scraper fixes.

If you enjoy using XBMC4Xbox and want to show your support for the ongoing development please consider making a donation to the project. Please also do join in the discussions over at our Forum.

See the development page for links to the source code and the svn repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page.

XBMC4Xbox 3.3.2 is out. It fixes a couple of issues that were introduced in 3.3.1.

Fixes:

• Fixed black background issue for Confluence Lite when interface is not in English.
• Fixed a problem with the recently updated build script that didn’t package up PM3 and Confluence.

See the development page for links to the source code and the svn repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page.

Changelog:

• v2.8.9 (Fri, 30 Aug 2013):
  • Addons:
    – available to all;
  • Main > Feeds ticker:
    – do not scroll on low refresh devices (e.g. Nook);
• v2.8.8 (Sun, 25 Aug 2013):
  • Music > Playlist:
    – select playlist / party mode;
• v2.8.7 (Sat, 17 Aug 2013):
  • Music > Library:
    – crashing with large library;
    – changed to expandable list + scrolling horizontal grid
  • DVD Remote > Volume :
    – crashing on Android 3.2
    – volume follows slider (requires Event Server enabled)
• v2.8.6 (Thu, 15 Aug 2013):
  • Keyboard: add “<” and “>” navigation buttons (repeatable);
• v2.8.5 (Sun, 28 July 2013):
  • Feeds – faster load, using FeedBurner
  • DVD Remote + Volume: volume control with hardware buttons
  • Analytics: today, 7 days, 30 days, all time
  • Preferences > Themes (dark, light, green) – premium only

For guides on how to configure & use, see more at:
https://sites.google.com/site/xbmc4xboxremoteandroid/

For support / feedback / suggestions use this forum thread:
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=203

Download from:

• Google Play (store)

It’s been a few weeks since the 3.3 release, and here is a small update to fix a few issues and the addition of a bonus skin theme. Read on to also find out what may be coming soon to XBMC4XBox.

Changes:

• There were problems accessing the video/music playlists when nothing was playing.
• Adding plugins to the home screen of Confluence Lite cause script failures when launching.
• There was a minor text positioning bug in the seek dialog with PM3.HD.
• We now ship with a lovely green XBox theme for Confluence Lite – Go to Settings -> Appearance -> Skin -> Theme to switch.

Thanks to Dan Dar3 for the plugin fix, and DavPow for the green Confluence Lite modification, and the main XBMC project.

The playlist bug was reported by multiple people after the 3.3 release was out. To avoid annoying glitches in future releases, please do get involved and try out the earlier Beta releases. You can then report problems, and help us get them fixed before we do the final release.

I am currently busy working on a major python upgrade (Python 2.7.5 is actually in trunk and already working!) and implementing proper Addons support from the XBMC code base. It is a huge amount of work, with many long days already spent on it. If you enjoy using XBMC4Xbox and want to show your support for the ongoing development please consider making a donation to the project. Please also do join in the discussions over at our Forum and say hello.

The XBMC4Xbox Wiki is currently very out of date, having been re-constructed over the last year from old xml dumps after the last server admin went AWOL. We would very much appreciate anyone that could lend a hand, updating the wiki with information regarding latest features, and correcting / fixing many of the issues. If you are interested you can register right away and start editing.

See the development page for links to the source code and the svn repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page.

The XBMC4Xbox team is proud to announce the release of XBMC4Xbox 3.3.

Improvements include

• New default Confluence Lite skin.
• DVDPlayer improvements – including:
  • Updated libraries for DVDPlayer (FFMPEG/libdvd et al).
  • Recognises additional video extensions as used by some XBox games.
  • HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) support.
  • Other playback improvements from XBMC.
• Updated VFS and Cache
• Improved 128MB Ram support.
• Built-in support for recently added videos/music for skins (without the need for Python).
• Updated MythTV support.
• Better out of the box support for universal / Microsoft Media Extender remotes.
• Password Manager for Samba shares allowing different usernames/password per share.
• Skinning improvements.
• Scraper updates.
• Various other code / library updates and improvements.

Big thanks to all those who have helped with this, including JezzX for Confluence Lite and XBS for his work porting it over to XBMC4Xbox. Thanks also to the developers at the XBMC project, as the majority of features were backported from their code base. Thanks to Dom, Jan, Kozz, Temhil, XPhazer and XMan as well as others over at the XBMC4XBox Forum for their help with scripting, code testing, moral support and help running things.

Please do join in the discussions over at our Forum, and if you enjoy using XBMC4Xbox please feel free to make a donation to the project.

See the development page for links to the source code and the svn repository. For binary builds, read the information on the download page.

Here are some screenshots from the latest release. Enjoy.