Hi everyone,

Last month, we announced OSMC’s stable release and since then we’ve been busy. It’s a new month, which means we’ve a new update as promised. This is a big one and brings the much anticipated Kodi 15, named Isengard. The next version of Kodi will be named Jarvis. This new version of Kodi takes greater advantage of binary addon support and moves to a release-early, release-often cycle — meaning that we should see more frequent releases from now on.

Please be careful: this update will upgrade your library’s database. If you are using a MySQL shared library, you will need to ensure that the other clients are upgraded to the same version of Kodi as well. You will receive a warning about this before updating in My OSMC.

Kodi update

Kodi 15 is now available and brings the following new features to all platforms:

  • A new chapter selector window — allows you to visually browse and select chapters from MKV files as well as other containers that support chapters.
  • Adaptive seeking — the more times you press a button to seek in a period of time, the larger the jump forward or backward will be. This may seem unusual at first, and you may wish to configure this in Settings.
  • Audio and Subtitle Lists — for content that includes multiple audio and subtitle choices, you can select from a full list of choices, rather than manually searching through a spinner.
  • Language Add-ons and Expanded International Preferences — now language translations aren’t dependent upon release, but get regularly updated to all users as the add-ons themselves update. Additionally, you now have total control over date, time, temperature and more displayed formats.
  • Improved Add-on Manager — the add-on manager has now been reworked to help make finding the add-ons you are looking for easier.
  • Improved Closed Captioning support in Live TV
  • Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as “update library”

Additionally, the *Raspberry Pi *gains the following new features, thanks to the hard work of popcornmix:

  • HD audio support – the new ‘dcadec’ library allows the Raspberry Pi to decode DTS HD and bitstream it as LPCM 7.1 via HDMI
  • Full Frame 3D support – the Raspberry Pi is the first device to support full frame 3D video. Be sure to enable ‘Adjust refresh rate to match video’ to ensure that your TV receives the 3D signal properly.
  • Performance – there are many improvements to playback and stability on Raspberry Pi

The Vero gets some nice new capabilities as well, thanks to some hard work from mk01:

  • Support for 23.976Hz playback
  • Support for 3D playback
  • Ability to synchronise playback to the display

Bug fixes

  • Fix an issue that could prevent write access to external hard drives
  • Fix an issue preventing scanning for channels in TVHeadend when installed from the Applications Store
  • Fix an issue preventing access to the Transmission web interface when installed from the Applications Store
  • Fix a Debian packaging bug which caused kernel headers packages to be incomplete
  • Fix an issue that caused issues with UPNP server capabilities in Kodi
  • Fix a issue that can cause OSMC to crash when using an RTL8812au based WiFi dongle on a 5Ghz network
  • Fix an issue where OSMC may incorrectly report that it is not connected to the network in the first time run tutorial
  • Fix an issue where OSMC on Vero sometimes booted to a black screen
  • Fix an issue where turning the TV on after a period of time would result in no picture when using a Vero
  • Fix an issue where video could stutter on Raspberry Pi when sync playback to display was disabled
  • Fix an issue with update scheduling that could prevent OSMC from upgrading

Improving the user experience

  • Added support for the Fire TV stick remote controller
  • Improve the visual layout of My OSMC’s WiFi and Bluetooth settings panels
  • Added more audio encoders (FLAC and Vorbis) which were not present in the last build
  • Speed up entering the Applications Store
  • Add support for additional WiFi dongles
  • Improve power management for better WiFi throughput on Raspberry Pi and Vero
  • Improve Vero GUI menu performance
  • Improve Vero wireless connection quality
  • Add additional support for WiFi dongles and TV tuners for Vero
  • Added support for the Xbox One media remote
  • Improve Hama MCE remote keymap
  • Added support for RTL8192DU based WiFi dongles
  • Added support for RTL8192EU based WiFi dongles
  • Added support for the official Raspberry Pi WiFi dongle
  • Upgraded CEC library to version 3 which brings stability improvements and greater compatibility for a wider range of TV sets
  • Improved the interface for configuring Wireless and Bluetooth connections
  • Improve boot time on Vero
  • Add option to configure repeat CEC presses on Vero

Miscellaneous

  • Upgrade to Linux 4.1 for Raspberry Pi and Vero
  • Add support for NFS v4.1
  • Add support for parallel NFS
  • Upgrade OpenSSL on any systems impacted by security vulnerability CVE-2015-1793
  • Removed AFP library packages as Apple Filing Protocol is no longer supported in Kodi

Wrap up

To get the latest and greatest version of OSMC, simply head to My OSMC -> Updates and check for updates manually on your exising OSMC set up. Of course — if you have updates scheduled automatically you should receive this update shortly. The first reboot *may take some time *as it will upgrade your library database.

If you enjoy OSMC, please like us on social media via Twitter or Facebook and consider making a donation if you would like to support further development.

Enjoy!