Posted By: Nathan Betzen on Feb 21, 2016 in Release Announcements, Site News
https://kodi.tv/wp-content/uploads/SplashKodi16-600x336.png
We are proud to announce the release of Kodi 16.0. Kodi 16 is a heavy under-the-hood improvements release, but let’s review some of the more prominent features coming out.
[SIZE=5]Event Logging[/SIZE]
The first big step in making Kodi better at communicating with you, the user, is the addition of event logging. With this feature you always have a constantly updating list of all the most important things Kodi has done recently, along with little issues you can fix. For example, when you scan in a library for the first time, the Event Logger will provide you with a list of videos that didn’t quite make it into the library, each one of which is clickable, so you can go straight to the offending video and fix it personally.
https://kodi.tv/wp-content/uploads/EventLogging02-800x450.png
You’ll also get a constant list of all recently updated add-ons, so if a recent update breaks, you’ll know the update happened and can then easily rollback.
[SIZE=5]Long Press[/SIZE]
More and more hardware companies are coming out with remote controls with a very limited button set. In particular, all current Android TVs are lacking a dedicated context menu button altogether. To deal with this, we’ve taken a page from the touchscreen UX and added a long press feature to remote controls. Now, if you press and hold the OK/Enter button for a few seconds, you will pull up the context menu. In the future, long press may be extended for additional functionality. For a better view of what this means, see the following video.
[SIZE=5]4:3 Non-linear Stretch[/SIZE]
It’s perhaps a bit late in coming, but Kodi finally supports stretching 4:3 content to 16:9 in a way that doesn’t warp the content that’s occurring in the center of the screen. Finally, you’ll be able to watch Friends, Seinfeld, Cheers, and Duck Tales in full screen without the awkward screen stretching from the past.
https://kodi.tv/wp-content/uploads/screenshot0001-800x449.png
[SIZE=5]Add-on Manager Changes[/SIZE]
In the ongoing quest to improve our our add-on manager several changes were done in the overall handling of each add-on. These changes include the following:
[ul]
[li]• The roll-back button on add-on info panel has been replaced by Update[/li][li]• The Update button now opens a list of available versions of the add-on. Should you have several repositories installed that offer different version of this add-on you can now choose which to install.[/li][li]• You can now disable auto-update per add-on through the info panel individual from others.[/li][/ul]
The add-on info panel can either be reached through the add-on manager or selecting the add-on in any section by either right click, use context menu (“C” key or long-press OK) and choose info or use the “I” key to directly open the panel.
[SIZE=5]Music Library Improvements[/SIZE]
The music library has rarely received the same support as Kodi’s video library, and this release begins to change that. In the past, adding music to Kodi’s library required extra steps after simply pointing Kodi to the music folders. Now Kodi will attempt to automatically scan the music files into the Kodi music library. For music files to be scanned correctly, they will need to be properly tagged. To read more, visit theKodi Beta3 blogpost.