Kodi 18 Is Coming But They Are Already Thinking About Kodi 19
After going over their successful Kodi 17 release, the focus turned to talking about Kodi 18 "Leia" that they have been working on since the end of 2016. Their design goals with Kodi 18 are to improve the architecture and implementation of this open-source, cross-platform media player. As part of improving the code-base they are focusing on C++11 support, improving the code quality, dropping unmaintained features/code, and other cleanups. They are also working on moving non-core features out to add-ons.
Kodi was formerly known as XBMC, the Xbox Media Center, and with this release they are also returning to supporting the Xbox. Kodi 18 Leia will support the Xbox One through the Windows Store thanks to work that's been taking place for more than the past year.
Kodi 18 also has been cleaning up its video player code, more future-proofing towards higher bit-rates and resolutions, supporting more shaders and renderers, and more. They are also working towards transcoder abilities, splitting up the UI and playback into separate processes, a headless Kodi mode, and picture-in-picture support.
One of the many other changes coming to Kodi 18 is RetroPlayer gaming emulator support. This Leia release also has restored Wayland support, improved Android usage, support for runnign directly off DRM/KMS interfaces on Linux and using the GBM API, Widevine Digital Rights Management support, better Blu-ray handling, and better CMake build system support.
Kodi 19 is already being talked about amongst developers and its codename will begin with an M but they aren't yet ready to begin talking more about this follow-on version. With Kodi 19 they will though be focusing on Python 3 support and no longer allowing add-ons for Python 2.
Those wishing to learn more about the state of Kodi and its features can see the PDF slide deck by Martijn Kaijser for FOSDEM 2018.
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