Kodi Team announced: We have been quiet for quite some time as our last official release announcement was about Kodi v16.1 “Jarvis” bugfix release end of April. We can assure we have not been sitting still as work for v17 progressed in a steadily pace. Our developers have actually been working on v17 since early December as a large part of our code base has been ripped out, put through the grinder and put back in a way that makes Kodi future proof which enables new and exciting possibilities.
To be honest we actually wanted to do this upcoming alpha release a bit sooner (1st of May). However since we hit some code issues we decided to skip that date to first solve the problems. Next one was 1st of June however I was on holiday for some weeks and I guess we skipped that date as well. Fast forward to present day and all looks good to go and bring you the first “official” v17 alpha build which you as user can install and take for a test drive. Maybe not that exciting as some of you know we always build nightly version so you could have installed it whenever you wanted to. Still such a release marks a special milestone as it also means we’re gearing up for getting it out the door as a final version. This may still take some months though so don’t get your hopes up yet.
Krypton….
Since the dawn of time, or at least since 2008 each released version has received a code name next to the version number. Giving each development iteration a code name in a certain category is kind of a tradition that is not only applicable for software but also for hardware. Google does so for Android and Intel also names their chips. Who are we to break this tradition and as such we follow in their steps with a theme that started out with mythical places or names. For our v17 release we actually let the public chose the name and with an overwhelming majority they chose the name “Krypton”. Looking back so far at what our small team of developers has done to the code the name Krypton certainly gives a certain emphasis to it that fits. As you may have noticed it took quite some time before we came out with our first Kodi v17 alpha 1 and we have some very good reasons for that. Several years ago we set a path that we wanted to improve our codebase instead of just slapping on new features and this release will certainly be no exception to that goal. Certain parts of our code underwent a complete overhaul or in some cases even went through a blender to be almost rebuild from the ground up. Normally we highlight the main improvements for each alpha release however this time we will have to split that up in several blogs as there’s simply too much to mention in one go. More of that will be published over the coming weeks.
The improvements so far in v17
Well I guess you’ll find out soon enough by either giving it a try or wait till we do an extensive write up of most of the changes done. I say most changes cause there are far too many to even list and the the number keeps growing. One of them was already announced earlier this year which is the new default skin (read here). Looking forward to the changes and want to try it out? You can hold of for a few days till the “official” alpha is released or already download one of the nightly versions and install it. Only difference might be that we added some additional fixes in the mean time which are also included in the nightly versions. The download links are listed at the bottom of this blog or you can jump straight to the one and only official download location https://kodi.tv/download/
Remember that these builds are still not ready for daily use unless you know what you are doing and want to help us do some testing. So far we have done most of the testing ourselves with the great help of the forum community that provided valuable feedback. With these alpha builds we try to gain some more attention to the general public and hopefully you are willing to help us further improve the stability of Kodi in general. These builds can simply be installed on top of your current Kodi installation. WARNING: Do make a backup of your userdata before proceeding as that gives you ability to go back.
Enough said. Downloads links are at the bottom…
The most awesome surprise in years…….
zappy-santaOver the years we have been playing with some random awesome and insane ideas that never came to life. Either they were to complicated, lack of skill sor we simply forgot about it as it took too long to realise. In the coming days however we will announce one of these ideas that has actually been talked about, worked on, discussed a lot and has actually been finished as well. It is something that’s way out of our comfort zone so we hope that this big surprise will be something you as users will be enjoying as much as we will.
Conclusion
Should you want to download and install this build please visit our download page.
- * Official Kodi 17.0 development downloads (near the bottom of the page)
- * Raspberry Pi versions can be found from LibreELEC as well as x86 versions (LibreELEC can be upgrade to if you have OpenELEC installed).
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