[Android Apps]: KODI 20 Nexus Alpha 2 now available

It´s now available to download and install the first official version of Kodi 20 “Nexus” Alpha 2. A version that is the first official step to the final version in a few months and that may be unstable.

For now, the changes in Kodi v20 Nexus at an aesthetic level, as we can see, are few and it seems to be a fairly continuous version in this regard. Internally, we have more information about the changes made in the official published changelog. In any case, we have versions available for Windows in 32 and 64bit compilations, as well as the Android compilations in ARM V7A format with greater compatibility and ARM V8A for Shield TV or similar.

Change list:

Video

• AV1 hardware decoding for Android.
• AV1 hardware decoding for Linux via VAAPI
• Bump to FFMPEG 4.4

Subtitles

• Add new font style settings such as border size/colour, background type/colour/opacity, shadow colour/opacity, and blur
• Add support to display subtitles with dynamic positions which make use of position tags
• Add underlined and strikethrough text style support
• Add a new wide colour palette in colour settings
• Add a new setting to change text alignment for closed caption subtitles for a better reading
• Add a new setting to override subtitles metadata like style and position
• Improved font size that now match the point/pixel proportion
• When Kodi is in windowed mode subtitles are now always displayed correctly
• Improved VPlayer for better reading of multiline text
• Improved SAMI format to better support multiple languages
• Improved TX3G format to support multiple styles, colours and alpha channel
• ASS/SSA subtitles are displayed without flickering
• Improved image-based subtitle rendering to keep a better aspect ratio
• Add support to the WebVTT subtitle format type
• Improved font list setting – the actual names of the fonts are now listed
• Add support to OpenType font type (OTF)
• Improved calibration window, so it’s now possible to also reset the calibration settings
• Subtitle settings can now be changed while in playback without side effects

Discs

• Fix resume of Blu-Rays and DVD ISOs in file mode (not in library)
• Fix playback of some optical discs on Linux due the incorrect mapping of mountpoints
• On Linux optical media is now mounted by default (via udisks)
• Partial code cleanup and platform split of disc drive handling
• Skin cosmetics
• Fix duplicated context menu items

EDL

• Fix EDL mute sections and EDL cuts

GUI

• Fix wrap lists
• Fix hitrect on auto sized buttons
• Fix some context menu options not triggering the respective builtin action
• Independent volume setting for GUI sounds
• Password reveal button in keyboard dialog

Input

• Added Steam Deck built-in controller support

Skinning

• Add a new Colour Picker window dialog to allow display a colour list
• Improved image control to support read dynamic $INFO data to “colordiffuse” tag
• Improved Player Process Info window – new information has been added and grouped by context
• New media flags for HDR videos: detect, store and process the type of HDR in a video file
• Skinners can now define modal dialogs if its visibility depends on Boolean condition evaluation
• Deprecation of old infolabels with the introduction of new generic ones (e.g. Player.Editlist, Player.Cuts, etc)

Estuary/Estouchy

• Estuary PVR Home Screen: New widget for timers (replacing old current/next recording widget)
• Estuary PVR Home Screen: Add percentage played progress bars to Recent Channels and Recent Recordings widgets
• Estuary PVR Home Screen: Change default click action to open the Guide window
• Improve display of EDL markers on the default skin (EDL mutes are now shown, cut sections are also identified)

Games

• Savestate manager for Retroplayer with captions describing the state of the game
• In-game Port Setup dialog to change between game controllers

PVR

• Channels and Recordings can specify a provider
• Read-only recordings supported
• EPG Search: Add Saved Searches, incl. new Estuary PVR Home Screen widget
• Channel Manager: Add possibility to refresh all channel logos
• Settings: Add possibility to specify which data to delete when resetting PVR database
• Automatic cleanup of cached PVR images (texture.db and cached image files)
• Functional Improvements for multi PVR Add-on scenarios
• Performance improvements, esp. for large number of channels

Addons

• Colour Picker
• Colour button setting
• Add support to add video HDR type info to a video list item
• Function for removing orphaned dependencies recursively

Android ARM v.8A (64 bits)

Android ARM v.7A (32 bits)