First release candidate of Kodi’s latest v17.0 “Krypton”, named after Superman’s home planet, has just arrived and it brings a large number of cool updates that clients have been waiting for. Dissimilar to different discharges, Krypton conveys an interface update to the extremely well known open-source media focus programming and substantially more. While the last arrival of Kodi v17 is planned for early 2017, it should be almost identical to this RC release.
[ad type=”banner”]1. New Default Skin: Estuary and Estouchy
We have constantly known Kodi to accompany “Confluence” as the default skin and keeping in mind that it compensates for a useful interface, it’s not extremely engaging and looks obsolete. Indeed, that progressions with Krypton, which brings a fresh out of the plastic new topic named “Estuary” and “Estouchy” (for touch-empowered gadgets).
On account of the new skin, the interface looks significantly more present day and clean. The home screen now highlights a sidebar on the right, which houses diverse choices like TV Shows, Music, Music Videos, TV, Videos, Pictures, Add-ons, Radio, Weather, Favorites and so forth. It likewise features the power, settings and search icons on top. In addition, every one of the pages look a considerable measure current with all the more spotless and flat icons.
You certainly like the new interface and the fact that now, there are different options for TV Shows & TV, Videos & Music Videos etc. Overall, better than Confluence but if you’d still like to have that theme, it’s available from the Kodi source.
2. Improved Settings Page
If you always handled confused or stunned by the Settings page in older Kodi versions, you’ll be willing to find a brand new Settings page in Kodi Krypton. Make sure, the options and the default style remain the same, there are some great changes. With the new update, the different options are better grouped and the help text that explains what an option does, is a lot more understandable. When you first open up settings, you will see different settings categories presented in a way better style than previous Kodi versions.
The “System Settings” page kind of remains the same but the interface and option explanation are better. To sum things up, the new Settings page is much appreciated because it makes finding different functions a lot easier.
3. Add-on Manager Changes
The real power of Kodi comes from the various official and third party add-ons accessible for it. These extensions improve the functionality of the media center platform by leaps and bounds. While Add-on Manager has been part of Kodi since v10, it’s only now that it has gone through a major service. The new Add-on Manager makes updating add-ons a waft and thanks to the new Estuary skin, it all looks great.
The first major change is the fact that by default, Kodi does not let you install third party add-ons or sources, owing to privacy issues but you can enable “Unknown sources” on the Add-on Settings page. Another change you like this addition of the “Recently updated” option in the Add-on Browser page. This should come in handy, if you want to be aware of the updates to your favorite add-ons.
4. Better PVR
The PVR (Live TV and video recording) capabilities of Kodi are commendable but its setup is complicated. May have guessed, its setup has been made easier with Kodi v17.0 Krypton. With the new update, once you have configured and enabled a PVR add-on. No more complicated options but you will obviously have to set up PVR backend also known as server first. Also, various functions of PVR like switching channels, recording timers, EPG etc. have been stabilized and improved.
5. Updates to Music Library
Whereas the music library in Kodi has improved over the years, it’s still nowhere close to how we would like it to be. Krypton brings some decent improvements to the music library in Kodi. With the new update, tag reading & scraping is better and the handling of albums & artists is also better, thanks to adding artist role handling. There’s also support for mood-based playback, so if you have music files that come with moods, you can play music based on the mood in Kodi.
6. New Video Player
Kodi has always featured a decent video player but it has always been known as the DVDPlayer and while it’s good, it’s a bit bulky at times due to old code. Well, the developers have now taken away DVDPlayer and brought about the brand new Video Player, which kind of looks and feels the same but there are a lot of under the hood changes. When it comes to use friendly features, there’s “Video stream selection“, which lets select a different video stream quickly, be it for better quality or just a different language.
Then, there’s also the new “Input Stream add-ons“, which lets natively written add-ons to give the control of the video stream quality to Kodi. Now, this should make up for a better video streaming experience on Kodi.
7. New Default Web Interface
Along with the new interface in the Kodi app, the Krypton update also brings a brand new web interface called “Chorus2“. Not many people know about Kodi’s web interface and it’s not surprising, considering it’s not your usual web user, instead you need to enable it to access it first. However, you may need to use it now, considering it boasts of a shiny new interface.
8. Android App Updates
The Kodi app on Android may be a little low on development but it’s still an app that many people like and it’s about to get better with the latest update. Along with the new Estouchy skin for touch-based devices. The update brings improved audio support, with passthrough for DTS, DTS-HD, DTS-X, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby ATMOS working fine on the new version of the app. Also, the Kodi Android app has now moved to Android MediaCodec standards and the new update is only available on Android version 5.0 and above.
9. Windows Store Update
Kodi recently arrived at the Windows Store for Windows 10 users, as a desktop bridge UWP app and it has been updated to v17.0 Krypton. While it’s identical to the version that you can download from Kodi’s website, it brings a few benefits like automatic updates. So, if you are not able to get the Krypton version of the app from Kodi’s webpage, you can get it from the Windows Store with ease.
10. Other Changes
Other than the above-mentioned updates and changes, Kodi now supports game controller add-ons, which means you no longer have to configure add-ons over XML files, which was certainly a pain. Additionally, the media center now includes 3dlut and simple ICC linking support for color correction.
The new update also includes an updated privacy policy, which tells you about how Kodi takes info from users and what it does with them. Kodi also claims that they are committed to stay transparent and open.
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