14 DAY TRIAL // Kodi 14.0 RC, the successor of the current XBMC project, has been released and is now available for testing. The famous media hub is preparing for a major name change, but the devs also plan to make the 14.0 branch the best one so far.
The XBMC project will soon change its name to Kodi and the developers are looking to also release a major upgrade for the application. Some of the users might look with nostalgia to the old name, which stands for Xbox Media Center.
As you can imagine, the media hub has not performed this function for a very long time. Now, with the release for the 14.0 branch, it's the perfect moment to make these changes.
The devs have been working on Kodi for a while now and they’ve managed to add a ton of new features and changes. The current iteration is still a Release Candidate, which means that it's not quite ready, but the final version is not too far.
If you really want to get the stable branch of the software, then you will need to get XBMC 13.2. This app has only been out for a couple of months, so it's not exactly old.
What's new in Kodi 14.0 RC
Kodi 14.0 is one of the biggest releases for this app and that is easily observed from the changelog made available. There are numerous important upgrades, but users will definitely notice the fact that it's a lot faster and more responsive.
"The last few months have certainly been rough-and-tumble, but we are pleased to announce the release candidate cycle for Kodi 14.0 Helix. This 14.0 release brings many updates and changes, not the least of which is the change to the software’s name and logo. The release candidate cycle will also be the first to include the official logo of Kodi!"
"To begin, Kodi has been updated to use FFMpeg 2.4.3. For users, this means Kodi will now be capable of playing back h.265 (also known as HEVC) and VP9 video codecs. This could result in dramatically smaller video files sizes with exactly the same level of quality. A 40 GB file could be compressed to 20 GB. A 1 GB file could be compressed to 500 MB without any loss in perceivable quality. Users with particularly large libraries or interest in 4K video may be especially likely to appreciate this update," said the developers.
Other improvements that have been implemented included better control over the addon, a better library selection, support for ATSC sub-channels, and even a virtual keyboard. You can download Kodi 14.0 RC from Softpedia and give it a go.
