14 DAY TRIAL // OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 2, an embedded operating system built specifically to run XBMC, the open source entertainment media hub, is now available for download and testing.
The OpenELEC developers are moving fast with their operating system and are not waiting around for the XMBC people. As you know, XBMC 13.0 Beta 1 “Gotham” has been released a short while ago and OpenELEC based its new branch on that particular version.
XBMC 13.0 Beta 1 “Gotham” comes with Android hardware decoding, various Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements, stereoscopic 3D Rendering, better touchscreen support, improved UPnP capabilities, lots of audio engine improvements, better subtitle searches, extended Python and JSON-RPC API for developers, FFMpeg 1.2, and much more.
One of the biggest features in XBMC 13.0 Beta 1 “Gotham” was Android hardware decoding, which means that XBMC should run on Android 4.0 devices.
OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 2 on the other hand is not an Earth-shattering release, and it includes a number of bugfixes and a few minor features that should make users’ lives a little easier.
“This release includes some bugfixes and improvements since 3.95.1 (beta1). Besides the usual bugfixes and package updates as well the XBMC Gotham beta2 release we also added some fixes to fix Airplay issues with iOS 7 devices, fixed SSL support for XBMC's internal ffmpeg, more firmwares for bluetooth, wlan and DVB devices, fixes for standby/wakeup issues on some systems and a fixed LIRC support for RPI's GPIO remote receivers,” reads the announcement.
The OpenELEC developers have upgraded a number of key systems for this release, including Linux kernel, which is now at version 3.13.6 and is the latest stable kernel version available at this moment.
The NVIDIA Legacy drivers included in the distribution have been updated to version 304.121, Samba has been updated to version 3.6.23, Systemd has been updated to version 211, bluez has been updated to version 5.16m, and more.
Also, the FFmpeg build has been fixed in order to include the much needed SSL support, the init system now takes care of reboot and shutdown, and the omxplayer is no longer being forced as the default audio player for OpenELEC.
Check the official announcement for a complete list of changes and improvements. You can download OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 2 right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.