14 DAY TRIAL // XBMC, an open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media that is available for multiple platforms, has been promoted to version 13.1 Beta 1.
Shortly after releasing XBMC 13.0 “Gotham” Final, the most advanced version of this software, the developers started working on the first maintenance update, which seems to have gathered quite a few changes.
“Only a week ago we released the stable version of 13.0 codename ‘Gotham.’ So far, from the responses we have received, people are pretty excited about it and are happily using it. Now that more people are starting to use the stable release, several issues popped up, that we now hope to address with this 13.1 beta1 release. Do note that this release contain only fixes and no new features. So it should be safe to install on top of current 13.0 release,” said the developers in the official announcement.
According to the changelog, VDPAU is now recovering much better after an error, the cropping of interlaced content using VDPAU is now working a lot better, the FLAC tracks with large embedded images are now playing properly, a crash that occurred if librtmp wasn’t available has been fixed, and building FFMpeg on the Linux platform using a newer version of librtmp is now working properly.
Also, the broken m4a and mp4 playback with paplayer has been fixed, the hint text is now shown in editcontrols even if the window is unfocused, a minor memory leak in PlayMedia builtin function has been fixed, albumartist is now used in the song's smartplaylists, and a unique client broadcast UID is now used in the PVR API.
If you decide to update to this new version, which is not stable, you should create a backup of the current userdata folder that contains all your current settings and database files. Also, keep in mind that some of the plugins and add-ons might cease to work after the upgrade to the new version. If you are using any third-party package in particular, you should contact the development team or check the official forums for a solution.
Check out the official announcement for a complete list of new features, updates, and changes. You can download XBMC 13.1 Beta 1 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.