14 DAY TRIAL // XBMC 13.0 Beta 1, an open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media that is available for multiple platforms, has finally arrived after a long wait.
After more than a year of work, the developers of XBMC have released the first Beta in the new 13.x branch. It has been dubbed “Gotham” and it's probably one of the biggest releases so far.
XBMC media player is being used by a lot of other companies and development teams for their own products, which means that soon there will be a lot of other upgrades for a number of applications and Linux distributions.
One of the most touted features for XBMC 13.0 Beta 1, which has also been backported to version 12.3, is without a doubt the Android Hardware Decoding. With this feature enabled, Android 4.0-powered devices should be able to run the software. The developers are providing two versions, for ARM and x86 architectures, in an effort to cover as many devices as possible.
According to the them, most Android devices that run on ARM hardware should be able use XBMC 13.0 Beta 1, although you will have to double check that you don't encounter any problems.
The Android and ARM port also means that XBMC 13.0 Beta 1 will be able to perform without any hinges on other similar device, such as the Raspberry Pi. Dramatic speed increases have been reported for browsing the libraries, loading images, and starting the videos.
XBMC 13.0 Beta 1 features improved 3D support, such as SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced. Unfortunately, 3D Blu-rays are out of the question, but not because the developers didn't want to implement the necessary support. This particular feature would only be available on very high-end CPUs, which means that a lot of XBMC users won't have access to it.
XBMC 12.0 “Frodo” introduces a new audio engine, which proved to be a very powerful and reliable one. In the current version, this engine has been reworked and improved even further, and it should provide a much better sound quality.
Searching for subtitles is also something that the developers chose to improve. The old system wasn’t bad, but the way a subtitle search service is downloaded has changed. It shouldn't be all that different for users, but they need to select and download their preferred add-on before starting a movie
Check out the official announcement for a complete list of new features, updates, and changes. Download XBMC 13.0 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.