Kodi 20 Nexus Officially Released – What You Need to Know

This IPTV Wire news report covers the release of Kodi 20 Nexus.

Kodi is one of the most popular streaming apps and media centers used among cord-cutters from around the world.

According to the official Kodi development team, the “Alpha” version of Kodi 20 Nexus has been released to the public.

The official press release from the Kodi website states the following on Kodi 20 Nexus:

“This is a major release, so, as you’d expect, it comes with many new features. However, it will inevitably cause problems for some people, which is why we’ll go through a more traditional Alpha/Beta/Release Candidate model.

As such, then, please be aware that installing this will inevitably break things, and we’d really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed.”

Therefore, Kodi 20 Nexus is NOT the most stable version of the Kodi software. This is a pre-release which means it is still in development and there will be bugs/issues.

The most stable release of Kodi as of this writing is version 19.4 Matrix.

Important Note: Most Kodi add-ons, repositories, builds, and other 3rd party options will not work properly on Kodi 20 Nexus since Kodi 19.4 is still the acting stable release of the Kodi software.

Below you will find the important features of Kodi 20 Nexus directly pulled from the official Kodi website.

Kodi 20 Nexus – Features & Details

Video

• AV1 hardware decoding for Android
• AV1 hardware decoding for Linux via VAAPI
• Bump to FFMPEG 4.4

Subtitles

• Add new font style settings such as border size/color, background type/color/opacity, shadow color/opacity, and blur
• Add support to display subtitles with dynamic positions which make use of position tags
• Add underlined and strikethrough text style support
• Add a new wide color palette in color settings
• Add a new setting to change text alignment for closed caption subtitles for a better reading
• Add a new setting to override subtitles metadata like style and position
• Improved font size that now match the point/pixel proportion
• When Kodi is in windowed mode subtitles are now always displayed correctly
• Improved VPlayer for better reading of the multiline text
• Improved SAMI format to better support multiple languages
• Improved TX3G format to support multiple styles, colors and alpha channel
• ASS/SSA subtitles are displayed without flickering
• Improved image-based subtitle rendering to keep a better aspect ratio
• Add support to the WebVTT subtitle format type
• Improved font list setting – the actual names of the fonts are now listed
• Add support to OpenType font type (OTF)
• Improved calibration window, so it’s now possible to also reset the calibration settings
• Subtitle settings can now be changed while in playback without side effects

Discs

• Fix resume of Blu-Rays and DVD ISOs in file mode (not in library)
• Fix playback of some optical discs on Linux due the incorrect mapping of mountpoints
• On Linux optical media is now mounted by default (via udisks)
• Partial code cleanup and platform split of disc drive handling
• Skin cosmetics
• Fix duplicated context menu items

EDL

• Fix EDL mute sections and EDL cuts

GUI

• Fix wrap lists
• Fix hitrect on auto sized buttons
• Fix some context menu options not triggering the respective builtin action
• Independent volume setting for GUI sounds
• Password reveal button in keyboard dialog

Input

• Added Steam Deck built-in controller support

Skinning

• Add a new Colour Picker window dialog to allow display a color list
• Improved image control to support read dynamic $INFO data to “colordiffuse” tag
• Improved Player Process Info window – new information has been added and grouped by context
• New media flags for HDR videos: detect, store and process the type of HDR in a video file
• Skinners can now define modal dialogs if its visibility depends on Boolean condition evaluation
• Deprecation of old info labels with the introduction of new generic ones (e.g. Player.Editlist, Player.Cuts, etc)

Estuary/Estouchy

• Estuary PVR Home Screen: New widget for timers (replacing old current/next recording widget)
• Estuary PVR Home Screen: Add percentage played progress bars to Recent Channels and Recent Recordings widgets
• Estuary PVR Home Screen: Change default click action to open the Guide window
• Improve display of EDL markers on the default skin (EDL mutes are now shown, cut sections are also identified)

Games

• Savestate manager for Retroplayer with captions describing the state of the game provided by https://retroachievements.org
• In-game Port Setup dialog to change between game controllers

Platform Specifics

• UNIX Family Platforms
  • Implement WS-Discovery (SMB discovery) for *ix platforms (Android/Linux/Apple)
• iOS/TVOS
  • Improved Siri Remote handling
  • Improved “Now Playing” info
• macOS
  • Initial support for M1 native including native windowing/input handling PR NOTE: We do not provide prebuilt M1 dmg’s. Any devs willing to work on ironing out the many corner cases of the native windowing implementation, don’t hesitate to ping @fuzzard on the forums if you have any questions.
  • Extend GameController support to OSX
  • Many code cleanups/refinements/refactors
• Android
  • Update Android build to use Gradle for signing/aligning/packing
• Linux
  • Add ACES/Hable Tonemapping for GLES
  • More BiCubic Shaders for GLES
  • Pipewire support
• Windows
  • New setting to use 10 bit swapchain for SDR videos. Improves video quality and more precise colour conversions: YUV to RGB, limited to full range, shaders, etc. This is true even if video output is limited to 8 bit RGB by system or graphics driver.
  • Improved DXVA2 (HW video decoding) performance by sharing decoding and rendering surfaces. Avoids video copy operations and drastically reduces video memory usage on NVIDIA and AMD graphics using recent drivers.

i8n support

• Harfbuzz rendering for scripts with open type font shaping features

PVR

• Channels and Recordings can specify a provider
• Read-only recordings supported
• EPG Search: Add Saved Searches, incl. new Estuary PVR Home Screen widget
• Channel Manager: Add possibility to refresh all channel logos
• Settings: Add possibility to specify which data to delete when resetting PVR database
• Automatic cleanup of cached PVR images (texture.db and cached image files)
• Functional Improvements for multi PVR Add-on scenarios
• Performance improvements, esp. for large number of channels

Build System/Dependencies

• Most dependencies have been updated to latest, or close to, for Apple/Android platforms
• Many cmake updates to update build system

Date/Time

• Many many updates/changes to use std::chrono throughout the code base

Addons

• Colour Picker
• Colour button setting
• Add support to add video HDR type info to a video list item
• Function for removing orphaned dependencies recursively

How to Install Kodi 20 Nexus

There are a few ways to install the Alpha version of Kodi 20 Nexus on your preferred Kodi device.

Since most users of Kodi prefer the Amazon Firestick/Fire TV and Android TV devices, we have provided a few methods below.

One method is with TROYPOINT’s popular Rapid App Installer for quick installation.

Another method for installing Kodi 20 Nexus is through the download page on the official Kodi website.

Those using the Amazon Firestick, Fire TV, or Android TV devices will likely have better luck installing the ARMV7A (32BIT) APK file.

Overall, feel free to try the brand new Alpha release of Kodi 20 Nexus on your preferred streaming device!

But keep in mind this is not the official stable release of Kodi, as most 3rd party add-ons will not work properly.

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