XBMC Media Center 12.0

What's new in this version:

Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder):
- Added unified Live TV and PVR frontend with a common EPG and DVR (Digital Video Recording) client GUI
- Added unified PVR backend framework and API for multiple PVR backend software from third-parties
- Added support to integrate PVR Addon's recorded TV Show Episodes and Movies with XBMC's Video Library
- Extended JSON-RPC and embedded Web Server API with PVR support to enable Web EPG in a web interface

PVR backend clients addons availabe for many popular third-party PVR backend software:
- PVR Demo Client dummy addon with fake backend from Team-XBMC for skinners and regression testing
- Argus TV / ForTheRecord PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- DVBViewer PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- NextPVR (former GB-PVR) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- Njoy Digital (N7) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- MediaPortal PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- MythTV PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from the XBMC's community
- Tvheadend PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- VDR (Video Disk Recorder) PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community
- Vu+ / Enigma2 / Dreambox PVR Addon backend client maintained and available from XBMC's community

Add-ons Framework, API, and Manager:
- Added addon API for homebrew DIY RGB LED Ambilight clone client software such as Boblight[1][2]
- Added ability to extend XBMC's native Python API by writing C++ code generated via Groovy and SWIG
- Added support for screensavers written in Python.

GUI Engine:
- Enabled Dirty Regions rendering to redraw screen on single dirty region by default on all platforms[3][4]
- Added ability to run a split display resolution for GUI and video playback on embedded platforms[5]
- Extended XBMC's GUI for PVR and EPG
- Improved touch and gesture support for all platforms
- Improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of scroll bars, and click handling
- Improvements to art handling, allowing Skinners to display multiple art types for each item, such as banners and posters for tv shows.
- Improved texture caching for GUI speedup

Platform Independent Playback:
- Added software decoding of 10-bit depth H.264 profile (Hi10P) videos (requires around a core2duo or equivalent and up)
- Added HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and M3U8 (Extended M3U) playlist support
- Added support for color and font style tags in MPL2 (MicroDVD) subtitles
- Added support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc media
- Added Bluray HDMV menu support (but not BD-J / BD-Live menus)[6]
- Improved Bluray playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
- Improved deinterlacing "Weave" method for playback of interlaced video when upscaling
- Upgraded FFmpeg's libavcodec and libavformat audio/video codec and demuxer libraries
- Improved support for forced subtitles
- Added option to set a default preference for subtitles and audio tracks based on language.

Library:
- Library customization that allows for custom video nodes
- Added Advanced Library Filtering for Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, and Music views
- Improved Smart Playlists
- Added custom video library tags for Movies, TV Shows and Music Videos
- Added support for both banner and poster video art types simultaneously[7]
- Improved performance for SQL database queries for faster browsing
- Added support for exporting video art as JPG or PNG rather than TBN file extension
- Switched to TagLib for reading metadata embedded into audio files
- Movie sets can now only be used one set per movie. See here for more info.

Scrapers:
- Improved TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by automatically scraping movie sets.
- Improved TheTVDB.com (Multi-Lingual) TV Shows and Episode scraper to obtain both posters and banners for shows and seasons.

Skins:
- Confluence: PVR front-end with Live TV and EPG specific windows, plus PVR stuff in OSD and GUI settings
- Touched: Improved the default touch screen skin for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android touch devices.

AudioEngine:
- Added unified "AudioEngine" audio abstraction framework with an API and platform sinks

Other:
- Improved CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) support for Pulse-Eight's LibCEC
- Improved AirPlay / AirTunes target support
- Improved the Audio-CD ripper that now works as a background task job
- Improved international language file translations system that are powered by Transifex[8]
- Added a Test Suite based on Google C++ Testing Framework to make regression testing easier
- Added rich metadata support to XBMC's UPnP Media Server for UPnP/DLNA clients
- Upgraded Plutinosoft's Platinum (libplatinum) UPnP and DNLA libraries
- Improved performance of the default Web Interface (complete rewrite of JavaScript loading)
- Added WebSocket support for JSON-RPC and to Addons API[9]
- Added basic support for PVR / EPG extensions and notifications over the JSON-RPC API
- Added SmartPlaylist Extensions and Extended Filtering in JSON-RPC[10]
- Removed the old HTTP API in favour of the new JSON-RPC API
- Improved keymap XML files for various controls, including the Xbox 360 Controller for PC (out-of-the-box support for both Windows and Ubuntu).

Android Specific:
- Added initial Android (operating system) port with multi-architecture platform support
- Added NEON (Advanced SIMD instruction set) CPU acceleration support for ARM architecture
- Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on Amlogic
- Added support for OpenGL ES hardware accelerated rendering of XBMC's GUI engine on Android
- Added ALSA audio output sink for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
- Added Andriod touch support

BSD Specific:
- Added initial BSD (operating system) port for FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and other similar BSD platforms
- Added ALSA, OSS, and PulseAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
- Added VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD
- Added VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) Hardware Acceleration Video Decoding support on BSD

Linux Specific:
- Added dedicated AMLPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding on AMLogic devices
- Added dedicated OMXPlayer video player for hardware accelerated video decoding via OpenMAX IL API
- Added ALSA and PulseAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
- Added alternative name support to LIRC mapping for linux-input-layer devices
- Added lircmap for Conexant's CX23885 IR (infrared) recievers
- Improved ARM processor architecture (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
- Improved OpenGL ES and EGL support (Pivos XIOS DS and Raspberry Pi as reference devices)
- Improved playback with Broadcom Crystal HD PCIe/Mini-PCIe hardware accelerated video decoder
- Improved VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers)
- Improved VDPAU (NVIDIA) Hardware Video Acceleration and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities
- Improved AMD/Intel x86-64 64-bit (AMD64 / IA-64t CPU architectures) support under Linux
- Remove all dependencies of HAL manager libraries from XBMC's code

iOS Specific:
- Added CoreAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
- Improved H.264 hardware accelerated video decoding support decode on iOS via Apple's VideoToolBox API
- Improved support for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
- Improved XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier
- Added iOS iDevices can now use the native iOS keyboard. Core functions only, so add-ons might still pop-up the XBMC keyboard.
- Added iOS iDevices can now use native video putout when using the Apple HDMI adapter. "A5" and above iOS devices can also mirror XBMC video to a native Apple TV 2/3 AirPlay server (but not to an XBMC AirPlay server).
- Added key repeat for ATV2
- Added navigation sound support
- Improved stylized subtitle support (ASS/SSA subtitles)

Mac OS X Specific:
- Added CoreAudio audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework
- Add support for compiling 64-bit version of XBMC for Mac on OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later
- Improved Apple VDADecoder Video Acceleration support (requires Snow Leopard or later)
- Improved XBMC's build system to make compiling XBMC much easier

Windows Specific:
- Added DirectSound and WASAPI audio output sinks for the new AudioEngine abstraction framework