Kodi 18 Leia Nearly Released, But For Now An RC5

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Kodi 18 Leia Nearly Released, But For Now An RC5

Kodi 18 Leia RC5 is available this weekend as what should be the last release candidate before this major release is out of this widely-used, cross-platform HTPC software...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Kodi-18-RC5-Released

[Danny3]

I am not really interested of Kodi news now as I was in the past.
Looking for more info why Kodi 18 can't do hardware decode for videos encoded with HEVC (H.265) 10bit on my Windows 7, I saw some disappointing info on their forums saying that if I want hardware decoding I need to upgrade to Windows 10.
I don't remember if it was one of the Kodi developers or just a user, but in any case Kodi 18 can't do hardware decoding even on Windows with my AMD RX 560 GPU, while MPC-HC does it just fine on the same system.
I don't understand why after all these years Kodi is still so far behind MPC-HC, when it comes to playback, even though MPC-HC is open source and they could see what MPC-HC is doing there that is so awesome or even copy it.
I don't even want to talk about the fact that MPC-HC can even use madVR, which makes the playback even more awesome.
I bet they still don't support multiple user accounts on Windows and you have to make it manually again.

[twilight]

I don't understand why after all these years Kodi is still so far behind MPC-HC, when it comes to playback, even though MPC-HC is open source and they could see what MPC-HC is doing there that is so awesome or even copy it.
I don't even want to talk about the fact that MPC-HC can even use madVR, which makes the playback even more awesome.
I bet they still don't support multiple user accounts on Windows and you have to make it manually again.

MPC-HC is just a player and Kodi is a fully fledged media center. Kodi can also call other players for the final playback, if you 're so keen on staying cutting edge with your media.

If you want multiple users on Kodi you have to do it through its own profile manager. No big deal imho.

[Danny3]

MPC-HC is just a player and Kodi is a fully fledged media center. Kodi can also call other players for the final playback, if you 're so keen on staying cutting edge with your media.

If you want multiple users on Kodi you have to do it through its own profile manager. No big deal imho.

I know that Kodi is a fully fledged media center, but the main function of it is to play movies and they should work first on improving that.
It already has hardware decoding for AVC (H.264). So I think it's only normal they should add hardware decoding support for HEVC too.
I know that Kodi can call other players, but doing it it's not as easy as toggling some config setting and requires to read a big tutorial which takes a lot of time.
And I don't have time to do it over and over again on each system that I intall Kodi.
I'm not keen on staying cutting edge with my media. It's just I like to have media with best quality.
And this means that videos encoded with HEVC in 10bit and sometimes even HDR.
I don't remember, but I think Kodi has also problems displaying HDR videos on non-HDR monitors and TVs.
So I hoped that the main feature of Kodi (the playback) will be improved to close the gap with other players, but it seems that it's not happening, not even on version 18.

For multiple users, I mean other Windows users (standard, guest) which I don't want to give the password from my account (where I'm administrator) just to use Kodi on their profile.
I want them to use Kodi on their own Windows account, just like other programs that I installed and other users can use on their own accounts.
Last time I checked this is not possible by default with Kodi.
It's possible to make it manually but it takes a lot of time to configure everything (move the database to a shared location and make symlinks from all the user accounts plus copy the shortcuts).

[calc]

Looking for more info why Kodi 18 can't do hardware decode for videos encoded with HEVC (H.265) 10bit on my Windows 7, I saw some disappointing info on their forums saying that if I want hardware decoding I need to upgrade to Windows 10.

Why would the Kodi developers want to waste effort on supporting an OS that is already past EOL?

[aht0]

Win7 support ends Jan 14 2020.. Not 2019

[Danny3]

Why would the Kodi developers want to waste effort on supporting an OS that is already past EOL?

Because it's the last good version of Windows!
I don't like the Windows 8 touchscreen interface and I don't like Windows 10 built-in trackware, spyware and other kind of crapware that is there.
And I don't give a fuck about what Microsoft says about EOL. They are so pushing with what they do that nowadays are even shittier than mafia.
It's not like Windows 7 will stop functioning past that date.
And let me ask you one thing that I'm curious, does the hardware decoding of Kodi work on Windows 8 or 10 for videos encoded with HEVC (H.265) 10bit ?

The only operating system that I'll be upgrading to from Windows 7 is Linux, but unfortunately Linux is far behind with the quality and user friendliness with those bullshit password requests every 2 minutes compared to Windows 7.
So, I think Windows 7 will survive on my computer as base for Kodi for more years.
I'm not upgrading to spyware for them.

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

Because it's the last good version of Windows!
I don't like the Windows 8 touchscreen interface and I don't like Windows 10 built-in trackware, spyware and other kind of crapware that is there.
And I don't give a fuck about what Microsoft says about EOL. They are so pushing with what they do that nowadays are even shittier than mafia.
It's not like Windows 7 will stop functioning past that date.
And let me ask you one thing that I'm curious, does the hardware decoding of Kodi work on Windows 8 or 10 for videos encoded with HEVC (H.265) 10bit ?

The only operating system that I'll be upgrading to from Windows 7 is Linux, but unfortunately Linux is far behind with the quality and user friendliness with those bullshit password requests every 2 minutes compared to Windows 7.
So, I think Windows 7 will survive on my computer as base for Kodi for more years.
I'm not upgrading to spyware for them.

Blah Blub personal opinions vs Kodi devs would waste resources on a EOL OS

[arokh]

Newer smart TV's have excellent hardware decoding (and also support things like HDR), makes much more sense to run Plex Media Server and run the Plex frontend on your TV these days. Emby is an alternative as well or so I've heard. Kodi never managed to get 3D MVC working for example, and now there's HDR which is still not ready (I think). Once it stops being able to support new technologies and the alternatives become better it will be hard for Kodi to stay relevant.

[xiando]

decode for videos encoded with HEVC (H.265) 10bit on my Windows 7

I see what your problem is. Install Gentoo.

Newer smart TV's have excellent hardware decoding (and also support things like HDR), makes much more sense to run Plex Media Server

Running a Botnet Spyware TV with a proprietary Botnet Media Server is a really bad idea. A dedicated media player box with Gentoo is preferable.

hi /g/