OpenELEC - Media Center Operating System

The OpenELEC team is proud to release the 3rd Release Candidate of OpenELEC 3.0! Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.99.3 :) Apologies to all for the long delay since RC2. We found some important sound driver issues with ... [More] recent kernel versions which we have solved with help from some of our users and Anssi Hannula, a kernel developer. Anssi is working on getting the fixes included in newer kernels so that all Distributions will benefit from this in the future. Many thanks for the great help! [Less]

We are pleased to announce that we have a new partner - Arctic and more specifically, their MC001 platform (EU Model, US Model) which is an ideal partner for OpenELEC. Arctic is also known for their cooling solutions, with this experiences they ... [More] developed a fully passive cooled Entertainment System - and OpenELEC delivers the optimal Multimedia OS for their systems. [Less]

First of all, we'd like to apologize. As some of you will have noticed, we recently experienced some downtime with our main webserver which affected our website and forums and while the wiki and chat remained working, the others were down for around ... [More] 48 hours. We'd like to thank our provider, SolNET for their hard work getting our website back up and running as quickly as they could, helping us with the DoS attack we suffered and making it easier for us to manage our traffic. [Less]

The OpenELEC team is proud to release the second Release Candidate of OpenELEC 3.0! Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.99.2 :). Our second Release Candidate updates XBMC to latest XBMC Frodo, and fixes some issues found in ... [More] our RC1 release. Also we updated some important parts of the OS to fix issues and update and add more drivers. This will be one of the latest releases before OpenELEC 3.0 final, so please test and report issues. [Less]

  The OpenELEC team is proud to release the second Release Candidate of OpenELEC 3.0! Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.99.2 :). Our second Release Candidate updates XBMC to latest XBMC Frodo, and fixes some issues ... [More] found in our RC1 release. Also we updated some important parts of the OS to fix issues and update and add more drivers. This will be one of the latest releases before OpenELEC 3.0 final, so please test and report issues. To manually update to this Release Candidate read http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=Updating_OpenELEC. Be social, join our community now! We invite everyone to actively participate in the OpenELEC community. In a short time we have become a bustling project with many keen users of all skill levels helping out daily. OpenELEC is for everyone and following us on social media not only keeps you up to date but helps the project by letting more people know about us. Forum: http://openelec.tv/forum Twitter: https://twitter.com/openelec Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OpenELEC Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112115795516947592126/112115795516947592126/posts IRC: #openelec on freenode.net (also avaible via our webchat)     We would like to thank our users, team members and partners for testing, reporting and fixing issues, creating how-to documents, developing new features, and their donations of hardware and funds to the project. We appreciate your continued support! How can I make a donation? If you want to contribute to the OpenELEC project, you can make a donation using PayPal. Donating is easy, takes only a few minutes and you do not need a PayPal account to make a donation. We have not set up our PayPal donation page to suggest a donation amount; please just donate what you feel comfortable with. You can download your OpenELEC 3.0 RC 2 build here. Upgrading to OpenELEC 2.99.2 There have been many months of developer testing in the run-up to this beta release, but like any major update there are a lot of changes and something somewhere will have been missed (this is why we do beta tests). If you are going to update to the beta release from our actual stable OpenELEC-1.0 or OpenELEC-2.0 we STRONGLY advise you to make a backup of XBMC’s data files first and start with a fresh XBMC user dir: mv /storage/.xbmc /storage/.xbmc-backup   The Slideshow screensaver has been moved to the XBMC add-on repo, users will now need to download the add-on to be able to use it. (If not they will just get a black screen which does nothing)   Improved OpenELEC WikiThanks to our Teammember lrusak and many of our users we have improved our wiki on http://wiki.openelec.tv. If you need a account to help us to contribute to our Wiki please ask one of our Teammembers for a account.   Issue Reports & Feature Requests on githubOpenELEC gained many new users since 2.0 and it became impossible to track issue reports and feature requests via forum postings. To re-assert some control and improve visibility for the dev team we have moved all bug reporting and feature requests to the github issue tracker here: http://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/issues. {gallery}openelec-3.0-beta1{/gallery} OpenELEC 3.0 highlights and changes: XBMC-12.0 (Frodo) Thanks to an incredibly successful GSoC experience and numerous dedicated developers who have been working on many projects for years, XBMC 12 figures to be one of the most anticipated feature updates in a long time. Features include… HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine (DTS-HD / True-HD not support on AMD GPUs) improved Live TV and PVR support Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types Support for the Raspberry PI Improved Airplay support across all platforms Advanced Filtering in the library Advanced UPnP sharing XBMC Frodo has improved sound card detection and "Audio Engine support". This may change the naming of audio devices available on your system and the Audio configuration handling. If audio stops working after the update please adjust audio configuration in XBMC settings to use the updated device names and remove any previously installed/configured /storage/.config/asound.conf Starting in XBMC v12 "Frodo", you should no longer use path substitution to sync thumbnails and other art between XBMC devices. For more infos see http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Sync_multiple_libraries/Upgrading_XBMC_to_v12   improved PVR SupportBased on XBMC 12.0 included PVR support we support many more DVB hardware, and have 4TheRecord, DVB Viewer, Mediaportal, MythTV, NextPVR, TVHeadend, VDR, Njoy N7 and VU+ support in the OS. New “RPi” imageWith XBMC Frodo version now getting stable, there is also a great choice for RaspberryPi owners, that want to use XBMC on their RaspberryPi. Among multiple distributions, like Raspbmc and XBian which are both Debian/Raspbian based and the fully RaspberryPi and XBMC optimized OpenELEC embedded OS, they can exactly choose what fits their needs. All those projects help XBMC to mature and bear great possibilities for all users out there.This new build was created to run OpenELEC on our first supported ARM device the RaspberryPi. To find informations how to use and install this build please read http://openelec.tv/forum/124-raspberry-pi/40979-raspberry-pi-faq#40979 and http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=Installing_OpenELEC_on_Raspberry_PiWe would like to thanks "Gimli" and "Popcornmix" for all the help we got with porting OpenELEC to the RaspberryPi   Improved AMD XVBA supportThanks to the efforts of FernetMenta, Fritsch, Newphreak and many users who have been testing and providing feedback our native XVBA support was improved again.Xvba now uses a better heuristics to detect wrongly encoded H264 files. The AMD decoder heavily relies that the correct level is set. With these changes, it is now possible to playback those files without artefacts.Another change was the handling of 2K and 4K video files. In the past, they broke the decoder and forced the user to reboot. We now correctly handle 2K resolution files and don't try to create the hw decoder for larger resolutions that are not supported by the XVBA SDK. [Less]

Team OpenELEC is proud to announce, in collaboration with our partner Zotac that OpenELEC is ALREADY optimized for the upcoming hardware.

Team OpenELEC is proud to announce, in collaboration with our partner Zotac that OpenELEC is ALREADY optimized for the upcoming hardware.     The Zotac Press release can we read in full here but the highlights are listed below. ZOTAC ... [More] Starts CES 2013 With New 3rd Generation ZBOX mini-PC New 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PC packs Intel Core processor with NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 graphics to form the ultimate home theater mini-PCHONG KONG – Jan. 07, 2013 – ZOTAC International, a global innovator and leading manufacturer of graphics cards, mainboards and mini-PCs today starts the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 with a new 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX and a refreshed mobile-on-desktop 2nd Generation ZBOX mini-PCs. The new ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PCs both receive Intel Core processors for outstanding performance.3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX ChassisThe 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX is the most substantial evolution of the ZBOX since its introduction three years ago and receives a slight 7-mm increase in thickness to accommodate higher-performance components. Network connectivity receives an upgrade with the 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX chassis for dual Gigabit Ethernet ports with teaming capabilities and dual external Wi-Fi antenna’s for superior wireless networking and Bluetooth reception. “After many years of research and development, ZOTAC is able to integrate desktop components and discrete graphics into our award-winning ZBOX mini-PC for greater flexibility and performance capabilities,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International. ZOTAC engineers also enhanced the cooling subsystem of the 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX chassis with triple the ventilation area for improved system cooling properties capable of handling the heat while maintaining quiet operation. NVIDIA ION™ ReinventedThe 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PC takes the NVIDIA ION™ concept and gives it a serious injection of performance with an Intel Core processor and NVIDIA GeForce graphics technology. A dual-core Intel Core processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 graphics processor join forces to form an unmatched home theater PC combination in the 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX with NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 graphics. The NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 graphics processor enables hardware decode acceleration of popular high-definition video formats, including Blu-ray 3D, outstanding video processing for phenomenal video playback and bitstream audio output capabilities for crystal clear loss-less surround sound. The Intel Core processor provides lightning-fast system responsiveness and additional horsepower to decode new 10-bit video formats such as Hi10P without a single dropped frame. “ZOTAC continues to impress us with their dedication to the home theater PC and continual advancement of mini-PC hardware capable of handling the latest and greatest features of OpenELEC,” said Stephen Raue, main developer and founder, OpenELEC. “We have no doubt the new 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX with NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 graphics is ready for the new HD audio and Hi10P video capabilities of the upcoming XBMC 12.0 Frodo-based OpenELEC 3.0 release.”Enhanced Mobile on Desktop ExperienceThe new 2nd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX with Intel HD Graphics 4000 rounds out the ZOTAC ZBOX lineup for CES 2013 with its 3rd Generation Intel Core i3 3120M processor for excellent performance in every day applications. By integrating a mobile 3rd Generation Intel Core i3, the new ZBOX packs an Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics processor that delivers nearly twice the 3D performance of Intel HD Graphics 2500 found in most desktop 3rd Generation Intel Core processors. The graphics boost helps the 3rd Generation ZOTAC ZBOX with Intel HD Graphics 4000 transcode videos up to 75-percent faster than previous generations for lightning-fast video conversions for quicker transfers of videos to portable media players and smartphone devices. ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PCs For All Your Computing NeedsThe new ZOTAC ZBOX with Intel Core processors offer a superior computing experience in a mini-PC form factor for all computing needs whether its high-performance CPU processing or stunning high-definition video playback capabilities, there’s a perfect ZBOX for the job. Each new ZOTAC ZBOX with Intel Core processors ship as a barebones or as a PLUS model with preinstalled memory and hard drive. It’s time to play with the new ZOTAC ZBOX with Intel Core processors. General details ZOTAC Starts CES 2013 with new 3rd Generation ZBOX mini-PC New 3rd Generation Chassis Enables use of desktop processors Dual Gigabit Ethernet Dual external Wi-Fi antennas Triple the ventilation area of 2nd Generation chassis NVIDIA ION reinvented 2nd Generation Intel Core processor with NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 configuration available Refreshed mobile-on-desktop 2nd Generation ZBOX New 3rd Generation Intel Core i3 3120M PLUS models available with preinstalled memory and hard drive 4GB DDR3 500GB 5400RPM HDD DVI & HDMI outputs 802.11n Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.0 High-amperage USB charging capable (yellow ports) Bundled MCE-compatible remote w/ USB IR receiver Bundled VESA75/100 mount   3rd Generation ZBOX with GeForce GT 610 Graphics Specifications:   {gallery}zotac_id42{/gallery}   Product Name ZBOX ID42 SKU ZBOX-ID42ZBOX-ID42-PLUS Memory 2 x 204-pin DDR3 SO-DIMM slots (Up to 16GB)DDR3-1333 Hard Disk Support 1 2.5-inch HDD PLUS Configuration 4GB DDR3 / 500GB 5400RPM HDD CPU Intel Core Processor (dual-core, 1.1 GHz) GPU NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 Video Memory 512MB DDR3 Display Options HDMI & DVI Memory Card Reader 4-in-1 (SD/SDHC/MMC/SDXC) SATA N/A Ethernet 2 x 10/100/1000Mbps WiFi Onboard 802.11n Wi-Fi & Bluetooth 4.0 USB Ports 2 USB 2.0 (rear) (high-amperage charging supported)2 USB 3.0 ports (1 on top, 1 on front) Audio Onboard analog stereo high-definition audio HDMI audio (bitstream)Digital Optical S/PDIF DirectX® Support DirectX® 11 with Shader Model 5.0 Other Features Hardware video decode acceleration, Blu-ray 3D support, dual-display capable HDCP Yes   2nd Generation ZBOX with Intel HD Graphics 4000 Specifications:   {gallery}zotac_id83{/gallery}   Product Name ZBOX ID83 SKU ZBOX-ID83ZBOX-ID83-PLUS Memory 2 x 204-pin DDR3 SO-DIMM slots (Up to 16GB)DDR3-1600 Hard Disk Support 1 2.5-inch HDD PLUS Configuration 4GB DDR3 / 500GB 5400RPM HDD CPU Intel Core i3 3120M (dual-core, 2.5 GHz) GPU Intel HD Graphics 4000 Video Memory Shared Memory Architecture Display Options HDMI & DVI Memory Card Reader 4-in-1 (SD/SDHC/MMC/SDXC) SATA N/A Ethernet 10/100/1000Mbps WiFi Onboard 802.11n Wi-Fi & Bluetooth 4.0 USB Ports 4 USB 2.0 (1 front, 1 top, 2 rear) (high-amperage charging supported)2 USB 3.0 ports (rear) Audio Onboard analog stereo high-definition audio HDMI audio (bitstream)Digital Optical S/PDIF DirectX® Support DirectX® 11 with Shader Model 5.0 Other Features Hardware video decode acceleration, Blu-ray 3D support, dual-display capable HDCP Yes   About ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited ZOTAC International is a part of PC Partner Ltd. Group. ZOTAC is also one of the largest NVIDIA graphics cards and motherboard manufacturer in the world with over 10 years of quality manufacturing experience. The ZOTAC philosophy is to deliver the latest products at competitive prices without sacrificing quality. For further information please visit www.zotac.com [Less]

The OpenELEC team is proud to release the first Release Candidate of OpenELEC 3.0! Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.99.1 :). With the old year we leave the Beta phase of OpenELEC 3.0 behind and jump to the final phase for ... [More] our upcoming Release of OpenELEC 3.0 with XBMC Frodo included. Our first Release Candidate updates XBMC to XBMC Frodo Release Candidate 3, and fixes some issues found in our Beta 6 release. We hope the new year brings you all new dreams, visions, resolutions and a new (better!) way of living - We wish you a very happy, healthy, positive and peaceful new year - with many surprises coming from us :-)! [Less]

  The OpenELEC team is proud to release the first Release Candidate of OpenELEC 3.0! Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.99.1 :). With the old year we leave the Beta phase of OpenELEC 3.0 behind and jump to the final ... [More] phase for our upcoming Release of OpenELEC 3.0 with XBMC Frodo included. Our first Release Candidate updates XBMC to XBMC Frodo Release Candidate 3, and fixes some issues found in our Beta 6 release. We hope the new year brings you all new dreams, visions, resolutions and a new (better!) way of living - We wish you a very happy, healthy, positive and peaceful new year - with many surprises coming from us :-)! To manually update to this Release Candidate read http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=Updating_OpenELEC. Be social, join our community now! We invite everyone to actively participate in the OpenELEC community. In a short time we have become a bustling project with many keen users of all skill levels helping out daily. OpenELEC is for everyone and following us on social media not only keeps you up to date but helps the project by letting more people know about us. Forum: http://openelec.tv/forum Twitter: https://twitter.com/openelec Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OpenELEC Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112115795516947592126/112115795516947592126/posts IRC: #openelec on freenode.net (also avaible via our webchat)     We would like to thank our users, team members and partners for testing, reporting and fixing issues, creating how-to documents, developing new features, and their donations of hardware and funds to the project. We appreciate your continued support! How can I make a donation? If you want to contribute to the OpenELEC project, you can make a donation using PayPal. Donating is easy, takes only a few minutes and you do not need a PayPal account to make a donation. We have not set up our PayPal donation page to suggest a donation amount; please just donate what you feel comfortable with. You can download your OpenELEC 3.0 RC 1 build here. Upgrading to OpenELEC 2.99.1 There have been many months of developer testing in the run-up to this beta release, but like any major update there are a lot of changes and something somewhere will have been missed (this is why we do beta tests). If you are going to update to the beta release from our actual stable OpenELEC-1.0 or OpenELEC-2.0 we STRONGLY advise you to make a backup of XBMC’s data files first and start with a fresh XBMC user dir: mv /storage/.xbmc /storage/.xbmc-backup   The Slideshow screensaver has been moved to the XBMC add-on repo, users will now need to download the add-on to be able to use it. (If not they will just get a black screen which does nothing)   Improved OpenELEC WikiThanks to our Teammember lrusak and many of our users we have improved our wiki on http://wiki.openelec.tv. If you need a account to help us to contribute to our Wiki please ask one of our Teammembers for a account.   Issue Reports & Feature Requests on githubOpenELEC gained many new users since 2.0 and it became impossible to track issue reports and feature requests via forum postings. To re-assert some control and improve visibility for the dev team we have moved all bug reporting and feature requests to the github issue tracker here: http://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/issues. {gallery}openelec-3.0-beta1{/gallery} OpenELEC 3.0 highlights and changes: XBMC-12.0 (Frodo) Thanks to an incredibly successful GSoC experience and numerous dedicated developers who have been working on many projects for years, XBMC 12 figures to be one of the most anticipated feature updates in a long time. Features include… HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine (DTS-HD / True-HD not support on AMD GPUs) improved Live TV and PVR support Improved image support, allowing the database to accomodate numerous additional image types Support for the Raspberry PI Improved Airplay support across all platforms Advanced Filtering in the library Advanced UPnP sharing XBMC Frodo has improved sound card detection and "Audio Engine support". This may change the naming of audio devices available on your system and the Audio configuration handling. If audio stops working after the update please adjust audio configuration in XBMC settings to use the updated device names and remove any previously installed/configured /storage/.config/asound.conf Starting in XBMC v12 "Frodo", you should no longer use path substitution to sync thumbnails and other art between XBMC devices. For more infos see http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Sync_multiple_libraries/Upgrading_XBMC_to_v12   improved PVR SupportBased on XBMC 12.0 included PVR support we support many more DVB hardware, and have 4TheRecord, DVB Viewer, Mediaportal, MythTV, NextPVR, TVHeadend, VDR, Njoy N7 and VU+ support in the OS. New “RPi” imageWith XBMC Frodo version now getting stable, there is also a great choice for RaspberryPi owners, that want to use XBMC on their RaspberryPi. Among multiple distributions, like Raspbmc and XBian which are both Debian/Raspbian based and the fully RaspberryPi and XBMC optimized OpenELEC embedded OS, they can exactly choose what fits their needs. All those projects help XBMC to mature and bear great possibilities for all users out there.This new build was created to run OpenELEC on our first supported ARM device the RaspberryPi. To find informations how to use and install this build please read http://openelec.tv/forum/124-raspberry-pi/40979-raspberry-pi-faq#40979 and http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=Installing_OpenELEC_on_Raspberry_PiWe would like to thanks "Gimli" and "Popcornmix" for all the help we got with porting OpenELEC to the RaspberryPi   Improved AMD XVBA supportThanks to the efforts of FernetMenta, Fritsch, Newphreak and many users who have been testing and providing feedback our native XVBA support was improved again.Xvba now uses a better heuristics to detect wrongly encoded H264 files. The AMD decoder heavily relies that the correct level is set. With these changes, it is now possible to playback those files without artefacts.Another change was the handling of 2K and 4K video files. In the past, they broke the decoder and forced the user to reboot. We now correctly handle 2K resolution files and don't try to create the hw decoder for larger resolutions that are not supported by the XVBA SDK. [Less]

  We are happy to announce our two winners of the two 8GB Raspberry Pi Media Centre Kit sponsored by The Pi Hut from our RaspberryPi Media Center draw: Stefan from Germany James from Singapore Congratulations and enjoy these devices with ... [More] OpenELEC! We want to thank all users who have participated. This Draw was very successful so we have decided to repeat this very soon. Watch us on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and/or here to not miss out on any further surprises! We'd also like to thank The Pi Hut for all the help and the Hardware donations. [Less]