Kodi 18 Finally Available As 64-bit App for Windows

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We don’t often feature Kodi on the Portal, but it has a place in our hearts. The XBMC successor is the most feature-rich media player application available on almost every platform. Now, Martijn Kaijser from the team announced a next milestone of the project.

Kodi is a free and open-source project, which grew into a huge multi-platform media center. The upcoming version will be available as a full 64-bit application. Right now, the 64-bit Kodi is available for Windows only, but the XBMC/Kodi Foundation is working really hard to port the necessary libraries to other platforms, including Android.

Kodi v18 is codenamed Leia, as a tribute to actress Carrie Fisher who portrayed Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies. Similar to Android, every version codename starts with a different letter. The project carried the names of Atlantis, Babylon, Camelot, Dharma, Eden, Frodo, Gotham, Helix, Isengard, Jarvis, Krypton, and finally Leia.

Users were asking for the 64-bit version of the app for a very long time. It has been a while since desktop operating systems adopted 64-bit and Kodi, being multi-platform, had to adapt. It was a huge challenge, but the team managed to release a first 64-bit nightly for Windows.

Originally, XBMC was available on XBOX but evolved greatly since 2003. The team needed to clean up the build system and the core code to slowly move over towards a 64-bit version. While many libraries already offer a 64-bit version, some needed to be ported from 32-bit. The team ported 31 external libraries to 64-bit. Kodi is still in a very early stage of development, but should perform the most basic tasks.

Martijn Kaijser has also shed some light on the current UWP situation. The team is steadily working on bringing Kodi to this platform. and adding 64-bit version to the roster is a huge step towards making the app compatible with the XBOX One. The team needed to change or remove over 800 function calls and now needs to find the solution to make a fully functional application. Nevertheless, Kodi is one step closer to becoming an XBOX One app.

Over the years, Kodi has attracted negative attention for its use to facilitate unauthorized access to copyrighted content, through third-party add-ons. Additionally, some companies are selling Android TV boxes with modified builds. Those versions allow watching copyrighted content via add-ons. These products are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Kodi project or the XBMC Foundation. The Foundation has taken steps to disassociate the Kodi project from these illegal products, including threatening legal action against those using its trademarks to promote them. The latest stable release of the project, v17 Krypton, can’t be distributed as a modified build.

Kodi v18 Leia is still an alpha. You can download the latest build for your device from the project’s website available below. The 64-bit Windows version can be installed on top of the current nightly. FInally, you can also download the version for Android to test the new features of this media-center.

Source: Kodi Get Kodi nightly (master branch)