XBMC 13.0 ‘Gotham’ Brings a Slew of Enhancements, Including Hardware Decode on Android

The XBMC developers released the latest major version of the popular media center software over the weekend, version 13.0. Called “Gotham”, this release is enormous: It features over 530 code changes made by 51 developers. And, it shows.

At the top, both the Raspberry Pi and Android builds feature enhanced performance, especially with regards to opening libraries, browsing through your videos, and also starting playback. For Android in particular, a major addition is hardware decoding, a feature that the developers say was the most-requested feature since the summer of 2012.

Fans of 3D films will be pleased to know that support for those has been added. Although 3D Blu-rays are not supported at this time, movies encoded to SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced are. You can see an example of the option available in a supported movie below:

Other key features include improved touchscreen support (introducing gestures), improved UPnP capabilities, a reworked Dramatic Audio Engine, an overhauled settings section, a better subtitle search, and much, much more.

To learn of everything that’s new, check out the official site. Before upgrading, be sure to read the “Important notice” at the bottom of the release page – better to be safe than sorry.