Kodi 21.3 “Omega” Final – Free Home Theater Media Player

Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning, free, and open-source (GPL) media center designed for playing videos, music, photos, games, and more. It enables users to access and enjoy a wide array of digital media, including videos, music, podcasts, TV shows, PVR content, and live television, whether stored locally, on a network, or streamed from online sources. This makes it an ideal solution for users seeking the best open-source home theater media center for streaming and local playback.

Kodi offers a customizable design with clean, flexible playback options. Its extensive feature set includes support for add-ons, visual skins, UPnP compatibility, web interfaces, remote control integration, and numerous other enhancements that allow users to tailor the media center to their preferred viewing experience.

The Kodi project is maintained by the non-profit XBMC Foundation and developed collaboratively by a global community of volunteers. This open development model ensures continuous improvement, frequent updates, and a strong commitment to user accessibility and innovation.

Media Center features

Music

Enjoy playback for AAC, MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, and WMA files, along with cue sheet support, tagging features, MusicBrainz integration, and smart playlists for refined music organization.

Movies

Supporting all the main video formats and sources, including streamable online media, ISOs, 3D, H.264, HEVC, and WEBM. Kodi can import these movies with full posters, fan art, disc art, actor information, trailers, video extras, and more.

TV shows

The TV shows library includes episode and season views featuring posters or banners, watched indicators, descriptions, and cast details. Video nodes, tags, and smart playlists help organize content into focused sections for genres such as sci-fi or anime.

Pictures

Import pictures into a library, explore the available views, launch a slideshow, and sort or filter everything through your remote control.

PVR and Live TV

Stream and record live TV directly from the user-friendly GUI. Kodi is compatible with numerous popular backends, including MediaPortal, MythTV, NextPVR, TVheadend, VDR, Windows Media Center, and more.

Add-ons

It offers add-ons for streaming videos, listening to music, customizing its features, integrating popular web services, enhancing visual artwork, managing smart lights, and much more.

Skin

A highly customizable skinning engine lets you transform the entire GUI and control every detail of the media center’s appearance. You can select from dozens of community-created skins, each offering unique customization options, or design your personalized user interface.

UPnP

Kodi’s UPnP compatibility enables seamless streaming between different Kodi instances and other UPnP-enabled devices on your home network. Designate one Kodi instance as the UPnP master, and other instances will automatically update their watched status and library information. This allows for centralized control and synchronization. Additionally, Kodi can import media from UPnP sources, further enhancing data synchronization across your network.

Web Interfaces

Kodi’s JSON-RPC interface enables powerful remote control and automation capabilities. This allows users to interact with Kodi programmatically, opening up a world of possibilities for remote controls, web browsers, and third-party tools. Developers can leverage this interface to create custom integrations, enhancing Kodi’s functionality and user experience.

Remote Controls

Control your media your way with support for hundreds of remote controls, CEC-compatible TVs, or one of the new Smartphone and Tablet Apps.