Kodi is now available on Xbox One.
The launch sees Kodi – which started out as XBMC, or Xbox Media Centre, since that was the only hardware it was designed to run on back in 2002 – come full circle.
Kodi is a neutral, open-source media player that can play local media files, as well as those stored online. It can also stream content from networked drives.
Apps – known as add-ons – can be built by third-party developers to unlock a swathe of new functionality for the barebones media player.
Unfortunately, this has left Kodi with an unfortunate reputation – since there is a huge market for add-ons that enable users to stream premium content, like paid-for sports and movie channels for free.
While Kodi itself is not illegal, using it to pirate copyrighted content most certainly is.
Kodi announced its arrival on Xbox One via a blog post.
“Let us end the year 2017 with a blast including a nostalgic reference to the past,” the company wrote.
“It has long been asked for by so many and now it finally happened. Kodi for Xbox One is available worldwide through Windows and Xbox Store and will only be released from Kodi v18 and onwards.”
Unfortunately, the Kodi app is missing a number of key features that you would find on the desktop counterpart. Kodi has also warned users that it “may contain missing features and bugs”.
At the time of writing, Kodi has the following limitations –
- Limited access to only part of your Video and Music folders
- Network support is limited to only NFS:// shares
- Kodi on Xbox One has no access to the Blu-ray drive to start the disc
- There’s no access to an attached storage drive
- There might still be problems with certain add-ons
According to Kodi, it has taken more than a year to bring the hugely-popular media player onto the Xbox.
The company shared, “In December 2016 (yes you read that right) the initial reconnaissance was done on what it would take to get it done and it seemed plausible.
“Initial work that needed to be done was to convert most if not all external code libraries Kodi relies on and get these changes accepted by the original maintaining developer group(s).
“Once that work was started the current Windows specific code was picked apart piece by piece and slowly converted to be with the UWP specs.”
Kodi is available to download from the Microsoft Store now.