Kodi Launches on Xbox One, But Don't Expect Perfection

In the vein of "everything old is new again," the media streaming software Kodi — formerly known as Xbox Media Center (XBMC) — has arrived on Xbox One.

The free, open-source software, which is designed to help you organize, view and manage your local media collection on various devices, is now bachelor worldwide via the Xbox Store, the Kodi team announced Friday. But don't expect perfection.

"It'south not finished however and may contain missing features and bugs," the team wrote.

Kodi, for the uninitiated, works with your existing digital media files — things like movies, television shows, music, podcasts, and photos — and won't supervene upon your subscriptions to video streaming services, such equally Netflix and Hulu, or music streaming apps, such as Spotify or Pandora. Instead, Kodi's utility is its support for a wide range of file types and extensive cross-device compatibility.

If you lot utilize already use Kodi, you'll detect that it looks pretty much exactly the same on Xbox One as information technology does on Windows 10 and other platforms. On the down side, though, the Xbox One app is withal "in early on stages of development and has very rough edges, might not be equally stable equally the regular version and may even exist missing some functions," Kodi wrote. At this betoken, for instance, it does non offering admission to Blu-ray or attached storage drives.

Nonetheless, Kodi developers are "working on getting information technology upwardly to the regular standard" and are hopeful almost this release.

"We were aware from the get-go there would be limitations when the piece of work started however that never kept us from realizing that dream of becoming once over again bachelor on the device that started information technology all," the team wrote. "It almost feels similar being reborn again."

Besides Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, and now Xbox One, Kodi too runs on Apple'south OSX and iOS, Google's Android, as well as Linux and Raspberry Pi.

Nearly Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag'due south expert on fettle and smart dwelling house products. Educational activity yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, strength training machines, treadmills, and more. Angela besides tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, only to name a few.