Kodi (software)

Kodi (formerly XBMC for Xbox Media Center) is a free and open-source media center application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a 10-foot user interface designed for use with large screens and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, and podcasts from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media, or TV gateway viewer. Kodi was initially designed as a multi-platform media center application that has grown to become a multi-purpose technological convergence platform. It is fully customizable: skins can change its appearance, and plug-ins expand the application with new features, such as weather forecasts and more remote control options, and can allow users to access streaming media content via online services such as Amazon Prime Video, Crackle, Pandora, Napster, Spotify, and YouTube. The later versions also have a personal video-recorder (PVR) graphical front end for receiving live television with electronic program guide (EPG) and high-definition digital video recorder (DVR) support. The software was originally created in 2002 as an independently developed homebrew media player application named Xbox Media Player for the first-generation Xbox game console, changing its name in 2003 to Xbox Media Center (abbreviated as XBMC, which was adopted as the official name in 2008) and was later made available under the name XBMC as a native application for Android, Linux, BSD, macOS, iOS/tvOS, and Microsoft Windows-based operating systems. Then the project was renamed again from XBMC to "Kodi" in July 2014 with the release of Kodi 14 (instead of the expected XBMC 14 release), while still keeping "XBMC Foundation" as the name for its legal entity that owns Kodi's code as well as directly related trademarks...