XBMC Media Center 12.0 Beta 1 Released With Raspberry PI And Android Support

XBMC Media Center, a free, open source digital media hub and HTPC (Home theatre PC) software has reached version 12.0 beta 1.  

Besides new features and improvements, the latest XBMC 12.0 beta 1 codenamed "Frodo" is now available on some new platforms like Raspberry PI or Android.

Here's what's new in the latest XBMC 12.0 beta 1:

• HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via the new XBMC AudioEngine
• Live TV and PVR (personal video recorder) support. This allows users with a TV tuner to watch live TV, listen to radio, view an EPG, schedule recordings, and more
• h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime
• 64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux
• Improved image support, allowing the database to accommodate numerous additional image types
• Improved Airplay support across all platforms
• Advanced Filtering in the library
• Advanced UPnP sharing
• Raspberry PI is now fully supported
• Initial support for Android
• More

Below you can see a few XBMC 12.0 beta 1 (running in Ubuntu) screenshots:

Install XBMC 12.0 beta 1 in Ubuntu

The latest XBMC 12.0 beta 1 can be installed in Ubuntu (12.10, 12.04 or 11.10) using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc

Even though XBMC 12.0 beta 1 comes with initial Android support, there are no Android builds available on XBMC download page and the XBMC Android FAQ advices the users to compile it. But if you want to download pre-built Android binaries, you can download XBMC 12.0 for Android from xda-developers.

Here are a few screenshots with XBMC 12.0 running on my Android phone:

For other Linux distributions, Windows, Mac OSX, iOS and AppleTV2, see the XBMC downloads page.