The team behind Kodi 18 Leia have reported that the 64-bit version of the software is now as as fully-featured as the original 32-bit release.
64-Bit Kodia 18 Leia
An update to the initial announcement from Kodi reports that the developers behind Kodi 18 Leia have updated the program to have all of the same features as the 32-bit version. It was only recently that any version of Kodi was 64-bit Windows was offered, and the Kodi 18 Leia update was a major leap forward for the company in terms of advancing their technology and offering the convenience of Kodi to a wider audience.
Previously the 64-bit Kodi 18 Leia update had some issues that necessitated a version that had fewer options than the original 32-bit release. Namely, a number of packages and addons weren’t compatible with the upgrade. After a long and difficult development process, however, the team behind Kodi 18 Leia can finally announce that the updated version is feature-complete.
A Long And Difficult Process
In the original announcement post that revealed a 64-bit update for Windows, the team behind Kodi explained why the process took so long.
“Since we originated on the XBOX we had a lot of legacy code related to Windows which wasn’t there for other platforms. Code was scattered everywhere and tied together in the most impossible ways. Slowly we started to clean up our build system and the core code that would make it possible to have a 64-bit version. Over time other platforms did add 64-bit support as the way we build them is totally different. Their main advantage point was how the external libraries that were used were build [sic] as it was almost as easy as just set compile to 64-bit. On Windows however we had to rely on the external library teams to provide such 64-bit versions and sadly almost none were available.”
However, the lack of external libraries didn’t keep Kodi down for long. Back in June of this year, a 64-bit Kodi 18 Leia was released for Windows.
“During past years several of our team tried to improve this situation and started to work getting those libraries updated to be 64-bit compilable and compilable [sic]. This is a huge undertaking as some were simple never intended to be anything else than 32-bit. Slowly but steadily the work progressed and after currently having ported 31 external libraries to 64-bit we are finally in a state that Kodi is usable and near feature complete. There are still some missing packages and add-ons but we hope that those get done quite soon to have it on par with Kodi as you already know.”
The long work of the development team appears to have paid off, as users can enjoy all the benefits of 64-bit capabilities on their Windows PC. This latest update joins the previous 64-bit versions already present on Mac and Linux, and is a long time coming. Still, you can’t really blame the Kodi development team for an issue that was out of their control. While we waited a long time for a fully-featured Kodi 18 Leia on Windows, it appears that the wait is finally over.
Kodi is a free and open-source media player software application. You can download the latest update here.
