XBMC for Android officially announced

Get the popcorn ready Droiders, as one of the world’s leading open-source media players, XBMC, is about to hit Android! XBMC for Android has been in development for some time after recently launching on iPad and Apple TV (jailbreaking was required). Don’t get too excited though, for now only some source code is available. However, the devs behind the project have advised that some beta APKs will be available in the coming weeks.

Below we can see XBMC for Android running quite stable on a Pivos XIOS DS set-top box. How the various hardware pieces (i.e. phones and tablets) handle the decoding is yet to be seen. If anyone can conquer with a one-solution-for-all in the media/DLNA market, it’s the team from XBMC.

The below statement is from XBMC’s own blog post:

We have been keeping a little secret.. the kind that is so much fun to share when the time comes. Today we announce XBMC for Android. Not a remote, not a thin client; the real deal. No root or jailbreak required. XBMC can be launched as an application on your set-top-box, tablet, phone, or wherever else Android may be found. The feature-set on Android is the same that you have come to expect from XBMC, no different from its cousin on the desktop. Running your favorite media-center software on small, cheap, embedded hardware is about to become a hassle-free reality

I can only imagine how good this would be running on something as thin as Kogan’s HDMI Ice Cream Sandwich TV Dongle.

Best of all, the app will be available straight from the Play Store – meaning no rooting is required! Watch this space.

Source: Engadget