Kodi just announced on Jun 21, 2015 the availability of Kodi from the google play store, it is the Kodi 15.0 beta 2 version...they also mentioned it is not available from the amazon app store with an interesting story about that. more info at Kodi.tv
Kodi announcement..google play store
- Thread starter K00lKatT
- Start date
Copy and Paste from the Kodi Foundation:
As you may have heard by now, we have a few announcements to make that should be of particular relevance to you Android for Kodi users out there.
Google Play
Firstly, Kodi is now available in Google Play. You can download it at this link, or use the following QR code.
The version currently available on Google Play is Isengard 15.0 Beta2. We’ve decided to go with Isengard as the first release, because it is dramatically more prepared for the feature set that modern devices like the Nexus Player and the NVIDIA Shield Android TV bring to the table with support for 4K and HEVC, among other things.
The benefits of the Google Play version of Kodi are fairly simple. You always get the most recent stable without needing to mess with sideloading apks. With that said, we will continue to publish apks on our site as well, so if you’d rather sideload, or if your Android device doesn’t have Google Play, we’ve still got you covered.
Amazon App Store
On a less positive note, as you may know, we’ve been informed that Kodi has been removed from the Amazon App Store because, according to the Amazon representative, “it can be used to facilitate the piracy or illegal download of content. Any facilitation of piracy or illegal downloads is not allowed in our program.”
As others have noted and we agree, this seems to be an absurd statement, purely because the same can be said about any web browser or media player that can play an online stream, which is approximately all of them, including at least one that Amazon prominently displays on its Fire TV packaging material. The version of Kodi submitted to the Amazon App Store is shipped as a purely vanilla media player, and the add-ons available from within the Kodi repository are entirely piracy free, pointing only to legal streams available to anyone on the internet. Installing piracy-related add-ons to Kodi is roughly as difficult as installing pirated apks onto an Amazon Android device.
Perhaps most frustratingly, while Amazon has removed the Kodi app from its app store, in its physical store it continues to sell set top boxes that are clearly violating the Kodi trademark by associating Kodi with pirated add-ons and other material. Which means, as far as we can tell, one of the biggest single organizations pushing the use of Kodi for piracy is Amazon itself.
If you’d like to read more on the topic, AFTVnews and TorrentFreak do a pretty good rundown of the situation as it currently stands.
Kodi Protest Collection
We spent some time going back and forth on putting together various shirts that might demonstrate a solid protest for Amazon removing Kodi from their App Store, but at the end of the day, we decided all our ideas ended up sounding a bit too much like a labor union protesting the establishment. So instead, here’s a cool, distressed look that we like a lot. Have fun!
Source: Kodi Foundation
As you may have heard by now, we have a few announcements to make that should be of particular relevance to you Android for Kodi users out there.
Google Play
Firstly, Kodi is now available in Google Play. You can download it at this link, or use the following QR code.
The version currently available on Google Play is Isengard 15.0 Beta2. We’ve decided to go with Isengard as the first release, because it is dramatically more prepared for the feature set that modern devices like the Nexus Player and the NVIDIA Shield Android TV bring to the table with support for 4K and HEVC, among other things.
The benefits of the Google Play version of Kodi are fairly simple. You always get the most recent stable without needing to mess with sideloading apks. With that said, we will continue to publish apks on our site as well, so if you’d rather sideload, or if your Android device doesn’t have Google Play, we’ve still got you covered.
Amazon App Store
On a less positive note, as you may know, we’ve been informed that Kodi has been removed from the Amazon App Store because, according to the Amazon representative, “it can be used to facilitate the piracy or illegal download of content. Any facilitation of piracy or illegal downloads is not allowed in our program.”
As others have noted and we agree, this seems to be an absurd statement, purely because the same can be said about any web browser or media player that can play an online stream, which is approximately all of them, including at least one that Amazon prominently displays on its Fire TV packaging material. The version of Kodi submitted to the Amazon App Store is shipped as a purely vanilla media player, and the add-ons available from within the Kodi repository are entirely piracy free, pointing only to legal streams available to anyone on the internet. Installing piracy-related add-ons to Kodi is roughly as difficult as installing pirated apks onto an Amazon Android device.
Perhaps most frustratingly, while Amazon has removed the Kodi app from its app store, in its physical store it continues to sell set top boxes that are clearly violating the Kodi trademark by associating Kodi with pirated add-ons and other material. Which means, as far as we can tell, one of the biggest single organizations pushing the use of Kodi for piracy is Amazon itself.
If you’d like to read more on the topic, AFTVnews and TorrentFreak do a pretty good rundown of the situation as it currently stands.
Kodi Protest Collection
We spent some time going back and forth on putting together various shirts that might demonstrate a solid protest for Amazon removing Kodi from their App Store, but at the end of the day, we decided all our ideas ended up sounding a bit too much like a labor union protesting the establishment. So instead, here’s a cool, distressed look that we like a lot. Have fun!
Source: Kodi Foundation
Kodi is an open platform, changing that would require a lot more resources from their part, to need to approve every add on, like Amazon do with every app. Indeed since Kodi can do so much, the problem here is equivalent to a web browser, there is so many things one can do with the internet, so it is not possible to control it.
Same happens with Roku and probably every other streaming device, unless it is completely closed to it’s own controlled store the same problem will keep existing.
Kodi will keep working on amazon unless they take it to the next level and decide that if there was no Kodi, they would rent more movies and maybe they block sideloading or certain apps, but i don’t think that would benefit them much, Kodi users will just switch to a competitor box.
Same happens with Roku and probably every other streaming device, unless it is completely closed to it’s own controlled store the same problem will keep existing.
Kodi will keep working on amazon unless they take it to the next level and decide that if there was no Kodi, they would rent more movies and maybe they block sideloading or certain apps, but i don’t think that would benefit them much, Kodi users will just switch to a competitor box.