title: Corporate governance

text: The UK passed the Bribery Act in 2010. This law made it illegal to bribe either government or private citizens or make facilitating payments (i.e., payment to a government official to perform their routine duties more quickly). It also required corporations to establish controls to prevent bribery.


title: Corporate governance

text: Incorporation in the US is under state level legislation, but there important federal acts. in particular, see Securities Act of 1933, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and Uniform Securities Act.


title: Corporate governance

text: The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was enacted in the wake of a series of high-profile corporate scandals, which cost investors billions of dollars. It established a series of requirements that affect corporate governance in the US and influenced similar laws in many other countries. SOX contained many other elements, but provided for several changes that are important to corporate governance practices:


title: Corporate governance

text: The U.S. passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in 1977, with subsequent modifications. This law made it illegal to bribe government officials and required corporations to maintain adequate accounting controls. It is enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Substantial civil and criminal penalties have been levied on corporations and executives convicted of bribery.


title: Corporate governance

text: Corporate governance principles and codes have been developed in different countries and issued from stock exchanges, corporations, institutional investors, or associations (institutes) of directors and managers with the support of governments and international organizations. As a rule, compliance with these governance recommendations is not mandated by law, although the codes linked to stock exchange listing requirements may have a coercive effect.


title: Corporate governance

text: One of the most influential guidelines on corporate governance are the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance, first published as the OECD Principles in 1999, revised in 2004 and revised again and endorsed by the G20 in 2015. The Principles are often referenced by countries developing local codes or guidelines. Building on the work of the OECD, other international organizations, private sector associations and more than 20 national corporate governance codes formed the United Nations Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR) to produce their Guidance on Good Practices in Corporate Governance Disclosure. This internationally agreed benchmark consists of more than fifty distinct disclosure items across five broad categories:


title: Corporate governance

text: The OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises are complementary to the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance, providing guidance tailored to the corporate governance challenges unique to state-owned enterprises.


title: Corporate governance

text: Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and other stock exchanges are required to meet certain governance standards. For example, the NYSE Listed Company Manual requires, among many other elements:


title: Corporate governance

text: The investor-led organisation International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) was set up by individuals centered around the ten largest pension funds in the world 1995. The aim is to promote global corporate governance standards. The network is led by investors that manage 18 trillion dollars, and members are located in fifty different countries. ICGN has developed a suite of global guidelines ranging from shareholder rights to business ethics.


title: Corporate governance

text: The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has done work on corporate governance, particularly on accounting and reporting. In 2009, the International Finance Corporation and the UN Global Compact released a report, "Corporate Governance: the Foundation for Corporate Citizenship and Sustainable Business", linking the environmental, social and governance responsibilities of a company to its financial performance and long-term sustainability.


title: Corporate governance

text: Most codes are largely voluntary. An issue raised in the U.S. since the 2005 Disney decision is the degree to which companies manage their governance responsibilities; in other words, do they merely try to supersede the legal threshold, or should they create governance guidelines that ascend to the level of best practice. For example, the guidelines issued by associations of directors, corporate managers and individual companies tend to be wholly voluntary, but such documents may have a wider effect by prompting other companies to adopt similar practices.


title: Corporate governance

text: In 2021, the first ever international standard, ISO 37000, was published as guidance for good governance. The guidance places emphasis on purpose which is at the heart of all organizations, i.e. a meaningful reason to exist. Values inform both the purpose and the way the purpose is achieved.


title: Corporate governance

text: Robert E. Wright argued in "Corporation Nation" (2014) that the governance of early U.S. corporations, of which over 20,000 existed by the Civil War of 1861–1865, was superior to that of corporations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because early corporations governed themselves like "republics", replete with numerous "checks and balances" against fraud and against usurpation of power by managers or by large shareholders. (The term "robber baron" became particularly associated with US corporate figures in the Gilded Age—the late 19th century.)


title: Corporate governance

text: In the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 legal scholars such as Adolf Augustus Berle, Edwin Dodd, and Gardiner C. Means pondered on the changing role of the modern corporation in society. From the Chicago school of economics, Ronald Coase introduced the notion of transaction costs into the understanding of why firms are founded and how they continue to behave.


title: Corporate governance

text: US economic expansion through the emergence of multinational corporations after World War II (1939–1945) saw the establishment of the managerial class. Several Harvard Business School management professors studied and wrote about the new class: Myles Mace (entrepreneurship), Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (business history), Jay Lorsch (organizational behavior) and Elizabeth MacIver (organizational behavior). According to Lorsch and MacIver "many large corporations have dominant control over business affairs without sufficient accountability or monitoring by their board of directors".


title: Corporate governance

text: In the 1980s, Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen established the principal–agent problem as a way of understanding corporate governance: the firm is seen as a series of contracts.


title: Corporate governance

text: In the period from 1977 to 1997, corporate directors' duties in the U.S. expanded beyond their traditional legal responsibility of duty of loyalty to the corporation and to its shareholders.


title: Corporate governance

text: In the first half of the 1990s, the issue of corporate governance in the U.S. received considerable press attention due to a spate of CEO dismissals (for example, at IBM, Kodak, and Honeywell) by their boards. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) led a wave of "institutional" shareholder activism (something only very rarely seen before), as a way of ensuring that corporate value would not be destroyed by the now traditionally cozy relationships between the CEO and the board of directors (for example, by the unrestrained issuance of stock options, not infrequently back-dated).


title: Corporate governance

text: In the early 2000s, the massive bankruptcies (and criminal malfeasance) of Enron and Worldcom, as well as lesser corporate scandals (such as those involving Adelphia Communications, AOL, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, and Tyco) led to increased political interest in corporate governance. This was reflected in the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Other triggers for continued interest in the corporate governance of organizations included the financial crisis of 2008/9 and the level of CEO pay.


title: Corporate governance

text: Some corporations have tried to burnish their ethical image by creating whistle-blower protections, such as anonymity. In the case of Citi, they call this the Ethics Hotline. Though it is unclear whether firms such as Citi take offences reported to these hotlines seriously or not.


title: Corporate governance

text: In 1997 the East Asian Financial Crisis severely affected the economies of Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines through the exit of foreign capital after property assets collapsed. The lack of corporate governance mechanisms in these countries highlighted the weaknesses of the institutions in their economies.


title: Corporate governance

text: In November 2006 the Capital Market Authority (Saudi Arabia) (CMA) issued a corporate governance code in the Arabic language. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made considerable progress with respect to the implementation of viable and culturally appropriate governance mechanisms (Al-Hussain & Johnson, 2009).


title: Corporate governance

text: Al-Hussain, A. and Johnson, R. (2009) found a strong relationship between the efficiency of corporate governance structure and Saudi bank performance when using return on assets as a performance measure with one exception—that government and local ownership groups were not significant. However, using rate of return as a performance measure revealed a weak positive relationship between the efficiency of corporate governance structure and bank performance.


title: Corporate governance

text: Key parties involved in corporate governance include stakeholders such as the board of directors, management and shareholders. External stakeholders such as creditors, auditors, customers, suppliers, government agencies, and the community at large also exert influence. The agency view of the corporation posits that the shareholder forgoes decision rights (control) and entrusts the manager to act in the shareholders' best (joint) interests. Partly as a result of this separation between the two investors and managers, corporate governance mechanisms include a system of controls intended to help align managers' incentives with those of shareholders. Agency concerns (risk) are necessarily lower for a controlling shareholder.


title: Corporate governance

text: In private for-profit corporations, shareholders elect the board of directors to represent their interests. In the case of nonprofits, stakeholders may have some role in recommending or selecting board members, but typically the board itself decides who will serve on the board as a 'self-perpetuating' board. The degree of leadership that the board has over the organization varies; in practice at large organizations, the executive management, principally the CEO, drives major initiatives with the oversight and approval of the board.


title: Corporate governance

text: Former Chairman of the Board of General Motors John G. Smale wrote in 1995: "The board is responsible for the successful perpetuation of the corporation. That responsibility cannot be relegated to management." A board of directors is expected to play a key role in corporate governance. The board has responsibility for: CEO selection and succession; providing feedback to management on the organization's strategy; compensating senior executives; monitoring financial health, performance and risk; and ensuring accountability of the organization to its investors and authorities. Boards typically have several committees (e.g., Compensation, Nominating and Audit) to perform their work.


title: Corporate governance

text: The OECD Principles of Corporate Governance (2004) describe the responsibilities of the board; some of these are summarized below:


title: Corporate governance

text: All parties to corporate governance have an interest, whether direct or indirect, in the financial performance of the corporation. Directors, workers and management receive salaries, benefits and reputation, while investors expect to receive financial returns. For lenders, it is specified interest payments, while returns to equity investors arise from dividend distributions or capital gains on their stock. Customers are concerned with the certainty of the provision of goods and services of an appropriate quality; suppliers are concerned with compensation for their goods or services, and possible continued trading relationships. These parties provide value to the corporation in the form of financial, physical, human and other forms of capital. Many parties may also be concerned with corporate social performance.


title: Corporate governance

text: A key factor in a party's decision to participate in or engage with a corporation is their confidence that the corporation will deliver the party's expected outcomes. When categories of parties (stakeholders) do not have sufficient confidence that a corporation is being controlled and directed in a manner consistent with their desired outcomes, they are less likely to engage with the corporation. When this becomes an endemic system feature, the loss of confidence and participation in markets may affect many other stakeholders, and increases the likelihood of political action. There is substantial interest in how external systems and institutions, including markets, influence corporate governance.


title: Corporate governance

text: In 2016 the director of the World Pensions Council (WPC) said that "institutional asset owners now seem more eager to take to task [the] negligent CEOs" of the companies whose shares they own.


title: Corporate governance

text: This development is part of a broader trend towards more fully exercised asset ownership—notably from the part of the boards of directors ('trustees') of large UK, Dutch, Scandinavian and Canadian pension investors:


title: Corporate governance

text: This could eventually put more pressure on the CEOs of publicly listed companies, as "more than ever before, many [North American,] UK and European Union pension trustees speak enthusiastically about flexing their fiduciary muscles for the UN's Sustainable Development Goals", and other ESG-centric investment practices.


title: Corporate governance

text: In Britain, "The widespread social disenchantment that followed the [2008–2012] great recession had an impact" on all stakeholders, including pension fund board members and investment managers.


title: Corporate governance

text: Many of the UK's largest pension funds are thus already active stewards of their assets, engaging with corporate boards and speaking up when they think it is necessary.


title: Corporate governance

text: Control and ownership structure refers to the types and composition of shareholders in a corporation. In some countries such as most of Continental Europe, ownership is not necessarily equivalent to control due to the existence of e.g. dual-class shares, ownership pyramids, voting coalitions, proxy votes and clauses in the articles of association that confer additional voting rights to long-term shareholders. Ownership is typically defined as the ownership of cash flow rights whereas control refers to ownership of control or voting rights. Researchers often "measure" control and ownership structures by using some observable measures of control and ownership concentration or the extent of inside control and ownership. Some features or types of control and ownership structure involving corporate groups include pyramids, cross-shareholdings, rings, and webs. German "concerns" (Konzern) are legally recognized corporate groups with complex structures. Japanese keiretsu (系列) and South Korean chaebol (which tend to be family-controlled) are corporate groups which consist of complex interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. Cross-shareholding is an essential feature of keiretsu and chaebol groups. Corporate engagement with shareholders and other stakeholders can differ substantially across different control and ownership structures.


title: Corporate governance

text: Family interests dominate ownership and control structures of some corporations, and it has been suggested that the oversight of family-controlled corporations are superior to corporations "controlled" by institutional investors (or with such diverse share ownership that they are controlled by management). A 2003 "Business Week" study said: "Forget the celebrity CEO. Look beyond Six Sigma and the latest technology fad. One of the biggest strategic advantages a company can have, it turns out, is blood lines." A 2007 study by Credit Suisse found that European companies in which "the founding family or manager retains a stake of more than 10 per cent of the company’s capital enjoyed a superior performance over their respective sectoral peers", reported "Financial Times". Since 1996, this superior performance amounted to 8% per year.


title: Corporate governance

text: The significance of institutional investors varies substantially across countries. In developed Anglo-American countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, U.K., U.S.), institutional investors dominate the market for stocks in larger corporations. While the majority of the shares in the Japanese market are held by financial companies and industrial corporations, these are not institutional investors if their holdings are largely with-on group.


title: Corporate governance

text: The largest funds of invested money or the largest investment management firm for corporations are designed to maximize the benefits of diversified investment by investing in a very large number of different corporations with sufficient liquidity. The idea is this strategy will largely eliminate individual firm financial or other risk. A consequence of this approach is that these investors have relatively little interest in the governance of a particular corporation. It is often assumed that, if institutional investors pressing for changes decide they will likely be costly because of "golden handshakes" or the effort required, they will simply sell out their investment.


title: Corporate governance

text: Particularly in the United States, proxy access allows shareholders to nominate candidates which appear on the proxy statement, as opposed to restricting that power to the nominating committee. The SEC had attempted a proxy access rule for decades, and the United States Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act specifically allowed the SEC to rule on this issue, however, the rule was struck down in court. Beginning in 2015, proxy access rules began to spread driven by initiatives from major institutional investors, and as of 2018, 71% of S&P 500 companies had a proxy access rule.


title: Corporate governance

text: Corporate governance mechanisms and controls are designed to reduce the inefficiencies that arise from moral hazard and adverse selection. There are both internal monitoring systems and external monitoring systems. Internal monitoring can be done, for example, by one (or a few) large shareholder(s) in the case of privately held companies or a firm belonging to a business group. Furthermore, the various board mechanisms provide for internal monitoring. External monitoring of managers' behavior occurs when an independent third party (e.g. the external auditor) attests the accuracy of information provided by management to investors. Stock analysts and debt holders may also conduct such external monitoring. An ideal monitoring and control system should regulate both motivation and ability, while providing incentive alignment toward corporate goals and objectives. Care should be taken that incentives are not so strong that some individuals are tempted to cross lines of ethical behavior, for example by manipulating revenue and profit figures to drive the share price of the company up.


title: Corporate governance

text: Internal corporate governance controls monitor activities and then take corrective actions to accomplish organisational goals. Examples include:


title: Corporate governance

text: In publicly traded U.S. corporations, boards of directors are largely "chosen" by the president/CEO, and the president/CEO often takes the chair of the board position for him/herself (which makes it much more difficult for the institutional owners to "fire" him/her). The practice of the CEO also being the chair of the Board is fairly common in large American corporations.


title: Corporate governance

text: While this practice is common in the U.S., it is relatively rare elsewhere. In the U.K., successive codes of best practice have recommended against duality.


title: Corporate governance

text: External corporate governance controls the external stakeholders' exercise over the organization. Examples include:


title: Corporate governance

text: The board of directors has primary responsibility for the corporation's internal and external financial reporting functions. The chief executive officer and chief financial officer are crucial participants, and boards usually have a high degree of reliance on them for the integrity and supply of accounting information. They oversee the internal accounting systems, and are dependent on the corporation's accountants and internal auditors.


title: Corporate governance

text: Current accounting rules under International Accounting Standards and U.S. GAAP allow managers some choice in determining the methods of measurement and criteria for recognition of various financial reporting elements. The potential exercise of this choice to improve apparent performance increases the information risk for users. Financial reporting fraud, including non-disclosure and deliberate falsification of values also contributes to users' information risk. To reduce this risk and to enhance the perceived integrity of financial reports, corporation financial reports must be audited by an independent external auditor who issues a report that accompanies the financial statements.


title: Corporate governance

text: One area of concern is whether the auditing firm acts as both the independent auditor and management consultant to the firm they are auditing. This may result in a conflict of interest which places the integrity of financial reports in doubt due to client pressure to appease management. The power of the corporate client to initiate and terminate management consulting services and, more fundamentally, to select and dismiss accounting firms contradicts the concept of an independent auditor. Changes enacted in the United States in the form of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (following numerous corporate scandals, culminating with the Enron scandal) prohibit accounting firms from providing both auditing and management consulting services. Similar provisions are in place under clause 49 of Standard Listing Agreement in India.


title: Corporate governance

text: Increasing attention and regulation (as under the Swiss referendum "against corporate rip-offs" of 2013) has been brought to executive pay levels since the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Research on the relationship between firm performance and executive compensation does not identify consistent and significant relationships between executives' remuneration and firm performance. Not all firms experience the same levels of agency conflict, and external and internal monitoring devices may be more effective for some than for others. Some researchers have found that the largest CEO performance incentives came from ownership of the firm's shares, while other researchers found that the relationship between share ownership and firm performance was dependent on the level of ownership. The results suggest that increases in ownership above 20% cause management to become more entrenched, and less interested in the welfare of their shareholders.


title: Corporate governance

text: Some argue that firm performance is positively associated with share option plans and that these plans direct managers' energies and extend their decision horizons toward the long-term, rather than the short-term, performance of the company. However, that point of view came under substantial criticism circa in the wake of various security scandals including mutual fund timing episodes and, in particular, the backdating of option grants as documented by University of Iowa academic Erik Lie and reported by James Blander and Charles Forelle of the "Wall Street Journal".


title: Corporate governance

text: Even before the negative influence on public opinion caused by the 2006 backdating scandal, use of options faced various criticisms. A particularly forceful and long running argument concerned the interaction of executive options with corporate stock repurchase programs. Numerous authorities (including U.S. Federal Reserve Board economist Weisbenner) determined options may be employed in concert with stock buybacks in a manner contrary to shareholder interests. These authors argued that, in part, corporate stock buybacks for U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 companies surged to a $500 billion annual rate in late 2006 because of the effect of options.


title: Corporate governance

text: A combination of accounting changes and governance issues led options to become a less popular means of remuneration as 2006 progressed, and various alternative implementations of buybacks surfaced to challenge the dominance of "open market" cash buybacks as the preferred means of implementing a share repurchase plan.


title: Corporate governance

text: Shareholders elect a board of directors, who in turn hire a chief executive officer (CEO) to lead management. The primary responsibility of the board relates to the selection and retention of the CEO. However, in many U.S. corporations the CEO and chairman of the board roles are held by the same person. This creates an inherent conflict of interest between management and the board.


title: Corporate governance

text: Critics of combined roles argue the two roles that should be separated to avoid the conflict of interest and more easily enable a poorly performing CEO to be replaced. Warren Buffett wrote in 2014: "In my service on the boards of nineteen public companies, however, I've seen how hard it is to replace a mediocre CEO if that person is also Chairman. (The deed usually gets done, but almost always very late.)"


title: Corporate governance

text: Advocates argue that empirical studies do not indicate that separation of the roles improves stock market performance and that it should be up to shareholders to determine what corporate governance model is appropriate for the firm.


title: Corporate governance

text: In 2004, 73.4% of U.S. companies had combined roles; this fell to 57.2% by May 2012. Many U.S. companies with combined roles have appointed a "Lead Director" to improve independence of the board from management. German and UK companies have generally split the roles in nearly 100% of listed companies. Empirical evidence does not indicate one model is superior to the other in terms of performance. However, one study indicated that poorly performing firms tend to remove separate CEOs more frequently than when the CEO/Chair roles are combined.


title: Emma Samms

text: Emma Elizabeth Wylie Samuelson MBE known professionally as Emma Samms, (born 28 August 1960) is an English actress and TV host, known for her role as Holly Sutton on the American daytime soap opera "General Hospital" and as the second actress to play Fallon Carrington Colby on the prime time soap opera "Dynasty". She also portrayed the recurring role of Amanda Vardalis on the British soap opera "Doctors".


title: Emma Samms

text: Samms first played Holly Sutton Scorpio on the ABC daytime soap opera "General Hospital" from 1982 to 1985. With Samms choosing to leave the series amicably to go to ABC's "Dynasty", her character Holly seemingly perished in a plane crash. On 10 April 1985 Samms appeared in the fifth-season episode "Kidnapped" as Fallon Carrington Colby, a role originated by Pamela Sue Martin in 1981. The character was immediately transplanted into the new "Dynasty" spin-off "The Colbys" for two seasons (1985–1987). After the spinoff was cancelled, Samms and the character of Fallon returned to "Dynasty" in the 23 September 1987 eighth-season premiere "The Siege - Part 1". Samms remained with "Dynasty" for two seasons until its last episode on 11 May 1989. She later returned for the 1991 miniseries "".


title: Emma Samms

text: After the show's run, Samms appeared in several film and television roles. In 1989, Samms made a guest appearance on the sitcom "My Two Dads" playing Marcy Bradford, the deceased mother of Nicole Bradford (Staci Keanan) and the woman whom the two fathers (Paul Reiser; Greg Evigan) fought over.


title: Emma Samms

text: "Fan favorite" Samms had been so popular at "General Hospital" that Holly was brought back from the dead in January 1992 after a seven-year absence. She stayed in the role until 1993, during this time also playing Holly's lookalike half-sister Paloma Perez, a heroic revolutionary.


title: Emma Samms

text: In 1995, Samms appeared as the villainous Grayson Louder in the prime time soap opera "Models Inc.", a spin-off of "Melrose Place", both produced by former "Dynasty" producer Aaron Spelling. She also appeared in the TV movie "Treacherous Beauties".


title: Emma Samms

text: Samms appeared in four episodes of the BBC series "Holby City" in 2003 and had a recurring run on the BBC daytime series "Doctors" as Amanda Vardalis in 2005. She made a seven-episode return to "General Hospital" as Holly in February 2006. After serving as a presenter (alongside "General Hospital" co-star Tristan Rogers) for the Daytime Emmy Awards on 28 April 2006, she reappeared on "General Hospital" for a three-week run starting 1 May 2006, and then again on 30 June 2006. She subsequently stepped into the BBC Children in Need reality series "Celebrity Scissorhands" as a hairdresser from 3–17 November 2006. On 20 September 2007 Samms guested on the long-running ITV series "The Bill" as drug addict Ella Winstanley.


title: Emma Samms

text: In August 2009, Samms performed at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in "Shall We Dance", a dance revue of musicals by Richard Rodgers, choreographed by Adam Cooper who stars, alongside his wife Sarah Wildor.


title: Emma Samms

text: In June 2014 Samms was announced as a contestant in BBC gymnastics show "Tumble". She was the second celebrity to be eliminated.


title: Emma Samms

text: In 2018, Samms performed alongside 26 other celebrities on a new Christmas song, called Rock With Rudolph, which was written and produced by Grahame and Jack Corbyn. The song was released digitally through independent record label Saga Entertainment, on 30 November 2018 in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital under the artist name The Celebs. The music video debuted exclusively with "The Sun" on 29 November 2018 and had its first TV showing on "Good Morning Britain" on 30 November 2018. The song peaked at number two on the iTunes pop chart. Later in 2018, Samms reprised her role as Amanda Vardalis on "Doctors".


title: Emma Samms

text: Samms continues to make appearances on "General Hospital". She returned in May 2009, March 2012, August 2013, July 2015, and September 2020.


title: Emma Samms

text: On 22 August 2022, it was announced that Emma Samms would be returning to "General Hospital", reprising the role of Holly Sutton, which she has been playing since 1982. Her episodes were scheduled to start airing in October 2022. According to "Deadline", "She’s now set to return to the ABC sudser in October. Fans last saw Holly on September 18, 2020; though presumed dead, Holly was found alive and locked in a cell in Monte Carlo." “I can’t believe that it’s been 40 years since I first appeared on General Hospital and that, once again, I get to play the wonderful character of Holly Sutton,” Samms told Deadline. “No one is more interested in what’s happened to her since we saw her two years ago, being held captive by a mysterious villain, than me!”


title: Emma Samms

text: Samms twice declined offers to appear in "Playboy", once during her run on "General Hospital" and the second during "Dynasty". Instead, she appeared on the cover of the February 1988 issue of "Inside Sports" in a bikini, as well as additional swimsuit shots inside the magazine.


title: Emma Samms

text: In 1983, Samms and her cousin, film producer Peter Samuelson, co-founded the Starlight Children's Foundation, an organization that helps seriously ill children and their families cope with their pain, fear and isolation through entertainment, education and family activities. The organization was their response to losing Samms's brother and Samuelson's cousin, Jamie, who died at age nine from aplastic anemia.


title: Emma Samms

text: In 1984 Samms and Tristan Rogers went public with their real-life romance, but the relationship ended around the time she left "General Hospital" the next year. Engaged to Marvin Hamlisch in the early 1980s, Samms has been married four times: to Bansi Nagji (1991–92), and to Tim Dillon (1994–95). She married John Holloway (1996-2003), and the couple had 2 children. In 2021, Samms married journalist and TV presenter Simon McCoy.


title: Emma Samms

text: Samms was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to seriously and terminally ill children.


title: Emma Samms

text: In April 2018, Samms said that she had been dealing with Bell's palsy, an illness that causes temporary facial paralysis. A month later she sent out an update on Twitter saying "paralysis on my face is 90% better".


title: Emma Samms

text: She tested positive for COVID-19 during the global pandemic in March 2020 and has since developed long-term complications from her initial infection.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone, sold under the brand name Duphaston & Dydroboon among others, is a progestin medication which is used for a variety of indications, including threatened or recurrent miscarriage during pregnancy, dysfunctional bleeding, infertility due to luteal insufficiency, dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, secondary amenorrhea, irregular cycles, premenstrual syndrome, and as a component of menopausal hormone therapy. It is taken by mouth.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Side effects of dydrogesterone include menstrual irregularities, headache, nausea, breast tenderness, and others. Dydrogesterone is a progestin, or a synthetic progestogen, and hence is an agonist of the progesterone receptor, the biological target of progestogens like progesterone. The medication is an atypical progestogen and does not inhibit ovulation. It has weak antimineralocorticoid activity and no other important hormonal activity.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone was developed in the 1950s and introduced for medical use in 1961. It is available widely throughout Europe, including in the United Kingdom, and is also marketed in Australia and elsewhere in the world. The medication was previously available in the United States, but it has been discontinued in this country.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone has proven effective in a variety of conditions associated with progesterone deficiency, Infertility due to luteal insufficiency including threatened miscarriage, habitual or recurrent miscarriage, Menstrual disorders premenstrual syndrome, and endometriosis. Dydrogesterone has also been registered as a component of menopausal hormone therapy to counteract the effects of unopposed estrogen on the endometrium in women with an intact uterus.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Primary or essential dysmenorrhea is a very common gynecological phenomenon experienced by women during their reproductive years. Clinical studies have shown symptom relief and a reduction in pain with dydrogesterone treatment for dysmenorrhea. Secondary amenorrhea is not a specific disease, but is instead a symptom. Dydrogesterone has been found to adequately induce bleeding within a sufficiently estrogen-primed endometrium. When estradiol levels are found to be low, dydrogesterone treatment is more effective when supplemented with estrogens.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Endometriosis is a chronic disease which can cause severe, progressive, and at times, incapacitating dysmenorrhea, pelvic pain, dyspareunia and infertility. Dydrogesterone relieves pain without inhibiting ovulation, so that patients are able to become pregnant during treatment. Dydrogesterone is particularly suitable in cases where the woman desires to become pregnant and to prevent bleeding problems. Dydrogesterone results in statistically significant reductions in the symptoms pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea and dyspareunia after the first treatment cycle for the treatment of post-laparoscopic endometriosis. The amount and duration of menstrual bleeding is also significantly reduced, and from the end of the third month onwards, bleeding was considered normal in the majority of patients. Improvement of endometriosis was observed in 71% of patients.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone has shown reasonable efficacy in relieving a number of premenstrual syndrome symptoms like mood swings and physical symptoms. Cyclic treatment with low-dose (10 mg/day) dydrogesterone has been found to be effective in the treatment of fibrocystic breast changes and associated breast pain.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Oral dydrogesterone is an effective medication, well tolerated and accepted among patients, and can be considered for routine luteal support. Advantage of dydrogesterone is oral administration, easy to use and better patient compliance which results in high satisfaction score of oral dydrogesterone in luteal support of IVF/ICSI cycles. Oral administration of progestins dydrogesterone at least similar live birth rate than vaginal progesterone capsules when used for luteal support in embryo transfer, with no evidence of increased risk of miscarriage.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Threatened miscarriage is defined as bleeding during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy while the cervix is closed. It is the most common complication in pregnancy, occurring in 20% of all pregnancies. Recurrent abortion is defined as the loss of three or more consecutive pregnancies. Dydrogesterone is associated with approximately two-fold significant reduction in the miscarriage rate as compared to standard care in threatened and recurrent miscarriages with minimal side effects.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: The objective behind menopausal hormone therapy is to actively increase the circulating levels of estrogen to control hot flashes and to prevent the long-term effects of the menopause, such as bone resorption and unfavourable changes in blood lipids. The administration of estradiol halts, or reverses atrophic changes that occur due to the loss of endogenous estradiol during the menopause.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Estrogen promotes endometrial cell growth and in postmenopausal women with an intact uterus, estrogen monotherapy results in continued endometrial development without the physiological secretory changes normally brought on by progesterone. This action is associated with an increased incidence of endometrial hyperplasia and carcinoma. Additional protection with progestogens is therefore important in patients with an intact uterus who receive estrogen therapy. Dydrogesterone counters the proliferative effect of estrogens on the endometrium and ensures the transition to a secretory pattern and cyclical shedding of the endometrium in serial menopausal hormone therapy regimes. Dydrogesterone effectively protects against the ontogenesis of endometrial hyperplasia. Unlike androgenic progestogens, dydrogesterone does not reverse the benefits brought on by estradiol on lipid profiles and carbohydrate metabolism. In a continuous, combined menopausal hormone therapy regimen, dydrogesterone retards the proliferation of the endometrium so that it remains atrophic or inactive.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone is available in the form of 10 mg oral tablets both alone and in combination with estradiol.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: The most commonly reported medication-related adverse reactions in people taking dydrogesterone without an estrogen in clinical trials of indications have included menstrual irregularities, headaches, migraines, nausea, breast tenderness, bloating, and weight gain. The use of progestins, in particular medroxyprogesterone acetate, in treating postmenopausal symptoms have been associated with increased risk of blood clots and breast cancer in a study carried out by the Women's Health Initiative. While the study did not involve dydrogesterone, it is possible, but not certain, that it too increases these risks.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone has been prescribed and used in over 10 million pregnancies worldwide. There have been no harmful effects exhibited due to the use of dydrogesterone while pregnant. Dydrogesterone is safe to use during pregnancy only when prescribed and indicated by a medical practitioner. Studies have not shown any incidence of decreased fertility due to dydrogesterone at therapeutic dose. The Ames test found no evidence of any potential mutagenic or toxicity properties.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: There is not enough clinical data to support overdose in humans. The maximum dose of dydrogesterone administered to humans to date was 360 mg orally, and the medication was found to be well tolerated at this dose. There are no antidotes to overdose, and treatment should be based on symptoms. In acute toxicity trials, the LD doses in rats were in excess of 4,640 mg/kg orally.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: In menopausal hormone therapy, dydrogesterone is administered together with an estrogen. Therefore, the interaction between dydrogesterone and estrogens has been assessed, and no clinically significant interaction has been observed.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone is a highly selective progestogen, and due to its unique structure, unlike progesterone and many other progestins, binds almost exclusively to the progesterone receptor (PR). The affinity of dydrogesterone for the PR is relatively low at about 16% of that of progesterone. However, "in vivo", dydrogesterone is comparatively much more potent by the oral route, with an equivalent dose, in terms of endometrial proliferation, that is 10 to 20 times lower than that of progesterone. This is due to pharmacokinetic differences between the two medications, namely improved bioavailability and metabolic stability with dydrogesterone as well as additional progestogenic activity of its metabolites. Dydrogesterone binds to and activates both of the major isoforms of the PR, the PR-A and PR-B, with a similar selectivity ratio between the two receptors as that of progesterone and with lower efficacy at the receptors relative to progesterone. The major active metabolite of dydrogesterone, 20α-dihydrodydrogesterone (20α-DHD), has progestogenic activity as well but with greatly decreased potency relative to dydrogesterone. As with other progestogens, dydrogesterone has functional antiestrogenic effects in certain tissues, for instance in the endometrium, and induces endometrial secretory transformation.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone does not bind importantly to the androgen, estrogen, or glucocorticoid receptor. As such, it is devoid of androgenic or antiandrogenic, estrogenic or antiestrogenic, and glucocorticoid or antiglucocorticoid activity. Similarly to progesterone however, dydrogesterone binds to the mineralocorticoid receptor and possesses antimineralocorticoid activity, but only weakly so. Like other progestins but unlike progesterone, which forms sedative neurosteroid metabolites, dydrogesterone is not able to be metabolized in a similar way, and for this reason, is non-sedative. The medication and 20α-DHD do not inhibit 5α-reductase. Dydrogesterone has been found to inhibit myometrium contractility via an undefined progesterone receptor-independent mechanism "in vivo" in pregnant rats and "in vitro" in human tissue at concentrations at which progesterone and other progestogens do not.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Due to its progestogenic activity, dydrogesterone can produce antigonadotropic effects at sufficient doses in animals. However, it does not suppress secretion of the gonadotropins, luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), or inhibit ovulation at typical clinical dosages in humans. Oral doses of dydrogesterone of 5 to 40 mg/day on days 5 to 25 of the cycle fail to suppress ovulation (assessed by urinary pregnanediol and laparotomy), and one study found that ovulation persisted even in women treated with an oral dosage of as great as 400 mg/day (assessed by visual inspection of the ovaries). Likewise, an intramuscular injection of 100 mg dydrogesterone in microcrystalline aqueous suspension on the first to third day of the cycle did not interfere with the development of an ovulatory pattern of spontaneous uterine contractions in women. A couple of conflicting studies exist on the issue of ovulation inhibition by dydrogesterone however, with findings of partial or full inhibition of ovulation by oral dydrogesterone. This included prevention of the mid-cycle LH and FSH peaks and the luteal-phase rise in body temperature and pregnanediol excretion. Nonetheless, the overall consensus among researchers seems to be that dydrogesterone does not inhibit ovulation in women. The apparent inability of dydrogesterone to prevent ovulation is in contrast to all other clinically used progestogens except trengestone, which is closely related to dydrogesterone. Similarly to trengestone but also unlike all other clinically used progestogens, dydrogesterone does not have a hyperthermic effect in humans (i.e., it does not increase body temperature).


title: Dydrogesterone

text: It has been said that the lack of ovulation inhibition and hyperthermic effect with retroprogesterone derivatives like dydrogesterone may represent a dissociation of peripheral and central progestogenic activity. However, a related retroprogesterone derivative, trengestone, likewise does not inhibit ovulation or produce a hyperthermic effect but rather has an inducing effect on ovulation.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Whereas all other assessed progestins are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer when combined with an estrogen in postmenopausal women, neither oral progesterone nor dydrogesterone are associated with a significantly increased risk of breast cancer (although the risk of breast cancer is non-significantly higher with dydrogesterone). Similarly, like oral progesterone but in contrast to other progestins, dydrogesterone does not appear to further increase the risk of venous thromboembolism when used in combination with an oral estrogen. Dydrogesterone may also provide inferior endometrial protection relative to other progestins such as medroxyprogesterone acetate and norethisterone acetate, with a significantly increased risk of endometrial cancer in combination with an estrogen with long-term therapy (>5 years).


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone weakly stimulates the proliferation of MCF-7 breast cancer cells "in vitro", an action that is independent of the classical PRs and is instead mediated via the progesterone receptor membrane component-1 (PGRMC1). Certain other progestins are also active in this assay, whereas progesterone acts neutrally. It is unclear if these findings may explain the different risks of breast cancer observed with progesterone, dydrogesterone, and other progestins such as medroxyprogesterone acetate and norethisterone in clinical studies.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone and its major metabolite, 20α-DHD, have predictable pharmacokinetics. The single-dose kinetics are linear in the oral dose range of 2.5 to 10 mg. The pharmacokinetics do not change during repeated administration of up to 20 mg dydrogesterone once daily. Dydrogesterone is readily absorbed with oral administration. The absolute bioavailability of dydrogesterone is on average 28%. T values vary between 0.5 and 2.5 hours. Steady state is attained after 3 days of treatment. The levels of 20α-DHD, which is the main active metabolite, are also found to peak about 1.5 hours post-dose.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: A single intramuscular injection of 100 mg dydrogesterone in microcrystalline aqueous suspension has been found to have a duration of action of 16 to 38 days in terms of clinical biological effect in the uterus in women. This was specifically the time until the onset of withdrawal bleeding in estrogen-treated amenorrheic women.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: The plasma protein binding of dydrogesterone and 20α-DHD are unknown. Based on the plasma protein binding of other progestins however, they are probably bound to albumin and not to sex hormone-binding globulin or corticosteroid-binding globulin.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: The metabolism of dydrogesterone occurs in the liver. It is virtually completely metabolized. The primary metabolic pathway is the hydrogenation of the 20-keto group mainly by AKR1C1 and to a lesser extent AKR1C3, resulting in 20α-DHD. This active metabolite is a progestogen similarly to dydrogesterone, albeit with much lower potency. With oral administration of dydrogesterone, circulating levels of 20α-DHD are substantially higher than those of dydrogesterone. The ratios of 20α-DHD to dydrogesterone in terms of peak levels and area-under-the-curve (AUC) levels have been found to be 25:1 and 40:1, respectively. For these reasons, despite the lower relative progestogenic potency of 20α-DHD, dydrogesterone may act as a prodrug of this metabolite.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: The metabolism of dydrogesterone differs from progesterone. Whereas the major metabolite of progesterone is pregnanediol, the corresponding derivative of dydrogesterone, retropregnanediol, cannot be detected in urine with oral administration of dydrogesterone. All of the metabolites of dydrogesterone retain the 4,6-diene-3-one structure and are metabolically stable. As such, similarly to progesterone, dydrogesterone does not undergo aromatization.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: The mean elimination half-lives of dydrogesterone and 20α-DHD are in the ranges of 5 to 7 hours and 14 to 17 hours, respectively.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone and its metabolites are excreted predominantly in urine. Total clearance of plasma is at a rate of 6.4 L/min. Within 72 hours, excretion is virtually complete. 20α-DHD is preponderantly present in the urine as a conjugate of glucuronic acid. Approximately 85% of the oral dose is successfully removed from the body within 24 hours. Around 90% of excreted material is 20α-DHD.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone, also known as 6-dehydro-9β,10α-progesterone or as 9β,10α-pregna-4,6-diene-3,20-dione, is a synthetic pregnane steroid and a derivative of progesterone and retroprogesterone (9β,10α-progesterone). Retroprogesterone derivatives like dydrogesterone are analogues of progesterone in which the hydrogen atom at the 9th carbon has been switched from the α-position (below the plane) to the β-position (above the plane) and the methyl group at the 10th carbon has been switched from the β-position to the α-position. This reversed configuration in dydrogesterone results in a "bent" spatial geometry in which the plane of rings A and B is orientated at a 60° angle below the rings C and D. Dydrogesterone also has an additional double bond between the C6 and C7 positions (4,6-dien-3-one configuration). While its chemical structure is close to that of progesterone, these changes result in dydrogesterone having improved oral activity and metabolic stability, among other differences, in comparison to progesterone.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Other retroprogesterone derivatives, and analogues of dydrogesterone, include trengestone (1,6-didehydro-6-chlororetroprogesterone) and Ro 6-3129 (16α-ethylthio-6-dehydroretroprogesterone).


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone is synthesized and manufactured by treatment of progesterone with ultraviolet light exposure.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone is a progestin which was first synthesized by Duphar in the 1950s and was first introduced to the market in 1961. It is unique, being the only retrosteroid that is commercially available and its molecular structure is closely related to that of natural progesterone, but it has enhanced oral bioavailability. It is estimated that during the period from 1977 to 2005 around 38 million women were treated with dydrogesterone and that fetuses were exposed to dydrogesterone "in utero" in more than 10 million pregnancies. It has been approved in more than 100 countries worldwide. It is commercially marketed under the brand name Duphaston and manufactured by Abbott after it took over Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Dydrogesterone was first introduced, by Duphar, as Duphaston in the United Kingdom in 1961. Subsequently, it was introduced in the United States as Duphaston and Gynorest in 1962 and 1968, respectively. Duphaston was removed from the United States market in 1979, and Gynorest is also no longer available in the United States.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: "Dydrogesterone" is the generic name of the drug and its , , and , while "dydrogestérone" is its and "didrogesterone" is its . It was also originally known as "isopregnenone". Dydrogesterone has also been referred to as "retroprogesterone", but should not be confused with retroprogesterone.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone is marketed mainly under the brand names Duphaston (alone) and Femoston (in combination with estradiol). It also is or has been marketed alone under the brand names Dabroston, Divatrone, Dufaston, Duvaron, Dydrofem, Femoston, Gestatron, Gynorest, Prodel, Retrone, Terolut and Zuviston and in combination with estradiol under the brand names Climaston, Femaston, and Femphascyl.


title: Dydrogesterone

text: Dydrogesterone is available widely throughout the world. It is marketed in the United Kingdom, India, Ireland, South Africa, and Australia, but not in the United States, Canada, or New Zealand. The medication was previously available in the United States, but has since been discontinued in this country. Dydrogesterone is also available in elsewhere in Europe, as well as in Central and South America, Asia, and North Africa.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: The , originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and now commonly called the Genbaku Dome, , is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The ruin of the hall serves as a memorial to the over 140,000 people who were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. It is permanently kept in a state of arrested ruin as a reminder of the destructive effects of nuclear warfare.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: The Product Exhibition Hall building was originally designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel. The design included a distinctive dome at the top of the building. It was completed in April 1915 and was named the "Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition" (HMI). It was formally opened to the public in August that year. In 1921, the name was changed to the "Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall", and again, in 1933, to the "Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall" (広島県産業奨励館 Hiroshima-ken Sangyo Shourei-kan). The building was located in the large business district next to the Aioi Bridge and was primarily used for art and educational exhibitions.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: At 8:15 a.m. on 6 August 1945, the first atomic bomb to be used in war was dropped by the United States Army Air Forces from the "Enola Gay", a B-29 bomber. The force of the atomic bomb effectively obliterated the city of Hiroshima, Japan.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: Earlier, on 25 July, General Carl Spaatz, commander of the United States Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, received orders to deliver a "special bomb" attack on selected cities in Japan. The first target city chosen was Hiroshima, which had an important port on southern Honshu and was headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army with 40,000 military personnel in the city. The bomb was assembled in secret and loaded on the "Enola Gay". The bomb, code named "Little Boy", possessed a force equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. The plane dropped Little Boy over the city at 8:15:17 a.m. local time on 6 August 1945. About 43 seconds after being dropped, it detonated over the city, missing its target by . Intended for the Aioi Bridge, the bomb instead exploded directly over the Shima Hospital, which was very near to the Genbaku Dome. Because the explosion was almost directly overhead, the building was able to retain its shape. The building's vertical columns were able to resist the nearly vertical downward force of the blast, and parts of the concrete and brick outer walls remained intact. The center of the blast occurred horizontally and vertically from the Dome. Everyone inside the building was killed instantly. The building's durability can also be attributed to its earthquake-resistant design; it has held up to earthquakes before and since the bombing.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: Due to its stone and steel structure, the building was one of the few structures left standing near the bomb's hypocenter. Soon commonly called the Genbaku ("A-Bomb") Dome, due to the exposed metal dome framework at its apex, the structure was scheduled to be demolished with the rest of the ruins, but the majority of the building was intact, delaying the demolition plans. The Dome became a subject of controversy, with some locals wanting it torn down, while others wanted to preserve it as a memorial of the bombing and a symbol of peace. Ultimately, when the reconstruction of Hiroshima began, the skeletal remains of the building were preserved.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: From 1950 through 1964, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was established around the Dome. The Hiroshima City Council adopted a resolution in 1966 on the permanent preservation of the Genbaku Dome, officially named the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome). The Dome continues to be the park's primary landmark.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: Weathering and deterioration of the Genbaku Dome continued in the post-war period. The Hiroshima City Council declared in 1966 that it intended to indefinitely preserve the structure, now termed "Genbaku Dome". The first popularly elected mayor of Hiroshima, Shinzo Hamai (1905–1968) sought funds for the preservation effort domestically and internationally. During one trip to Tokyo, Hamai resorted to collecting funds directly on the streets of the capital. Preservation work on the Genbaku Dome was completed in 1967. The Genbaku Dome has undergone two minor preservation projects to stabilize the ruin, notably between October 1989 and March 1990.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: The Genbaku Dome stands almost exactly as it did after the bombing on 6 August 1945. Changes to the ruins, meant to ensure the stability of the structure, have been minimal.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: In December 1996, the Genbaku Dome was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List based on the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Its inclusion into the UNESCO list was based on its survival from a destructive force (atomic bomb), the first use of nuclear weapons on a human population, and its representation as a symbol of peace.


title: Hiroshima Peace Memorial

text: Delegates to the World Heritage Committee from China and the United States had reservations regarding the confirmation of the memorial as a World Heritage Site. China cited the possibility that the monument could be used to downplay the fact that the victim countries of Japan's aggression suffered the greatest losses of life during the war, and the United States stated that having a memorial to a war site would omit the necessary historical context. The United States dissociated itself from the decision.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open-source media player software application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi is a multi-platform home-theater PC (HTPC) application. It is customizable: skins can change its appearance, and plug-ins allow users to access streaming media content via online services such as Amazon Prime Instant Video, Crackle, Pandora Internet Radio, Rhapsody, 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.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The software was 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 2004 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.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Because of its open source and cross-platform nature, with its core code written in C++, modified versions of Kodi XBMC together with JeOS have been used as a software appliance suite or software framework in a variety of devices, including smart TVs, set-top boxes, digital signage, hotel television systems, network connected media players and embedded systems based on armhf platforms like Raspberry Pi. Derivative applications such as MediaPortal and Plex have been spun off from XBMC or Kodi, as well as just enough operating systems like LibreELEC.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi has attracted attention due to the availability of USB plug-ins for the software that facilitate playback of files from users' personal digital media collections, seen by media distributors as potentially enabling unauthorized access to copyrighted content, as well as "fully loaded" digital media players that are pre-loaded with such add-ons; The XBMC Foundation has not endorsed any of these uses, and has taken steps to disassociate the Kodi project from these add-ons, including threatening legal action against those using its trademarks to promote them.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi supports many common audio, video, and image formats, playlists, audio visualizations, slideshows, weather forecast reporting, and third-party plugins. It is network-capable (internet and home network shares). Unlike other media center applications such as Windows Media Center, MediaPortal and MythTV, Kodi does not include its own internal digital TV-tuner code for Live TV or DVR/PVR recording functionality, as instead it acts as a unified DVR/PVR front-end with an EPG TV-Guide GUI interface which, via a common API, abstracts and supports multiple back-ends via PVR client add-ons from third parties, with those running either locally on the same machine or over the network.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Plug-ins, using either C/C++ programming languages to create binary add-ons or the Python scripting language to create Script Addons, expand Kodi to include features such as television program guides, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Veoh, online movie trailer support, and Pandora Radio and podcast streaming. Kodi also functions as a game launcher on any operating system.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi's source code is distributed as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL-2.0-or-later), it is governed by the tax-exempt registered non-profit US organization, XBMC Foundation, and is owned and developed by a global free software community of unpaid volunteers.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Even though the original XBMC project no longer develops or supports XBMC for the Xbox, XBMC on the Xbox is still available via the third-party developer spin-off project "XBMC4Xbox", which forked the Xbox version of the software and completely took over the development and support of XBMC for the old Xbox. The ending of Xbox support by the original project was also the reason that it was renamed "XBMC" from the old "Xbox Media Center" name, and why it later was renamed "Kodi". The Xbox version of XBMC had the ability to launch console games, and homebrew applications such as emulators. Since the XBMC for Xbox version was never distributed, endorsed, or supported by Microsoft, it always required a modchip or softmod exploit to run on the Xbox game-console.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi has greater basic hardware requirements than traditional 2D style software applications: it needs a 3D capable graphics hardware controller for all rendering. Powerful 3D GPU chips are common today in most modern computer platforms, including many set-top boxes, and XBMC, now Kodi, was from the start designed to be otherwise very resource-efficient, for being as powerful and versatile a framework as it is. It runs well on what (by Intel Atom standards) are relatively underpowered OpenGL 1.3 (with GLSL support), OpenGL ES 2.0 or Direct3D (DirectX) 9.0 capable systems that are IA-32/x86, x86-64, ARM (AArch32 and AArch64), RISC-V, or PowerPC G4 or later CPU based.


title: Kodi (software)

text: When software decoding of a full HD 1080p high-definition and high bit-rate video is performed by the system CPU, a dual-core 2 GHz or faster CPU is required in order to allow for perfectly smooth playback without dropping frames or giving playback a jerky appearance. Kodi can, however, offload most of the video decoding process onto graphics hardware controller or embedded video processing circuits that support one of the following types of hardware-accelerated video decoding: Google's MediaCodec API for Android, Intel's VAAPI, Nvidia's VDPAU API, AMD's XvBA API, Microsoft's DXVA API, Apple's VDADecoder/VideoToolbox APIs, and the Khronos Group's OpenMAX API, AMLogic VPU, Freescale's i.MX6x series VPU, and Raspberry Pi's GPU MMAL. By taking advantage of such hardware-accelerated video decoding, Kodi can play back most videos on many inexpensive, low-performance systems, as long as they contain a supported VPU or GPU.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The TV feature allows users to watch some TV broadcasts that may be transmitted by a DTT, ADSL, cable, or Internet streaming, depending on the chosen add-on.


title: Kodi (software)

text: From version 12.0 (Frodo), Kodi has a native Live TV with EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and DVR (Digital Video Recorder) features with a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) frontend GUI, which enables video capture and playback to and from a hard disk drive with PVR Client Addons for most popular PVR backends (TV tuner card server). These addons can be installed separately as plugins in Kodi.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The PVR backend can either be a DVR set-top box connected to the network or a PC with a digital video recorder software. This software can run on the same computer or on other computers on the same network. The PVR software can turn computers or other appliances into DVRs. The operating system can be Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Android devices.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The Video Library, one of the Kodi metadata databases, is a key feature of Kodi. It allows the organization of video content by information associated with the video files (e.g., movies and recorded TV shows) themselves. This information can be obtained in various ways, like through scrapers (e.g., web scraping sites like IMDb, TheMovieDB, TheTVDB), and nfo files. Automatically downloading and displaying movie posters and fan art backdrops as background wallpapers. The Library Mode view allows users to browse their video content by categories; Genre, Title, Year, Actors and Directors.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi uses one multimedia video player "core" for video-playback. This video-player "core" for video-playback is an in-house developed cross-platform media player, "DVDPlayer", which was designed to play back DVD-Video movies, and this includes support native for DVD-menus, (based on the free open source libraries code libdvdcss and libdvdnav). This FFmpeg based video-player "core" today supports all widespread mainstream formats. One relatively unusual feature of this DVD-player core is the capability to on-the-fly pause and play DVD-Video movies that are stored in ISO and IMG DVD-images or DVD-Video (IFO/VOB/BUP) images (even directly from uncompressed RAR and ZIP archives), from either local harddrive storage or network-share storage.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The Music Library, one of the Kodi metadata databases, is another key feature of Kodi. It allows the organization of a music collection to allow searching, and creating smart playlists by information stored in music file ID meta tags, like title, artist, album, production year, genre, and popularity. Automatically downloading and displaying album covers and fan art backdrops as background wallpapers.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi handles all common digital picture/image formats with the options of panning/zooming and slideshow with the Ken Burns effect, with the use of CxImage open source library code. XBMC can handle CBZ (ZIP) and CBR (RAR) comic book archive files, this feature lets users view/read, browse and zoom the pictures of comics pages these contain without uncompressing them first.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Development was in progress on new core features integrating a built-in Games Manager and Game Launcher front-end GUI with a Games Library, and Game Console Emulator API into XBMC. The code for all was being developed in a separate branch to be incorporated into the mainline tree.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The Games Manager, once integrated into Kodi, provides a unified games manager library and GUI front-end launcher with online metadata web scraping support for information about the games. It also introduces Game Addons as new type of addon with just-in-time emulator installation. Adding a Games Library for Game Metadata, exposing info (current level, number of lives, number of coins earned, etc.) to GUI, as well as extending the Addon API to support Game Client Addons, supporting Kodi's VFS (Virtual File System). It also provides a joystick and gamepad abstraction layer for common joystick API and input clients.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Also under development is the "RetroPlayer" video game console emulator (ROMs) interface, supporting the libretro API and emulator cores (from the RetroArch project, which is its reference front-end). Libretro itself is a modular multi-system game/emulator system designed to be fast, lightweight, and portable.


title: Kodi (software)

text: RetroPlayer supports emulators for most popular retro game consoles, including but not limited to: Atari 2600, Atari Lynx, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy, the original PlayStation, Sega systems (Master System, Genesis, Sega CD, Game Gear), plus multiple arcade games via MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and FBA (Final Burn Alpha), as well as ScummVM and MS-DOS based games.


title: Kodi (software)

text: From v 18 Kodi supports a player core, Retroplayer, to play games using game emulator addons available for libretro.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi can play media from CD/DVD media using an internal DVD-ROM drive. It can play media from an internal built-in hard disk drive and SMB/SAMBA/CIFS shares (Windows File-Sharing), NFS, or stream them over ReplayTV DVRs/PVRs, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) or Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) shares, or stream iTunes-shares via Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP). Kodi can take advantage of a broadband Internet connection if available to stream Internet-video-streams like YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and Veoh, and play Internet-radio-stations (such as Pandora Radio). Kodi includes the option to submit music usage statistics to Last.fm and Libre.fm. It has music/video-playlist features, picture/image-slideshow functions, an MP3+CDG karaoke function and many audio-visualizations and screensavers. Kodi can upscale/upconvert all standard-definition resolution videos and output them to 720p, 1080i, and 1080p high-definition resolutions.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Under Microsoft Windows, Kodi supports Directsound and WASAPI; since WASAPI performs no mixing or resampling, it provides best audio quality.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi can be used to play/view all common multimedia formats through its native clients and parsers. It can decode these audio and video formats in software or hardware, and optionally pass-through AC3/DTS audio, or encode to AC3 in real time from movies directly to S/PDIF digital output to an external audio-amplifier/receiver for decoding.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi features several open APIs to enable third-party developers to create capabilities which extend Kodi with a multitude of addons, such as audio and video streaming plugins for online sources, screensavers, skins and themes, visualizations, weather forecasts, web interfaces, web scrapers, widget scripts, and more. Kodi developers encourage users to make and submit their own addons to expand media content and value-added services accessible from within Kodi.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi/XBMC features, since version 10.0 (codename: "Dharma"), an Addons Framework architecture and an Addons Manager GUI client that connects to a decentralized digital distribution service platform that serves add-on apps and plug-ins which among other things provide online content to Kodi, the "Addons Manager" (or "Addons Browser") inside Kodi allows users to browse and download new addons directly from Kodi's GUI.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Many of these online content sources are in over-the-top content high definition services and use video streaming site as sources for the media content that is offered. Kodi has extensibility and integration with online sources for free and premium streaming content, and offers content from everything from commercial video to free educational programming, and media from individuals and small businesses. Not all content sources on add-ons are available in every country, however. Due to rights agreements, many content sources are geo-restricted to prevent users in outside countries from accessing content, although some have taken to bypassing the regional restrictions in order to unblock these sources, disregarding the usage rights.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi features an integrated Python Scripts interpreter for addon extensions, and WindowXML application framework (a XML-based widget toolkit engine for creating a GUI for apps and widgets) in a similar fashion to Apple macOS Dashboard Widgets and Microsoft Gadgets. Python widget scripts allow normal users to add new functionality to Kodi themselves, using Python scripting language. Current plugin scripts include functions like Internet-TV and movie-trailer browsers, cinemaguides, weather forecast, over-the-top content video streaming services like YouTube, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Netflix, Veoh, MLB.tv, Internet-radio-station browsers such as Pandora Radio, online picture sharing sites like Flickr, TV guides such as TVShow Time, e-mail clients, instant messaging, different timetables, home automation scripts to front-end control PVR software and hardware, P2P file-sharing downloaders (BitTorrent), IRC, also casual games such as "Tetris".


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi has the built-in optional function to automatically download metadata information, cover art and other related media artwork online through its web scrapers that looks for media in the user's audio and video folders and their sub-directories. These "scrapers" are used as importers to obtain detailed information from various Internet resources about movies and television shows. It can get synopses, reviews, movie posters, titles, genre classification, and other similar data. XBMCGUI then provides a rich display for audio and video files that the scrapers have identified.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Scrapers use sites like The Movie Database (TMDb) or IMDb.com to obtain thumbnails and information on movies, thetvdb.com for TV show posters and episode plots, CDDB for audio CD track listings, and Allmusic (AMG) and MusicBrainz for album thumbnails, reviews, and metadata.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Fanart.tv has been added to the list of information sources and XBMC can use it to retrieve logos, backgrounds, CDs with transparent backgrounds, album covers and banners among other image types for music artists, TV shows and movies, the popularity of which contributed to XBMC being able to handle new image types.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Like the majority of applications that originated from a 'homebrew' scene, modification and customization of the interface using skins is very popular among Kodi users and hundreds of skins and themes are available for users to install. The Kodi skinning engine's flexibility is also advantageous to third parties wanting to create derivative works, as it facilitates rebranding the environment and making deeper changes to the look and feel of the user interface.


title: Kodi (software)

text: As of Kodi version 17, the official default skins for new installs are "Estuary", for typical home-theater usage, and "Estouchy" for touchscreens. These newly designed skins replace the longtime default skin "Confluence", and are intended to present more content on the homescreen, be easier for new users, and bring "Kodi into the present day of UI design."


title: Kodi (software)

text: Users can also create their own skin (or simply modify an existing skin) and share it with others via public websites that are used for Kodi skin trading and development. Many such third-party skins exist that are well maintained by the community, and while some skins are originals with unique designs, most begin as a clone or an exact replica of other multimedia software interfaces, such as Apple Front Row, Windows Media Center Edition (MCE), MediaPortal, Wii Channel Menu (Xii), Xbox 360 interface, and others.


title: Kodi (software)

text: In addition to skins and themes users can create a themed package called a 'build'. Within this package homebrew developers are able to distribute a skin and multiple addons. The delivery mechanism used within the Kodi scene is called a wizard with the Replicant Wizard being the most prominent.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Web Interface addons for Kodi normally allow browsing a media library remotely, to handle music playlists from a computer instead of television. Others allow remotely controlling the navigation of XBMC like a remote for remote controlling of an installed and concurrently active Kodi session running on a computer if it runs on an internet tablet or similar device with a touch interface. Others act like a media manager to allow modifying metadata and artwork in XBMC's video and music libraries.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi has a "My Programs" section which is meant to function as an application launcher for third-party software such as computer games and video game emulators, all from a GUI with thumbnail and different listings options. However, while this feature was fully functioning on the Xbox version of XBMC, it is still in its infant stage on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows, thus requiring third-party launcher plugins to function properly.


title: Kodi (software)

text: There are many software applications for mobile devices available for and associated with Kodi. Some of these mobile apps work as simple remote controls, while others function as more advanced second screen companion apps, offering additional information about what users are viewing or listening to on Kodi, such as metadata about movie actors and music artists, with links to other works available from those persons in their collection or online.


title: Kodi (software)

text: "XBMC Remote for Android" and "XBMC Remote for iOS" are free and open source official apps for mobile devices released by Team-Kodi/Team-XBMC on Google Play for Android devices and the App Store for iOS Devices, such as iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. These applications act as a second screen and remote control solution which allows for fully browsing the media library and for remote controlling of an installed and concurrently active XBMC session running on a computer via the handheld touchscreen user interface of these device.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Several third-party developers have also released multiple other unofficial Kodi remote control apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Ubuntu Touch, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone devices. Some of these remote control apps are made specifically for controlling Kodi, while some universal remote control apps are capable of controlling many different media center and media player applications, and some of these third-party remote apps cost money while others are free.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Due to the dated hardware of the first-generation Xbox game console that Kodi-XBMC was designed for, and a desire to expand the project's end-user and developer-base, many official ports of XBMC to computer operating-systems and hardware platforms have been created. Through the processing power of more recent computer hardware, XBMC can decode high-definition video up to and beyond 1080p resolutions, bypassing hardware limitations of the Xbox version of XBMC.


title: Kodi (software)

text: In recent releases of Kodi-XBMC there is hardware accelerated video decoding for DXVA, VDPAU, VA-API GPU hardware video decoding, as well as hardware accelerated video decoding via ARM NEON, and OpenMAX, Broadcom Crystal HD. The source code for XBMC is actively updated by developers in a public Git repository, which may contain features and functionality not yet incorporated into the most recent "stable" releases.


title: Kodi (software)

text: "Kodi for Linux" (formerly "XBMC for Linux") is primarily developed for Ubuntu Linux and Kodi's developers' own Kodibuntu (formerly "XBMCbuntu"). Third-party packages for most other Linux distributions are also available, and it is possible to compile XBMC Media Center from scratch for any Linux distribution, as long as the required dependency libraries are installed first. Hardware accelerated video decoding is achieved via the VDPAU API on Nvidia's GPUs, the VAAPI API for AMD/ATI Radeon, S3 Graphics, and Intel's newer Integrated Graphics Processors, as well as hardware accelerated video decoding via OpenMAX, ARM NEON, and Broadcom Crystal HD on systems with supporting hardware. Development version of Kodi/XBMC for Linux is available at Launchpad as PPA (Personal Package Archive) for the standard Ubuntu Desktop version 8.04 and later, as well as DEB packages for Debian.


title: Kodi (software)

text: "Kodi for OS X" (formerly "XBMC for Mac") runs natively on and later, as well as on the Apple TV. 1080p playback can be achieved on Apple computers either via software decoding on the CPU, if it is powerful enough, or by hardware-accelerated video decoding for hardware supporting Apple's VDA API or video decoders such as the Broadcom Crystal HD.


title: Kodi (software)

text: 1080p playback on the first-generation Apple TV (a.k.a. "ATV1") can only be achieved by hardware accelerated video decoding via Broadcom Crystal HD; the user must replace the ATV's internal WiFi adapter with a Broadcom Crystal HD PCI Express Mini (mini-PCIe) card in order to activate this functionality.


title: Kodi (software)

text: "Kodi for Windows" (formerly "XBMC for Windows") runs natively on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 as a 32-bit or 64-bit application. 1080p and Ultra HD (4K) playback can be achieved on Windows computers either via software decoding on the CPU, if it's powerful enough, or by hardware accelerated video decoding.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Hardware video decoding via DirectX Video Acceleration is supported, although this enhancement only runs on Windows 7 (or later?) since it uses the DXVA 2.0 API, which was not supported in Windows XP.


title: Kodi (software)

text: "Kodi for iOS" (formerly "XBMC for iOS"), a full port of Kodi to Apple's iOS operating system, was released publicly on 20 January 2011. It supported both 720p and 1080p hardware accelerated video decoding of H.264 videos, and was compatible with Apple's iDevices that use Apple A4 or Apple A5 (ARM-based) processors with a jailbroken iOS operating system.


title: Kodi (software)

text: "Kodi for Android" (formerly "XBMC for Android") is a full port of the complete Kodi/XBMC application to Google's Android operating system, officially compatible with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and later versions supporting API Level 14. was first announced and its source code released publicly on 13 June 2012. This is a full port of Kodi's and C source code with all its dependencies to Android with a build-system that was designed to handle multiple processor architectures, like ARM, MIPS, and x86 with the Android NDK (Native Development Kit for Android) without using a single line of Java, and the XBMC.APK is running natively under Android as a NativeActivity application. Hardware accelerated video decoding on Android is currently only officially available for some specific hardware platforms, such as the Amlogic SoC based Pivos XIOS series which have been used as the reference hardware platform during the development so far. XBMC source code must be compiled with Google's official Android NDK revision 10d or later, and be built for the "android-17" toolchain (Android API Level 17) using GCC version 4.8, which Kodi for Android code currently requires to compile correctly but is not supported by Google's Android NDK. This is also the real reason why XBMC for Android does not support the original Google TV; since the Android NDK was not made available for older Google TV devices it means that Kodi/XBMC could not be compiled for it today.


title: Kodi (software)

text: XBMC 9.04 (codename: "Babylon") point-release version of XBMC for Xbox, now obsolete, was released on 6 May 2009 as the last official version of XBMC for Xbox. The original developers of XBMC have since issued a statement stating they will no longer develop or support XBMC for Xbox as part of the XBMC project as of 27 May 2010. The development of XBMC for Xbox ended because the focus for all Team XBMC developers has completely shifted to the Linux, Mac, and Windows versions of XBMC instead.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Even though the original XBMC project no longer develops or supports XBMC for the Xbox, an XBMC version for the Xbox is still available via the third-party developer spin-off project "XBMC4Xbox", who have completely taken over the development and support of XBMC for the original Xbox.


title: Kodi (software)

text: XBMC for Xbox was never an authorized/signed Microsoft product, therefore a modification of the Xbox is required in order to run XBMC on an Xbox game-console. XBMC for Xbox can be run as an application (like any Xbox game), or as a dashboard that appears directly when the Xbox is turned on. Since XBMC for Xbox was part of an open source software program, its development source code was stored on a publicly accessible subversion repository. Accordingly, unofficial executable builds from the subversion repository are often released by third parties on sites unaffiliated with the official XBMC project.


title: Kodi (software)

text: On 29 December 2017, Kodi developers announced via the news section of their official website that a Kodi app had been released for the Xbox One. It is noted that the UWP version will retain the characteristic Kodi appearance, however, many core features are missing or broken.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The developers of Kodi (formerly "XBMC") state that as long as the GPL licensing of the Kodi software is respected they would love Kodi to run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible, as "Powered by Kodi" (or "Powered by XBMC") branded devices and systems. They envision Kodi being pre-installed as a third-party software component that commercial and non-commercial ODMs and OEMs and systems integrator companies can use royalty-free on their own hardware, hardware such as set-top boxes from cable-TV companies, Blu-ray Disc and DVD players, game-consoles, or embedded computers and SoC (System-on-a-Chip) built into television sets for web-enabled TVs, and other entertainment devices for the living room entertainment system, home cinema, or similar uses.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Below is a list of third-party companies that sell hardware bundled with Kodi or XBMC software pre-installed, or sell uninstalled systems that specifically claim to be Kodi- or XBMC-compatible. Many of these third-party companies help submit bug fixes and new features back upstream to the original Kodi-XBMC project.


title: Kodi (software)

text: ARCTIC is a company based in Switzerland best known for their cooling solutions working in partnership with the OpenELEC team. On 5 February 2013, together they released a fully passively cooled entertainment system: the MC001 media centre (US and EU version), equipped with the latest XBMC 12 (OpenELEC 3.0) platform. OpenELEC and ARCTIC are planning on their next release, aim to provide a more dedicated builds for the ARCTIC MC001 media centre systems.


title: Kodi (software)

text: AIRIS Telebision, sold by Telebision in Spain and designed specifically for the Spanish market, is a nettop based on Nvidia Ion chipset, pre-installed Ubuntu base with XBMC for Linux and a customized AEON skin and Spanish plugins. Other than the modified skin, what is unique with the AIRIS Telebision's XBMC build is that it comes with a digital distribution service platform that they call their "App Store" which lets users download new Spanish plugins and updates for existing plugins. Telebision also lets users download a Live CD version of their software as freeware, which lets users install their Telebision distribution on any Nvidia Ion based computer.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Lucida TV II, made by LUCIDQ inc, is a nettop based on Nvidia Ion chipset which can be ordered with Xubuntu and XBMC software installed.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Pulse-Eight Limited sells both custom and off-the-shelf hardware primarily designed for Kodi-XBMC, such as remote controls, HTPC systems and accessories, including a custom HTPC PVR set-top-box pre-installed with XBMC that they call "PulseBox" Pulse-Eight also offers free performance tuned embedded versions of XBMC that they call "Pulse" which is based on OpenELEC and a custom PVR-build of XBMC that is meant to run on a dedicated HTPC system.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Xtreamer Ultra and Xtreamer Ultra 2, manufactured by the South Korean company Unicorn Information Systems, are nettops based on Nvidia graphics and Intel Atom processors which come with OpenELEC and Kodi-XBMC software pre-installed. The first-generation Xtreamer Ultra uses Nvidia Ion chipset with a 1.80 GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 CPU, while the Xtreamer Ultra 2 uses discrete GeForce GT 520M graphics with a 2.13 GHz dual-core Intel Atom D2700 CPU.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Since 10 September 2010, ZOTAC has been shipping a software bundle that they call ZOTAC Boost XL with all their new motherboards and Mini-PCs, such as Zotac's ZBOX and MAG series of Nettops which Zotac also does demos of with XBMC. This ZOTAC Boost XL software bundle consist of the software applications; Auslogics BoostSpeed, Cooliris, Kylo (HDTV-optimized Web Browser), and XBMC Media Center.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Zotac's ZBOX and MAG series of small mini-PCs are nettops based on Intel, AMD, or Nvidia graphics, and they are all sold in both as complete ready-to-use computer and as barebone computers (without memory and hard drive). Zotac Zbox ID33, ID34, ID81, ID80 and AD04 are all specifically marketed towards the HTPC market, with some coming with slot-loading Blu-ray Disc optical disc drive, and some with a remote control.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The mintBox by the Linux Mint team is an OEM version of the Israeli company CompuLab's fit-PC, which comes pre-installed with Linux Mint open source operating-system and software, MATE desktop, and XBMC. Available in two fanless models, both with AMD APUs, HDMI output port, eight USB slots, two eSATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, built-in Bluetooth, and an infrared media center remote control.


title: Kodi (software)

text: PrismCube Ruby by Marusys is a DVB-S2 twin-tuner high-definition DVR-PVR set-top-box running XBMC as its main interface on-top of embedded Linux.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Marusys MS630S and MS850S are high-definition PVR-ready set-top-boxes with the ability to run Linux kernel-based media players like XBMC, and Marusys is advertising these two devices as compatible with XBMC.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Myka ION is a fanless Nvidia Ion-based set-top device designed to bring Internet television and media stored on the home network to the living room; it comes pre-installed with XBMC Media Center, Boxee, and Hulu Desktop as applications that can be started from the main menu.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The MK-X1 by Modified Konstructs is an Nvidia Ion-based set-top device based on Acer Aspire Revo that comes pre-loaded with XBMC, and the device has a recommended retail price of $300 (US).


title: Kodi (software)

text: Neuros LINK made by Neuros Technology is an open Ubuntu-based set-top device and media extender designed to bring internet television and other video to the television, it comes pre-installed with XBMC Media Center.


title: Kodi (software)

text: BryteWerks Model One Projector is a 1080p HD digital video projector designed for home cinema use; it has an integrated home theater PC running a custom version of XBMC. In addition it features a remote control, as well as a 720p 8.9-inch touch screen panel display on the back of the projector for controlling the system. It also has a built-in Wi-Fi and Ethernet adapters, as well as a slot-loaded Blu-ray Disc player, and includes a 500 GB solid-state drive and an additional internal 2 TB hard disk drive can be added.


title: Kodi (software)

text: The Primus by Mediaimpact Technologies is a Linux Mint-based media center and set-top-box that integrates MythTV, Netflix Desktop, Hulu Desktop, and Steam Gaming through Kodi for a seamless home entertainment system ready for the living room. It comes complete with SMK-Link remote control.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi/XBMC media center source code have over the years become a popular software to fork and to use as an application framework platform for others to base their own media player or media center software on, as if Kodi were a GUI toolkit, windowing system, or window manager. And today at least Boxee, Plex, Tofu, MediaPortal, LibreELEC, OpenELEC, OSMC, GeeXboX, Voddler, DVDFab Media Player, and Horizon TV are all separate derivative products that are all openly known to at least initially have forked the graphical user interface (GUI) and media player part of their software from XBMC's source code. Many of these third-party forks and derivative work of Kodi-XBMC are said to still assist with submitting bug fixes upstream and sometimes help getting new features backported to the original Kodi-XBMC project so that others can utilize it as well, shared from one main source. However some which was initially a fork of XBMC have since fully or partially been rewritten to use closed source proprietary software. For more information see the main "List of software based on XBMC" article.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Some examples on building on Kodi-XBMC are LibreELEC, OSMC, OpenELEC and GeeXboX which are free and open source embedded operating systems providing complete media center software suite that comes with a preconfigured version of Kodi/XBMC and DVR/PVR plugins. They are both designed to be extremely small and very fast booting embedded Linux-based distributions, primarily optimized to be booted from flash memory or a solid-state drive, and specifically targeted to a minimum set-top box hardware setup based on ARM SoC's or Intel x86 processor and graphics.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Similar embedded Linux distributions to LibreELEC/OpenELEC/GeeXboX are the professionally made E2BMC and OpenPCTV which are commercial Kodi/XBMC-based software platform for DVR/PVR set-top boxes, with both being designed as a hybrid integration between Kodi media center software and Dreambox's Enigma2 PVR software scripts.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Another example is XBMC4Xbox, which is a third-party developer spin-off project of XBMC, with still active development and support of the Xbox platform. This project was created as a fork of XBMC as a separate project to continue having a version of XBMC for the Xbox hardware platform. It was not started by official members of the official XBMC project, nor will it be supported by the official Team Kodi in any way. It started when support for the Xbox branch was officially dropped by Team XBMC, which was announced on 27 May 2010.


title: Kodi (software)

text: Kodi is a non-profit and free software community driven open-source software project that is developed only by volunteers in their spare time without any monetary gain. XBMC Foundation and the team of developers leading the development of Kodi/XBMC, ""Team-Kodi""/""Team-XBMC"", encourage anyone and everyone to submit their own source code patches for new features and functions, improve existing ones, or fix bugs to the Kodi/XBMC project.