K7 v1.8.0

Highlights

• Windows Direct Play (LibVLC): Native hardware decoding support (HEVC, EAC3, Matroska...) for local files and direct streams via D3D11 and libvlc. This significantly reduces server-side FFmpeg transcoding load while delivering smoother playback on desktop.
• Enhanced Android Playback: Revamped ExoPlayer integration featuring faster track switching, precise seeking, and improved HLS stability. Subtitle styling on SubtitleView now accurately reflects your player preferences.
• Smart Windows Pipeline Routing: Seamless switching between LibVLC for Direct Play and Video.js for HLS fallback (when encoding or subtitle burn-in is required), preventing stack conflicts under the same native controls.

Changes

Features

• feat(windows): add libvlc direct play with d3d11 output
• feat(windows): route hls through video.js under native chrome
• feat(android): style exo text cues from video player settings
• feat(maui): expand native video overlay chrome and controls
• feat(web): align video.js player with native playback behavior
• feat(stream): expose indexed-file subtitle vtt endpoint
• feat(session): honor caller track indexes over playback settings
• feat(playback): add shared helpers for hls audio, vtt, and track continuity
• feat(remote): improve remote control seek clock and device labels
• feat(tv): show movie and serie duration next to the hero rating

Bug Fixes

• fix(android): harden exoplayer for amlogic tv playback
• fix(hls): stabilize segment wait and windows transcode path
• fix(stream): disable kestrel buffering on direct media responses

Documentation

• docs(playback): document exo android and windows split pipeline
• docs(about): credit libvlc for windows direct play

Miscellaneous

• chore(nuget): add videolan preview feed for libvlc packages
• refactor(shared): move trackselector into k7.shared

Artifacts

• Docker: ghcr.io/kaybi-gh/k7:1.8.0
• Android: K7-1.8.0-android.apk
• Windows: K7-1.8.0-win-x64.zip