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I remember last year a prior article on Kodi 19 indicating that an integrated web browser would be included in this version. Will this no longer be implemented? I sincerely hope this isn't the case.
An integrated web browser would allow multimedia access that isn't currently available through Kodi add-ons. The following are two examples of this. I have an MLB.TV subscription, and the service includes the option of listening to the radio broadcasts of the baseball games. While the MLB.TV Kodi add-on includes support for the video broadcasts of games, it doesn't include support to listen to the radio-only broadcasts. An integrated Kodi web browser would allow the capability to listen to the radio-only feeds. Another example involves SiriusXM. There isn't a Kodi add-on available that will allow someone with a SiriusXM subscription to listen to the online feeds of its channels. An integrated Kodi web browser would allow someone with a SiriusXM subscription to log into their service and to listen to their feeds.
I do sincerely hope that this previously-announced feature of the web browser doesn't get dropped from Kodi 19. If it does, it will be a real disappointment.
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sarbes
Team-Kodi Member
Posts: 614
Then prepare to be disappointed.
Yes, a while ago, one of our team members had a Chromium based prototype ready. Development has been halted because of changes made by the browser developers, which made it impossible to integrate into Kodi.
Even if the limitation could be overcome, I personally doubt that it is viable to ship a web rendering engine. Implementing and maintaining supporting on 5+ different system architectures (with dozens off sub variants) is a tremendous task. If you would consider that any Chromium update has to be implemented in a timely fashion, I'm sure it would need a full-time dev to support it.
On the other hand, you can launch a browser of your choice to play the content you want.
