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Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

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Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#21

Post by poizan42 »

woleium wrote: post #19
ssl-3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all different things. Kodi, as you may recall from a decade ago, has its roots in the old Xbox Media Center. It grew beyond that OG Xbox a long time ago and runs on just about anything these days, although things like Raspberry Pi 4s are a common (and performant) choice for dedicated hardware. It is open source. Kodi is primarily a media player (load files from local or regular-ass SMB NAS, and play them), an…

Kodi runs well on a pi4, but the lack of hdmi-cec support was enough to make me change to an nvidia shield pro (not the tube shaped one one, unless you like stuttering 4k playback)

I'm using hdmi-cec with Kodi on an rpi4 and it works just fine? I did need to tweak the logical address to get it to work with my tv though, but the pi4 certainly supports CEC.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#22

Post by captn3m0 »

nerdix wrote: post #14
spamuel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodi evolved from XBMC, which is the OG of this genre.

In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the early Plex codebase was a fork of XBMC.

The original announcement mentions it as a split: https://www.plex.tv/ja/blog/announcing-plex/

Apparently there was an interim OSXBMC project as well.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#23

Post by lighthammer »

hagbard_c wrote: post #12
bloopernova wrote: post #2

What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?

Kodi + an older television without "smarts" make for an actual "smart" television, one which does not try to sell you as a product to advertisers but which uses its "smarts" for your benefit. This is how the part of my family which likes to watch television (which is everyone but me...) access their network-provided pablum (my bias might show through a bit here and there) using a "dumb" TV with a Raspberry Pi on the…

Any recommendations for larger older televisions without "smart" features?

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#24

Post by sebazzz »

ssl-3 wrote: post #13
bloopernova wrote: post #2

What's the home media server landscape look like these days? I used Kodi about 10 years ago I think, but I hardly ever hear about it on HN, just Plex and I think Jellyfin? Why would someone choose one over the others?

They're all different things. Kodi, as you may recall from a decade ago, has its roots in the old Xbox Media Center. It grew beyond that OG Xbox a long time ago and runs on just about anything these days, although things like Raspberry Pi 4s are a common (and performant) choice for dedicated hardware. It is open source. Kodi is primarily a media player (load files from local or regular-ass SMB NAS, and play them), an…

Kodi for use on a Raspberry Pi is best deployed in the form of LibreELEC. This has HDMI-CEC support and GUI configuration built-in.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#25

Post by hagbard_c »

lighthammer wrote: post #23
hagbard_c wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodi + an older television without "smarts" make for an actual "smart" television, one which does not try to sell you as a product to advertisers but which uses its "smarts" for your benefit. This is how the part of my family which likes to watch television (which is everyone but me...) access their network-provided pablum (my bias might show through a bit here and there) using a "dumb" TV with a Raspberry Pi on the…

Any recommendations for larger older televisions without "smart" features?

Currently using a Sony 40" which I got for free, before that a 37" LG, also free. There's plenty of people who for some reason want to get rid of their "old" television to get one of those newfangled "smart" things, have a look around the local classified ads/Craigslist/Freecycle/and you're sure to find plenty of options. As long as it has HDMI and a big enough screen you're set.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#26

Post by smackeyacky »

lighthammer wrote: post #23
hagbard_c wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodi + an older television without "smarts" make for an actual "smart" television, one which does not try to sell you as a product to advertisers but which uses its "smarts" for your benefit. This is how the part of my family which likes to watch television (which is everyone but me...) access their network-provided pablum (my bias might show through a bit here and there) using a "dumb" TV with a Raspberry Pi on the…

Any recommendations for larger older televisions without "smart" features?

The two best TV's I've found at thrift shops are Panasonic Viero. One is a 32" in the bedroom and the other was 37" for daytime use in the lounge (for big pictures we use an old Mitsubishi HC7000 projector).

Both have great pictures, no dead pixels. The biggest issue with thrifted TV's is that they don't come with stands so you need to get a wall mount or contrive a stand of some sort.

I would heavily recommend against anything Samsung. There always seems to be something wrong with any Samsung being sold 2nd hand.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#27

Post by ssl-3 »

sebazzz wrote: post #24
ssl-3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all different things. Kodi, as you may recall from a decade ago, has its roots in the old Xbox Media Center. It grew beyond that OG Xbox a long time ago and runs on just about anything these days, although things like Raspberry Pi 4s are a common (and performant) choice for dedicated hardware. It is open source. Kodi is primarily a media player (load files from local or regular-ass SMB NAS, and play them), an…

Kodi for use on a Raspberry Pi is best deployed in the form of LibreELEC. This has HDMI-CEC support and GUI configuration built-in.

LibreELEC is indeed slick: Their motto is, IIRC, "Just enough Linux to run Kodi."

It is absolutely ideal if what one wants to have is a dedicated media player appliance and -- like any other cromulent video playing appliance -- it Just Works.

But there's a ton of other ways to get Kodi running on Raspberry Pi hardware.

For instance: There was a time when I was running Kodi under RetroPie, so I could combine antique console emulation and video playing on one [at the time] Pi 3.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#28

Post by ssl-3 »

lighthammer wrote: post #23
hagbard_c wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodi + an older television without "smarts" make for an actual "smart" television, one which does not try to sell you as a product to advertisers but which uses its "smarts" for your benefit. This is how the part of my family which likes to watch television (which is everyone but me...) access their network-provided pablum (my bias might show through a bit here and there) using a "dumb" TV with a Raspberry Pi on the…

Any recommendations for larger older televisions without "smart" features?

I use a ~16-year-old Samsung LNA52A550 (52", 1080p) that I spent rather a lot of money on once upon a time.

It has been calibrated for the colors to be as correct as possible. It's from a time before smart TVs. (Heck, it's from a time before LED-backlit TVs -- it's got fluorescent tubes in it.) But it has HDMI-CEC, and it cheerfully outputs both DTS and Dolby Digital on its optical TOSLINK port so as to connect to [cheap!!!, and sometimes even awesome] surround receivers of similar vintage.

If you find a Samsung of that age that hasn't been smashed, it probably won't work reliably as-is: They used bad capacitors in the power supply -- bad enough that they lost a class action lawsuit about that at least once.

(But good caps are cheap, and they're ridiculously easy to swap out on those single-layer PCBs. The only trick is to spend the extra few dollars and replace every single capacitor on the power supply board, and not just the ones that seem to be bad: All of the factory caps will turn bad eventually, which is something I learned the second [and hopefully final] time I took it apart to fix it.)

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#29

Post by JoyousAbandon »

woleium wrote: post #17
JoyousAbandon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Kodi on a Shield to play any local files I want to watch, which reside on a USB-attached SSD. Results have been pretty good, although it suffers from some non-intuitive UI design... the sort of which also plagues other media applications I've tried. Let me try it on my computer... OK, specifically, Kodi says, "your library is currently empty. To populate it... enter "Files" section, add a media source, and conf…

lookup the keyboard shortcuts! Tab and backspace are useful x to stop playback

You shouldn't have to look up keyboard shortcuts to operate a GUI. That's the whole point of a GUI.

Re: Kodi 21.0 "Omega"

#30

Post by JoyousAbandon »

jzemeocala wrote: post #18
JoyousAbandon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Kodi on a Shield to play any local files I want to watch, which reside on a USB-attached SSD. Results have been pretty good, although it suffers from some non-intuitive UI design... the sort of which also plagues other media applications I've tried. Let me try it on my computer... OK, specifically, Kodi says, "your library is currently empty. To populate it... enter "Files" section, add a media source, and conf…

ESC goes back to home

Thanks. Not super useful without a keyboard, though.
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