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Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

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Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#131

Post by halkony »

jakear wrote: post #61
denkmoon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Walt Disney Company. One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

I don’t see much of an issue with Disney getting paid for the new content they produce. If I want to watch the new Bad Batch episodes, I can either pay for a Disney+ subscription and increase the official view count, thereby increasing the project’s revenue and likelihood the folks working on it have their contracts renewed, or I can convince myself Disney is some evil corporation consisting of people who don’t deser…

> Back when I was a kid with no assets to my name piracy made some sense. However, now that I have the means to support creators, I do.

This is the most sensible argument I've heard for being anti-piracy. It is a matter of means, and I've had a similar experience with my approach to piracy.

I'd be interested to know more statistics about what demographics perform piracy and on what kinds of media.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#132

Post by mackrevinack »

progman32 wrote: post #93

This may be unpopular, but after using Kodi and similar software for many years (and enjoying it!), I just gravitated back to the basics. Want to watch a movie? Navigate to it in my file manager and play it with VLC. Music? Just use Winamp 2 or Audacious. I realized I was messing with odd HDMI passthrough issues, database issues, audio sync, broken plugins, stressing about tagging, etc etc every movie night much more…

if im on my laptop and i know what i want to watch ill use the file manager since its definitely a lot quicker, otherwise i usually open up jellyfin because so i can get a synopsis of the movie and see the ratings.

kodi is definitely a bit complex at the best of times though. trying to set up the home screen and menus exactly how you like it can be very tedious and using the jellyfin plugin is just adding another layer of complexity on top of all that.

im thinking i might just try a plain OS soon that opens jellyfin media player app on boot. it probably wouldn't be able to do as many things from the remote as kodi but maybe something like that KDE Connect that your using might be the way to go when i have to do anything complicated

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#133

Post by pksebben »

progman32 wrote: post #93

This may be unpopular, but after using Kodi and similar software for many years (and enjoying it!), I just gravitated back to the basics. Want to watch a movie? Navigate to it in my file manager and play it with VLC. Music? Just use Winamp 2 or Audacious. I realized I was messing with odd HDMI passthrough issues, database issues, audio sync, broken plugins, stressing about tagging, etc etc every movie night much more…

it's not exactly "all-purpose", but with laptop in hand and Linux connected to the tv...

`ssh user@host cat file.mkv | mplayer`

it's more one of those things that spark joy because of how weird it is, but I end up using it all the time.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#134

Post by peletiah »

progman32 wrote: post #93

This may be unpopular, but after using Kodi and similar software for many years (and enjoying it!), I just gravitated back to the basics. Want to watch a movie? Navigate to it in my file manager and play it with VLC. Music? Just use Winamp 2 or Audacious. I realized I was messing with odd HDMI passthrough issues, database issues, audio sync, broken plugins, stressing about tagging, etc etc every movie night much more…

I'm using Kodi since several years for the family TV. I only had to tinker with the streaming buffer for YouTube, other than that it required no maintenance.

My wife can use it from her mobile. We can play movies for our kids or stream a YouTube-clip. I'm using a Firefox-addon to cast clips from my browser to Kodi. That's about it, no killer app, just convenient digital media on an old, dumb TV.

Only I'd wish Yatse was ported to iOS (Unless my wife's iPhone dies soon).

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#135

Post by Nux »

Kodi is an absolute godsend!

My living room main stack is Rpi+Libreelec+Kodi, it works wonderfully and it's my main way to consume media: video, music, inet radio and youtube.

I use the TV remote to control it via CEC in conjuction with the Yatse Remote app which gives me better control and allows me to do even more.

It's great.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#136

Post by tuscen »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #106
tuscen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you agree to erase your memory of all culture surrounding you and to create truly from blank than your statement could have some sense.

The culture around our current set of movies very very very likely wouldn't exist without for profit markets for that IP. Sorry my blood, sweat, tears in making new items isn't "free" for you to take unless I release it as free (which I certainly have in the past). I mean you can steal it obviously because it's an IT product but that doesn't make it moral at least not in my culture.

The current set of movies wouldn't be possible without thousands of years of myths, legends, stories and other fiction that was in public domain when these movies were made. Are you willing to pay countries royalties for their myths and legends.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#137

Post by probably_wrong »

puchatek wrote: post #101
denkmoon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is a moral obligation.

Not consuming media offered by a corrupt system would be plausible. And there would be plenty of choices to source content directly from artists. Or make your own. Pirating content is just something people do because it's technically feasible. To silence the cognitive dissonance and justify the behavior towards their peers and reconcile it with the rest of their character (presumably they would not steal physical obj…

As someone who sees pirating as civil disobedience, I would like to respectfully disagree.

Disney (and friends) spend the GDP of a small country to ensure that my entire life is surrounded by their products and enshrined themselves in international treaties to ensure that it will remain so. I could stop consuming their media, which would require me to withdraw from 90% of all movies and music that my friends and family want to watch, which whether I like it or not is what I would call "my culture".

I don't think this is fair, specially considering that I had no say in this state of things and that changing it would require me to essentially mobilize my entire nation against the foreign interests of the USA.

I don't expect everyone to agree with this point of view, but to call it "intellectually dishonest" feels to me like an unnecessary agression. If anything, I would counterargue: expecting people to either pay a toll to access their culture or to to become "cultural monks" is what's truly wrong, especially when there's an alternative that literally favors the interests of people over corporations.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#138

Post by malka »

puchatek wrote: post #101
denkmoon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is a moral obligation.

Not consuming media offered by a corrupt system would be plausible. And there would be plenty of choices to source content directly from artists. Or make your own. Pirating content is just something people do because it's technically feasible. To silence the cognitive dissonance and justify the behavior towards their peers and reconcile it with the rest of their character (presumably they would not steal physical obj…

I personally find more intellectually dishonest to compare piracy to theft.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#139

Post by smackeyacky »

bane wrote: post #77

I honestly can't keep track anymore. I've used plex for a number of years and it's "fine" but they keep spending time developing things I don't want and ignoring things the community would like in an effort to "go commercial" and "legitimatize". I want a media center that can do these things: - access from phone or tablet: remote is nice to have, but on my own network is a must - can chromecast everything - can scrap…

Just buy a google chromecast with google tv and install VLC on it.

No games or mame but everything else on the list is covered. Kodi is fun but having to educate the non technical household members how to use it is not fun.

Thats what killed the old HTPC concept for me. Too much fiddling, not enough watching.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#140

Post by discardable_dan »

bane wrote: post #77

I honestly can't keep track anymore. I've used plex for a number of years and it's "fine" but they keep spending time developing things I don't want and ignoring things the community would like in an effort to "go commercial" and "legitimatize". I want a media center that can do these things: - access from phone or tablet: remote is nice to have, but on my own network is a must - can chromecast everything - can scrap…

Plex supports a lot of this as paid features.
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