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Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

kodi.tv

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Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#181

Post by bayindirh »

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 use Kodi on my computer with Tiny Media Manager, and loving it so far. Yes, it's not a TV on a living room setup, but being able to browse what I have with good metadata is a much better experience for me, so far.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#182

Post by antihero »

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 have found with 4K tvs the cursor and UI is annoyingly tiny.

Currently I'm using the ATV 4K and Infuse (and MBP SMB share) for "other" content. Works a dream.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#183

Post by Jnr »

I use Kodi as my main TV/Steambox UI. It handles movies, shows, twitch, live TV (wrote addon to work with local IPTV provider), launching Steam games, streaming from sources :).

Movie/show progress is synchronized to Trakt, and Trakt also provides list of trending shows and movies, so I always have an overview in a single place, no need to go to 10 different streaming services.

But the default UI is just terrible.

I use it with Arctic Horizon theme and it improves it a lot but not everything can be improved with custom theme. https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=351756

I wish they did a UI overhaul to make it a bit more modern.

Having customized it over the years, I see how powerful it can be, but defaults are quite unfriendly.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#184

Post by otherme123 »

harrisi wrote: post #156
otherme123 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything is technically possible. But I don't think that "ebooks, pdfs, cbz, cbr, etc ." reader is a reasonable requirement for a media center. Or an emulator. They start complaining that software is bloated to appeal the community, and then request more bloat, but to their particular wants.

Yes, almost everything is technically possible. I agree with the first three sentences. I don't have an opinion on the last. Again, I was just curious if there was any reasons I couldn't think of why the top-level's comments were unfulfillable! I'm always curious about people's desires that (apparently) can't (or won't) be solved with software. This is a space I'm not too familiar with, but there doesn't seem to be a…

The limit are resources: mainly time and human [will] power.

Why merge Spotify with Netflix? Just have two apps and services, is not that difficult for the user, nor a real nuissance. The OP didn't request audiobooks. He specifically asked also for PDF, a comic format (CBR) and "etc.". That, I guarantee you, lead to further requests (highlite the PDFs, a unified comic/pdf/movie/music storage and showroom, screencap, sharing...). Add a lot of underlying complexity, bugs, cost in manteinance, extra mental load...

As for the "ideal audiobook reader platform" let me tell you something: audiobooks are consumed by people while walking, running, driving, at the gym, in the sub... I've never heard of anyone planted in front of the reader just hearing the audiobook. The nature of audiobooks is "hear a book while doing something else", and a TV goes against exactly that. A TV audiobook is called "a movie" or "a serie", something that you can already watch in Kodi.

This reminds me of the "4 star but..." in the App Stores. Lots and lots of users of a nice free app comment like "I LOVE the app, but I only rate it with 4 stars unless you add this little, small, really tiny thing that I want. If you do that, I will come back and give you the 5th star".

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#185

Post by mkdirp »

I've been using Kodi for some 5 years now. At the height of piracy addons here in the UK a few years ago I was quite worried that Kodi devs would just give up, and I'm glad they didn't.

For anyone who uses a PVR device, I highly recommend using TVHeadend, with Kodi as a frontend it's been the perfect PVR system. TVHeadend allows to define multiple inputs (HDHomerun, DVB-C/T, IPTV, and lots others) and adds the rest of the tooling on top to have a full PVR system. TVHeadend itself has a really bad UI, and as lots of issues, but once set up, you do not have to care about its UI any more and you'll need it very little.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#186

Post by wiz21c »

I've got about 200 DVD's but each time I look at Kodi (or others) it basically means : rip the DVD first... Which is the last thing I want to do when I want to actually look at the DVD.

Is there a solution to RIP the DVD (I'm OK with it's just an ISO copy) while playing it ? So that I don't have to think about it first ?

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#187

Post by checkyoursudo »

harrisi wrote: post #156
otherme123 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything is technically possible. But I don't think that "ebooks, pdfs, cbz, cbr, etc ." reader is a reasonable requirement for a media center. Or an emulator. They start complaining that software is bloated to appeal the community, and then request more bloat, but to their particular wants.

Yes, almost everything is technically possible. I agree with the first three sentences. I don't have an opinion on the last. Again, I was just curious if there was any reasons I couldn't think of why the top-level's comments were unfulfillable! I'm always curious about people's desires that (apparently) can't (or won't) be solved with software. This is a space I'm not too familiar with, but there doesn't seem to be a…

Re: scrobbling, I think you are thinking of scrubbing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubbing_(audio)

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#188

Post by mmlkrx »

Right on the homepage it says "Kodi brings your media to life".

Apart from piracy, what are legal ways to acquire my own media? When I can't find something on Netflix or Amazon Prime, I typically just buy it on Amazon but Amazon doesn't provide me with a video file. Are there any places I can buy digital media that allow me to download and manage my own media files?

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#189

Post by DrewRWx »

wiz21c wrote: post #186

I've got about 200 DVD's but each time I look at Kodi (or others) it basically means : rip the DVD first... Which is the last thing I want to do when I want to actually look at the DVD. Is there a solution to RIP the DVD (I'm OK with it's just an ISO copy) while playing it ? So that I don't have to think about it first ?

That is a really cool idea!

It doesn't sound like it is a major factor in your use case, but Kodi is one of the few players that not only can play directly from ISOs either compressed or uncompressed.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#190

Post by DrewRWx »

harrisi wrote: post #105
oefnak wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ebooks, photos and emulators? In my opinion they don't belong in my cinema app.

I agree! But, objectively, someone does think they belong. That's beside the point. I was curious if there are technical, business, or political (or something else) reasons why it's not possible (either theoretically or practically).

Objectively someone has a subjective opinion...
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