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Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

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Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#201
post #188

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?

Rip your own Blu-rays.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#202
post #188

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?

people used to buy CD/DVD/BR and rip them. nowadays it's easier and faster to download from somewhere.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#204

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…

This is fair, but I've found that I want to watch my content on a television instead of my computer monitor, since I already have everything set up. Unfortunately, it seems that there aren't many good options for just playing files on the network natively using Android TV alone. It seems that a lot of people reach for Plex or similar in this situation, but setting up Plex requires a separate computer to serve the fil…

Besides the gaming desktop, and the two laptops, I also have a normal old school desktop for the TV.

And honestly, I don't see why that's not a common practice. Super easy to use.

No Android fiddling needed at all.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#205
post #202
post #188

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?

people used to buy CD/DVD/BR and rip them. nowadays it's easier and faster to download from somewhere.

I use plex and only archive music because my collection is rare and will degrade over time (vinyl). not owning the media is what prevents me from using these services too (apart from the lack of catalog). fortunately there's bandcamp and some other sites that understand the rights of the consumer. btw plex + plexamp is fantastic

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#206

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…

The issue with Kodi is, in my opinion, the same as with setting up a mame cab for playing roms : Perpetual Work In Progress. Users are spending way more time configuring, optimizing, and eventually breaking the whole thing than actually enjoying it. On my side, i'm playing my content with my AppleTV through a Plex server on a Nas, using wired network, and I couldn't be happier. Using a professionnal, closed, solution…

Who says thats not the part i love about my mame always something to do, and no Ive had both setups and kodi and plex suffer from the same config mess.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work? Where is the media hosted? Chromecast nearly cracks this problem, but playing local media has always needed weird fragile browser extensions in my experience.

The newer Chromecast(Chromecast with Google TV) has a redesigned Android TV interface with a smart remote. The older chromecast you didn't really have any interface to interact with it aside from sending a signal from your phone to control it remotely. In this case I believe the above commenter was just implying to use your home PC as your Media server, install VLC on the Chromecast with Google TV, and then play the…

Yes, a raspberry pi with a usb drive running samba and minidlna.

I started with an old nslu2, the pi on my network is slug5, as its the fifth machine that has done this job over about 15 years or so.

VLC installed on the chromecast works well with the little remote control, so local media is no harder than netflix or prime.

Edit: the original streamer I used was a Neuston mc-500, which could access network files. The nslu2 was a little slow, but 15 years ago media files were much smaller too. You could record digital tv with a usb dongle and play it back on the neuston which amazed me at the time.

Edit2: the kids had hacked PS2s in their bedrooms that had media players on them that pulled data from the nslu2 as well. It was cool, cheap and worked well.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#208
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.

I've actually put Kodi on my Chromecast with Google TV. Put the things my parents watch on the favorites and remove all the other menu items and they can use it fine.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#209

I love Kodi, it runs my house for watching movies, listening to my mp3 collection or internet radios, and does it great. However what I'm really missing is a way to stream everything in and out: - allow streaming audio to other computers for multi-room audio - allow streaming audio from phones or computers when I throw a party at home and people want to play DJ - allow streaming audio+video from a computer to use my…

For network video or audio streaming, I use NDI.

When I found it, it was quite a pleasant surprise.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#210
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…

I've found Plex to be decently capable for all the things I want EXCEPT ONE.

For whatever bizarre reason, Plex all but requires you conform to specific filename formats. I don't why, but this pisses me off to no end.

What's the point of having elaborate media containers like MKV if you can't just point to an arbitrarily named file, process, fill-in, or read the metadata and have it added to your library? I mean, Plex maintains a database, can read metadata, pull info from moviedb, tag stuff, categorize... what's up with the obsession on filenames?

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