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Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

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Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#221

Post by markheggan »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #213
AndrewDavis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a similar approach to when i used it long ago when it was xmbc. My media is well organised on my file system so I'd point xmbc at a smb share and navigate from there. What made Kodi/xbmc great was the interface worked better on a couch using a game controller to navigate versus a traditional desktop where i'd be forced to use a keyboard+mouse.

The thing that bothers me the most is that file browser is behind 4..5 clicks while it should be there as first-class menu. Also, file lists order folders and files independently. If not for those two things, Kodi would be perfect.

Generally agree, but you can set a shortcut from the main menu to file browser.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#222

Post by chrisjc »

pksebben wrote: post #133
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.

waiting for a response about how you can then also transcode the video into ascii by piping in an extra command :)

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#223

Post by 3np »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #213
AndrewDavis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a similar approach to when i used it long ago when it was xmbc. My media is well organised on my file system so I'd point xmbc at a smb share and navigate from there. What made Kodi/xbmc great was the interface worked better on a couch using a game controller to navigate versus a traditional desktop where i'd be forced to use a keyboard+mouse.

The thing that bothers me the most is that file browser is behind 4..5 clicks while it should be there as first-class menu. Also, file lists order folders and files independently. If not for those two things, Kodi would be perfect.

Kodi is very flexible and you can make the menus behave just like you want. Setting it up can take a bit of fooling around to figure out but it's quite straight-forward once it clicks.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#224

Post by 3np »

rmrfchik wrote: post #212
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…

Totally agree. All I want is "here my files, let me pick one". And KODI make me to choose genres, directors, stars, movie length, all this stuff. Need to do many clicks just to browse directory/dlna. And it's laggy.

All of that is strictly optional; you can browse in a local or remote folder and use it just like a traditional video player+file browser in that sense.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#225

Post by deadbunny »

crispyambulance wrote: post #210
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…

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…

The reason for the file naming convention is for metadata matching. All they are really doing behind the scenes is searching the movie name (and possibly year) from a metadata provider. The files you obtain online or rip yourself themselves rarely have any metadata in the file so the only remaining option is to parse the filename/directory structure.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#226

Post by pm3003 »

mackrevinack wrote: post #132
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 lay…

Jellyfin on a plain OS is a good choice. I do it on a TV for friends and family (with a browser set for fullscreen). The Jellyfin app enables much control via other connected devices. People like it, and maintenance is ok (1 day per year, more if I want to add content more often).

I wanted to tinker with Proxmox so the Jellyfin server is virtualized, but running it directly on the host/hypervisor OS is probably a better choice in order to transcode with the GPU. GPU passthrough in Proxmox is not intuutive and I deemed it not worth the troubles for my use case.

I have a network storage shared with the different VMs and containers, an airsonic server, a podcast downloader (airsonic being not so good at that), a DNS, Kiwix, Calibre, Komga for use with Tachiyomi (lots of work to set up good content) and a few social games (pictionary, posio, codenames etc).

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#227

Post by kuschku »

kevincox wrote: post #219
Dedime wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as Jellyfin goes in my own experience: - Supports phone / tablet / browser / roku / others - Can chromecast - Supports movies, tv. Not sure about random videos but I suppose you could do it. - Supports subtitle downloading - Haven't used it myself, but supports podcasts, books, photos, music Also FOSS. Doesn't have the same motive as commercial software ala Plex to nag you, and it hasn't nagged me yet.

I use jellyfin myself but it is so incredibly slow that often it is basically non-functional. It seems that usually when I first open it after a while it is fast enough but then it rapidly slows to a crawl where it sometimes can't even start the next episode in a series. I'm not running it on fantastic hardware but it should me more than sufficient for this task, other services on the box are snappy. I would happily…

If you put jellyfin's sqlite DB onto an NVMe drive, its speed instantly skyrockets and becomes very usable.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#228

Post by chrisjc »

raffraffraff wrote: post #142
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…

Nope. So I found that the only way to get a media solution was to compromise. I thought I needed a media server / streamer. Not sure why. Maybe because I started with Plex years ago, and that's what it is. I dropped Plex because I don't trust them, and they force me to log into their service. I switched to Jellyfin because it's the most recommended alternative (and is a more 'free' fork of Emby). But I thought it was…

How does your Rpi connect to the TV, HDMI? How do you control the TV, through CEC?

Wondering why you wouldn't consider adding a NAS/SMB into the mix if you were adding a 2nd or 3rd head to the mix instead of syncing across disks?

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#229

Post by deadbunny »

fbanon wrote: post #196

My gripe with Kodi is that it's horribly slow at scanning even my medium-sized (~1.5 TB) music collection. I've tried switching to UPnP so that the metadata is scanned locally on the media server, but Kodi's UPnP support is horribly broken. I've tried fixing some of the issues, but it's an endless rabbit hole of spaghetti code...

Pretty sure the time consuming but of that is the metadata lookups going to the internet.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#230

Post by 3np »

zeruch wrote: post #50
StockHuman wrote: post #9

For your consideration, Jellyfin. [0] [0] https://jellyfin.org/

I'm still on Emby only because it "just works" with Chromecast, but the second Jellyfin gets that sorted, I'm moving over.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Emby and Google are non-options for me but I can understand choosing it for a feature that's critical for you.
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