Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System • Hacker News Board

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#271

Post by jrm4 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

Bit of a thread hijack, but:

I'm surprised at what appears to be the lack of a simple and lightweight "10 foot interface" for Linux. You have projects like Kodi and KDE BigScreen, but (as most people are noting here) a lot of us don't need all the bells and whistles (and e.g. compositing).

A 10 foot browser + filemanager + music player + movie player would probably handle it. "Mouseless" would be nice, but maybe not even that?

Is this out there and a bunch of us are missing it? Basically a 10 foot openbox?

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#272

Post by dakial1 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

Kodi, Plex, the late Boxee are all pioneers and the pillars of what streaming services have of user experience today. I remember when I first saw Boxee interface back at the piracy-wild-west era and thought how wonderful and easy it was to watch a movie with it. I even had transmission setup on a NAS (DNS-323) automatically downloading my preferred shows that appeared without much effort on my TV.

The truth is that I didn't pirate because I wanted to pay nothing for media, I did it because I wanted the streaming experience and ability to have movies available on demand, not some cumbersome physical media whose purpose was only to guarantee studios/record labels profit at the expense of my consumption experience. They didn't care about me so I didn't care about them, something that changed with the coming of Netflix, Spotify, Google Music and all others... Now I gladly pay what I consider a fair fee for their services and amazing hassle-free experience. These wouldn't have happened (as quickly at least) without the 2000's piracy world and the media platforms build around it...

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#273

Post by blendergeek » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

refracture wrote: post #118

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…

Auto subtitle downloads? Come now if you are only watching rips of your own legally purchased media the subs would be available to you already… unless you aren’t. Seriously though you are asking a lot here.

> Come now if you are only watching rips of your own legally purchased media the subs would be available to you already…

I can't figure out how to get subtitles for stuff I DVR off my OTA TV so this would be nice for me and I am not a pirate.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#274

Post by baseballdork » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

lugorrr wrote: post #267

scubbo wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound like you've had slightly-more-than-average bad luck (I had some similar problems occasionally when I had Kodi on an RPi3, but it's been flawless for a year or so after I upgraded to RPi4), but you're certainly not wrong! One point to consider, though, is that most TVs don't have built-in file managers (or, indeed, NAS-connection capability) - for folks who prefer to watch their media on a big screen, yo…

May i ask what flavour of kodi you're using with your RPi4? OpenELEC, LibreELEC?

Not the parent, but I've been using the kodi-rpi out of the archlinuxarm repos.

https://archlinuxarm.org/packages/armv7h/kodi-rpi

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#275

Post by jean_valje4n » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

lugorrr wrote: post #267

scubbo wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound like you've had slightly-more-than-average bad luck (I had some similar problems occasionally when I had Kodi on an RPi3, but it's been flawless for a year or so after I upgraded to RPi4), but you're certainly not wrong! One point to consider, though, is that most TVs don't have built-in file managers (or, indeed, NAS-connection capability) - for folks who prefer to watch their media on a big screen, yo…

May i ask what flavour of kodi you're using with your RPi4? OpenELEC, LibreELEC?

OSMC latest release works fine for hevc 4k content

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#276

Post by jean_valje4n » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #154

Keyframe wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's bad luck, maybe you're a fiddler? I've been using Kodi since first release on original xbox, when it was XBMC. I set it up like only a handful of times since, only when I installed new machine - it was original xbox, then a soare laptop, then a spare comouter, rpi3 and now latest being rPi4. OpenELEC image, a few plugins, youtube key and that's it. I enjoy it for having access to my video library, those fe…

> I've been using Kodi since first release on original xbox, when it was XBMC. It wouldn't be HN if I didn't correct you in that it was originally XBMP on the old Xbox, before it graduated to a media center. It was a revelation in that the UI was amazing for the time, and the hardware was good enough to decode everything available. I remember soldering in an extra IR eye so that I could power on and off the Xbox with…

I still switch it back to the XBMC-ish theme on Kodi. I think its called confluence.

Did you get it off #xbins? I think that was the only place to find binaries of it without building it yourself.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#277

Post by yboris » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

For browsing, previewing, searching, and organizing videos I created Video Hub App. The primary feature is scrub / preview thumbnails from inside the video as you hover with your mouse and an infinite scroll of all your videos. It also has a "filmstrip" view to see all screenshots at once.

I hope it is useful to some of you here.

https://videohubapp.com/en/

Open source MIT: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#278

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

scubbo wrote: post #240

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 does sound like you've had slightly-more-than-average bad luck (I had some similar problems occasionally when I had Kodi on an RPi3, but it's been flawless for a year or so after I upgraded to RPi4), but you're certainly not wrong! One point to consider, though, is that most TVs don't have built-in file managers (or, indeed, NAS-connection capability) - for folks who prefer to watch their media on a big screen, yo…

Many TVs have DLNA, which you could use to play content off a NAS - if it ever worked properly. It's such an unloved standard.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#279

Post by sam_lowry_ » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

markheggan wrote: post #221

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I googled a bit and yes, there does seem to be a way to configure a top-level file browser with super favourites add-on. For sorting, I see nothing appropriate, though.

So, yes, Kodi is flexible, but too tricky for leisure use.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#280

Post by vander_elst » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

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…

Similar ending for me as well. There were quite often issues with plugins and I ended up sshing in the machine via phone and starting the movies/series that way.