Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

kodi.tv

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 349 posts

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#291

Post by JeremyNT »

a254613e wrote: post #80
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…

No. Your expectations from one piece of software are completely unrealistic.

On the other hand, there are open source options for most of this stuff. Jellyfin probably gets you about half of the list, and you can set up dedicated software for much of the rest with a little effort.

It's interesting that the parent expects this to all be a single piece of software. Is this a generational thing? It's the opposite of the "do one thing and do it well" philosophy I grew up on.

I like Jellyfin a lot but I actually sometimes feel like it tries to do too much.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#292

Post by Mindwipe »

lvass wrote: post #268
mmlkrx wrote: 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?

It's just so convenient to backup your physical media and use Kodi to play it. It's 100% legal, I swear I ripped it myself and just happened to lose the original disks.

> It's 100% legal

In some territories.

Though I would note breaking DRM to format shift content isn't legal in basically any functioning country in the world.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#293

Post by crispyambulance »

deadbunny wrote: post #225
crispyambulance wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, that's understandable, but many folks prefer to not rename files.

I would like to be able to just point to a file and tell Plex what that file is so it "knows" (puts it in it's database). If it can read/write metadata on the file itself, that would be great too.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#294

Post by crispyambulance »

apexalpha wrote: post #260
crispyambulance wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 answer is simple: not every media file is an MKV that has metadata inside it. Your solution works for MKV files. The Plex solution works for all file types and containers. It's easy to see why Plex would prefer this way.

Yeah but Plex, I believe, also maintains it's own database for the media files. Why can't I just "tell it" the metadata in those cases and leave the filenames as is?

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#295

Post by razze »

rcoilliot wrote: post #114
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…

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…

That more sounds like a you problem. No reason to play around with your setup, if you don't want to. Just hook it up to a NAS and play your files, has been working fine here for +7 years

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#296

Post by panick21_ »

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 Plex (Kodi) like system for the phone and for other people. In practice I far more often use mpv on the terminal to start movies.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#298

Post by fgonzag »

pjc50 wrote: post #278
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…

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.

VLC can be installed on most smart tvs and has excellent DLNA support. I still use plex but have DLNA as a backup when the internet goes out (better local network connectivity)

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#299

Post by schemathings »

kuschku wrote: post #234
schemathings wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - I bought Emby this year for serving local media - my one gripe is no thumbnails/preview when you scrub over the timeline - this one has it. Will give it a spin.

There's actually ongoing work on extremely efficient tooling for thumbnails/previews :)

That's good to hear!

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#300

Post by Vrondi »

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…

For the music part, seriously check out MusicBee. Try it in Theatre Mode.
Post reply on HN