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Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

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Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#321

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.

I have configured mine to go to file manager when I press 'f' on the keyboard. You may not have a keyboard attached but it might be worth your while.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#322
post #217

The real OGs had this running on a modded original Xbox when it was still xbmc. In order to watch MST3K episodes from emule. Running CoreELEC on an odroid N2+ now, highly recommended.

The OGs were using Hauppage WinTV & ATI AIWs long before Xbox was released.

MythTV. I spent so much time fiddling with it.

My setup would automatically record the 1 hour block of BBC World News and transcode it to make it suitable for the PSP so I could watch it on the train to work.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#323
post #277

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

Thank you for creating this! It's perfect for my current needs :)

Do you use sqlite under the hood? Also, what's the largest collection / folder size that you know videohub can handle?

Also, I just bought it anyway -- I am impressed at how you donate a generous portion of every sale to charity!

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#325

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…

Similarly, I spent ~£2000 on having a wonderful home cinema setup (meticulously organised kodi library on a dedicated HTPC, surround-sound, projector) -- but it’s mostly collecting dust because chromecast’ing netflix from my phone to the TV is so much more convenient . I’m really hoping that Matter’s open casting protocol takes off, and we can get a new generation of software that combines the best of "self-hosted op…

Thats why I switched to plex. Being able to chromecast makes it possible to use any of my tv's not just the one that had the pc connected. I now run chromecast's only and a plex server.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but many folks prefer to not rename files.

That's like arguing that they prefer an unsorted pile of thousands of books vs. a library/bookstore. I mean if that's how they want it then fine, but you don't get the useful features.

There are a multitude of metadata managers out there which don't require the same directory structure but they are a load more effort than automatic metadata matching and a lot more effort than simply organizing your media in the first place.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#327

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…

>> Only thing I don't like about it is that Netflix isn't on it.. but that's hardly Kodi's fault. My main use case for it actually was wanting to watch netflix, youtube and prime on my desktop monitor from my office couch. The two main issues were lack of a remote and the lack of native support in kodi for any of those streaming platforms. The first issue was solved with this nifty little unit: https://www.amazon.com…

coughs https://github.com/CastagnaIT/plugin.video.netflix/

https://github.com/Sandmann79/xbmc

https://github.com/anxdpanic/plugin.video.tubed

These might work better than using web launcher.

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#328

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…

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…

https://github.com/CastagnaIT/plugin.video.netflix/

Re: Kodi: An Open Source Home Theater System

#329
post #324

Maybe after the Software Freedom Conservancy lawsuit is won, Kodi will be able to run on Vizio TVs. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

The problem is the toolkit offered, more than anything else. Kodi needs lots of native code hooks into the OS, which Tizen, WebOSTV, etc don't support, or at least don't give access freely. Otherwise Kodi could be on every platform.. Most TV OS's that aren't Android TV or Roku require you to write web-based apps (unless you're Netflix or YouTube, but another story there) which abstract all the 'good stuff' out, so impossible to run Kodi on. Roku is an even worse mess (forcing you to use Brightscript, a digital signage language they bought forever go and still maintain)
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