Kodi (formerly known as XBMC)

meerkat154

meerkat154

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Kodi V15 officially hit BETA-1.

If you are looking for an excellent media playing software Kodi is hard to beat. An off shoot of XBMC.

Running it currently off of Amazon FireTV and it blows the WD live player out the window.

https://kodi.tv/kodi-15-0-isengard-beta-1/

Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games, and more. Kodi runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.
 
meerkat154 said:
Kodi V15 officially hit BETA-1.

If you are looking for an excellent media playing software Kodi is hard to beat. An off shoot of XBMC.

Running it currently off of Amazon FireTV and it blows the WD live player out the window.

https://kodi.tv/kodi-15-0-isengard-beta-1/

Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games, and more. Kodi runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.
Click to expand...

I know a guy around here buying firesticks, sideloading them with kodi and add-ons, and selling them for 130. Hes making a killing..lol :lol:
 
Back to kodi 14.2 for me. Stalker plugin doesn't work. Which is one of my main reason i use amazon fire tv\kodi.
 
I usually wait to at least the 2nd RC to do an upgrade....

Up until recently though, it's always been a PITA to do upgrades with a fresh install. With the new functionality of exporting/importing libraries, this is easier now.

I wish the central database backend was faster (for tracking watching between devices), thumbnails and posters just don't load fast enough, even with the backend residing on an SSD and superfast MySQL query performance.

Still needs better touch functionality too. Kodi out of the box on windows/linux tablet is just bad. It's better on Android, but unfortunately it doesn't carry over to multi-input OS's :(
 
I've struggled a LOT with Kodi so far on my HTPC machine. I haven't touched it in over a month, but my experience until now was that the media catalog piece was terrifyingly spotty and inconsistent.
 
shrike126 said:
I've struggled a LOT with Kodi so far on my HTPC machine. I haven't touched it in over a month, but my experience until now was that the media catalog piece was terrifyingly spotty and inconsistent.
Click to expand...

I had the same problem initially when I moved from WD live Player. Found that labeling the movies specifically reduced those issues to zero.

I can recommend Filebot for that task.
-Kat
 
t0adp1p3 said:
I have a lifetime plex subscription thing, is this better/different from plex?
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Been a long time since I had used Plex but from what I remember I had install a Plex client on my host machine which sources my movie collection and I was somewhat uncomfortable have a program with login credentials needed to catalog my music and movie collection.

Also doesn't Plex "remux" the video streams so the quality is not always up to par? Works great for portable devices.
-Kat
 
t3hl33td4rg0n said:
I usually wait to at least the 2nd RC to do an upgrade....

Up until recently though, it's always been a PITA to do upgrades with a fresh install. With the new functionality of exporting/importing libraries, this is easier now.

I wish the central database backend was faster (for tracking watching between devices), thumbnails and posters just don't load fast enough, even with the backend residing on an SSD and superfast MySQL query performance.

Still needs better touch functionality too. Kodi out of the box on windows/linux tablet is just bad. It's better on Android, but unfortunately it doesn't carry over to multi-input OS's :(
Click to expand...

Yes - with Android you can just run the "upgrade" command and your collection database is maintained. :)

Amazon Fire TV - woot! :lol:
-Kat
 
meerkat154 said:
I had the same problem initially when I moved from WD live Player. Found that labeling the movies specifically reduced those issues to zero.

I can recommend Filebot for that task.
-Kat
Click to expand...
I'll have to give Filebot a try. Do you have a labeling format you go by? So that scraping data works reliably and it doesn't suddenly drop movies out of the catalog for no goddamned reason?
 
shrike126 said:
I'll have to give Filebot a try. Do you have a labeling format you go by? So that scraping data works reliably and it doesn't suddenly drop movies out of the catalog for no goddamned reason?
Click to expand...

I just use Filebots defaults - Title (Year). In Kodi I use the default movie scraper - forgot the name. Also have subscene plugin enabled in Kodi to automatically download subtitles.

http://www.filebot.net/

Only way I had movies drop out of my catalog if you have "Hide Watched" enabled. So far flawless on Amazon Fire TV with Kodi 15 Beta 1.

Only piece that I find annoying is that when you delete a movie you have to go back and select "Clean Database" in Kodi. Very odd functionality. :nuts:
-Kat
 
meerkat154 said:
I just use Filebots defaults - Title (Year). In Kodi I use the default movie scraper - forgot the name. Also have subscene plugin enabled in Kodi to automatically download subtitles.

http://www.filebot.net/

Only way I had movies drop out of my catalog if you have "Hide Watched" enabled. So far flawless on Amazon Fire TV with Kodi 15 Beta 1.

Only piece that I find annoying is that when you delete a movie you have to go back and select "Clean Database" in Kodi. Very odd functionality. :nuts:
-Kat
Click to expand...
Hmmm do you use PLEX as well?
 
meerkat154 said:
Been a long time since I had used Plex but from what I remember I had install a Plex client on my host machine which sources my movie collection and I was somewhat uncomfortable have a program with login credentials needed to catalog my music and movie collection.

Also doesn't Plex "remux" the video streams so the quality is not always up to par? Works great for portable devices.
-Kat
Click to expand...

Plex will remux only as needed, depending on the device being streamed to, file format of the media, bandwidth, etc. and you can do some quality adjustments as well. Plex now is a lot better than Plex even a year ago, let alone 2 or more. Very happy I did the lifetime subscription when it was $80 as we've gotten a lot of value out of it, streaming movies and music to Rokus, computers and mobile devices.

And the best thing for people not liking to be computer/network admins even if they have some knowledge - Plex generally just works and never crashes and doesn't require much in the way of maintenance beyond updates.
 
2nd plex. using it with a measely roku stick and i am impressed to **** at how well it performs overall. fast library navigation speed (thumbnails popup instantly), and transcoding and playing back mkv bd rips with subs to 1080p 10-12mbps stream w dolby is pretty damn impressive. completely negated my needing to get a separate htpc to act as a playback device on my main tv. i can use my plex server to stream media to my tv, pc's & mobile devices with ease.
 
How's playback on larger mkv files (BDRIP, 1080p, Bluray quality)?

I had to switch to SPMC on my FireTV due to the crappy playback of xbmc/kodi. I would have been all over plex if it would play DD+/DTSHD on FTV.
 
kingofslackerz said:
How's playback on larger mkv files (BDRIP, 1080p, Bluray quality)?
Click to expand...

pretty much flawless. most of my stuff is around 9-10Mbps, some stuffs upwards 15-17Mbps. no problems. i'm not even using a particularly strong machine to run plex server: an i5 650 w 8 gigs of RAM with Win8+Plex installed on a HDD. plex supports direct stream and direct play, so if transcode is not needed it'll stream the media to your device raw (i.e. little to no overhead). if you like to force hardsubs or need to downsample 7.1/5.1 to 2 channel to play back on a particular device then plex will transcode on the fly and that could potentially be a bottleneck if the machine you're running the server off of isn't sufficiently beefy. iirc you need cpu rating of 2000 passmarks for each 1080p stream
 
kingofslackerz said:
How's playback on larger mkv files (BDRIP, 1080p, Bluray quality)?

I had to switch to SPMC on my FireTV due to the crappy playback of xbmc/kodi. I would have been all over plex if it would play DD+/DTSHD on FTV.
Click to expand...

My HTPC/backup machine running Win Server 2012R2 on an 8GB Core2 Quad 9550. I can stream a mkv blu-ray to a Roku 3 no problem (needs to transcode these days because of a silly Roku firmware update that'll hopefully be fixed again someday) - I usually limit to 12/s for the sake of the Roku. It was a dream when it didn't have to transcode - I could stream 2 1080P streams to different Rokus plus a stream to an iPhone that was transcoding.

But this thread is about Kodi - feel free to start one on Plex if you want info on that.
 
For cord cutters. You need to download this iptv plugin for kodi. The stalker plugin has over 500 free live channels(hbo\showtime\cinemax\movie channels\cable channels)
Download Stalker plugin
https://github.com/kenji123/pvr.stalker-old/releases

go to settings -> addon -> install from zip

In setttings -> enable PVR -> Enable stalker plugin and config with http://1.iptvprivateserver.tv/ and change the last 2 numbers of the mac address in stalker config.

A live tv section should appear as part of the menu.
 
Ciera said:
pretty much flawless. most of my stuff is around 9-10Mbps, some stuffs upwards 15-17Mbps. no problems. i'm not even using a particularly strong machine to run plex server: an i5 650 w 8 gigs of RAM with Win8+Plex installed on a HDD. plex supports direct stream and direct play, so if transcode is not needed it'll stream the media to your device raw (i.e. little to no overhead). if you like to force hardsubs or need to downsample 7.1/5.1 to 2 channel to play back on a particular device then plex will transcode on the fly and that could potentially be a bottleneck if the machine you're running the server off of isn't sufficiently beefy. iirc you need cpu rating of 2000 passmarks for each 1080p stream
Click to expand...

vitocorleone said:
My HTPC/backup machine running Win Server 2012R2 on an 8GB Core2 Quad 9550. I can stream a mkv blu-ray to a Roku 3 no problem (needs to transcode these days because of a silly Roku firmware update that'll hopefully be fixed again someday) - I usually limit to 12/s for the sake of the Roku. It was a dream when it didn't have to transcode - I could stream 2 1080P streams to different Rokus plus a stream to an iPhone that was transcoding.

But this thread is about Kodi - feel free to start one on Plex if you want info on that.
Click to expand...

I'm really asking in reference to FTV, since OP mention that's how he was running the beta. Kodi runs large/intensive video files fine on my core2duo HTPC I built.
 
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