I really wanted to move to Kodi to be able to run everything locally (Plex requires a login etc) but it was way too much friction for my use case (and I don't think it is such a unique use case). I keep my media in separate folders for each genre and wanted to do a one-to-one mapping of folder to "library" so that I can just click on, say, "sci-fi" and see all the movies for that in a grid and so on. Plex makes this very easy and for Kodi, I had to do investigate all sorts of workarounds like creating "dynamic views" (or something similar I think) and even then it wasn't as smooth and easy as Plex. Also, some of the features require specific themes which is not a great design IMHO. Basically gave up and have continued with Plex - it seems to be the gold standard in the balance between polish and features (always happy to explore other options though).

Your experience echoes mine to a certain extent.

When searching for a media platform, I tried various ones including Kodi (and the various forks/environments like LibreElec et. al), Plex and others.

I also have a folder hierarchy which Kodi doesn't respect (very annoying) and played around with Plex as well.

However, I am unwilling to log in and share telemetry about my own personal library with Plex.

As such, I went with MythTV, which isn't as slick as Plex or Kodi, but does most of the job (that is, manage my local media library). It lacks in streaming options, including podcasts and the devs seem much more focused on the DVR than anything else.

That said, for what it does, MythTV is pretty good, but there's a lot it doesn't do.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I don't like Plex's telemetry aspects either and am pretty much focused on my own content (e.g. I don't really use Plex TV or other streaming bits). In addition to what I mentioned about my library organization needs, I just need to be able to view/search my content easily (Plex's default grid layout and sorting/filtering options are pretty well done in this regard e.g. being able to sort by Date Added/Release Date etc) and view them on my TV via using Chromecast (Plex's android client is far from perfect but gets the basic job done). If a solution covers these aspects well enough without having to share telemetry, I'll drop Plex in a heartbeat.

>If a solution covers these aspects well enough without having to share telemetry,

MythTV[0] does okay with video and music libraries.

It's available as packages on most distributions[1] which allows me to keep my front end and back ends synched just by performing regular package updates.

It is open source and can also be compiled from source[2] if you prefer it that way.

I run my back end on a VM with 4GB RAM and 2 vCPUs. My front end is a fanless miniPC[3] (I bought it almost three years ago, so I'm sure you can do better now for the same money) which renders 1080p/Stereo (I don't have a surround-sound system, but that's definitely supported) via HDMI pretty flawlessly. I imagine that a newer front end device could easily handle 4K (although I don't have a device to display that) resolution.

Edit: I'd add that the front end and back and can run on the same system, but the physical layout of my home made it more useful to split the two.

The Mythtv Wiki[4] is also pretty good for many set up/configuration issues.

It's not perfect by any measure, but it does the job without telemetry or external dependencies.

Core MythTV development seems pretty active, but the broader "ecosystem" (plugins, addons, etc.) is very weak.

[0] https://www.mythtv.org/

[1] https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Packages#Targeted_Linux_Distribu...

[2] https://www.mythtv.org/download

[3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NXPSCK9

[4] https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Main_Page

Edit: Fixed front end/back end. Added the missing link.

Kodi allows you to regex your way to any folder hierarchy: https://kodi.wiki/view/Scrapers

Not to be an ass but why not store your films in a flat layout (one folder per film) then use the built in features like "movies > by genre > sci-fi"?

Because metadata doesn’t exist. There is the directory (NOT a folder). There is the movie file. End of report.

Because of a limited world view. Movies are ONLY one thing. SciFi OR Comedy. Not both. Never both.

Because the idea behind a genre-based movie directory hierarchy is _genius_, and the tens of thousands of people that don’t fight the practical organization methods of media catalogs are sheep.