Only thing I don't like about it is that Netflix isn't on it.. but that's hardly Kodi's fault.

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 the official Media Remote using a special key combination.

Almost. I had a set of ffmpeg scripts that would encode blu-rays at 720p just so so it would playback without any dropped frames. But yeah, everything else was fantastic.

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

If you are interested in the latest Kodi, check out "libreelec" [0] a maintained fork of "openelec". "openelec" support was dropped in 2017 [1].

[0] https://libreelec.tv/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenELEC

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/gp/product/B00WQG6A8C. The second was solved with a kodi plugin called web launcher. I had to mod the plugin to make it launch pages in kiosk mode on the leftmost of my dual displays (basically passing a custom command line to chrome), and I am not sure whether it has been updated for py3-based kodi.

https://github.com/Sandmann79/xbmc

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

These might work better than using web launcher.

I have been doing this all the time with Kodi. Just disable media scanning and browse through. I'm sold on Kodi because for years it has been the only way to watch video on my Linux NUC without tearing, it digests every media I can throw at it, and it's overall just very easy to configure and use.

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.

Also, file lists order folders and files independently.

If not for those two things, Kodi would be perfect.

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

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, you need some client that can a) connect to your storage location, and b) play it out over HDMI etc. For me, Kodi is the best-functioning of those options.

If you're content with watching on a laptop/PC screen (or if your PC has your TV as an AV-out), however, then you're golden and there's nothing that Kodi really does over-and-above to make it worthwhile.

EDIT: Ah, I see[1] you do indeed have a PC connected to your TV. In which case - yeah, there's no reason not to do what you're doing!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29634830

Lack of a built in file manager on any device is an excellent indicator of "how bad the manufacturer is trying to reduce your freedom."

Moreover, they correctly understand what the TV industry works so hard to obscure. It's computers all the way down. If you're gonna slap a computer on my screen, then let me use it as a general purpose computer. If, however, you insist on putting a computer on my screen that I hate, then make it easy for me to avoid it.

And of course, we know why they don't do this -- the low cost of the TV is subsidized by the data they sell to others gained by spying on you.

> They want "just a screen" precisely so that they can use whatever they want on it, including filemanagers if they wish.

Yep - and if the screen is "just a screen" (i.e. has no file manager or other media-interfacing functionality on it), there there will need to be some _other_ computer in the stack of "computers all the way down" to provide the media-interface. For me, Kodi does that job perfectly well, but it doesn't work well for everyone.

> the low cost of the TV is subsidized by the data they sell to others gained by spying on you.

Yes, this is an uncontroversial statement of a distasteful truth.

Maybe newer TVs (this one's 10 years old) have support for more codecs, but I'm not inclined to replace it when it otherwise continues to work well. I'll just drive it with a Raspberry Pi running Kodi and call it good.

You can also use apt to customize OSMC because it's based on Debian[1].

The maintainer, Sam Nazarko seems really helpful too.

[1] https://osmc.tv/wiki/general/installing-packages-via-apt/

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

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, sometimes make things better.

Another path is to go in search of a better way to enjoy the music.

Both have their value, but if you start down the path of looking for the better way, don't lose track of the original goal. Too many audiophiles are still listening to their equipment instead of the music.

(Same goes for people playing vintage video games, watching movies, writing things by hand with fountain pens, supporting sports teams... this is a core part of modern civilization, I think.)

When I used Kodi that was part of the appeal.

But then I had two Kodi boxes and media on a NAS and wanted them to sync played status. Eventually Emby with the Kodi Sync plugin was the way to do that instead of trying to share a database.

But then I got an Apple TV 4K, and the Emby app runs on that too, and now same as you it’s what I end up using.

My wife can use it from her mobile. We can play movies for our kids or stream a YouTube-clip. I'm using a Firefox-addon to cast clips from my browser to Kodi. That's about it, no killer app, just convenient digital media on an old, dumb TV.

Only I'd wish Yatse was ported to iOS (Unless my wife's iPhone dies soon).

That's how I use Kodi on an (otherwise) headless HTPC (a RPi) connected to my TV. You don't need to build and maintain a content library, plugins, etc. Select Videos - Files, navigate to a folder, select the file and enjoy.

> What are people's favorite "killer apps" for software like Kodi? Is it just convenience and I've have had bad luck?

Control via a TV remote and no need to hook up my laptop to the TV every time is a killer convenience feature for me.

MadVR know their stuff, they recently announced a very expensive home theatre video processor [1].

[1]: https://madvrenvy.com/

There's room for both, they're targeting entirely different crowds.

But yes, I absolutely do this too, it's so much more flexible and lets me run sponsorblock and other plugins in youtube/twitch/some random site I just found. Those are the real killer features for me, so it's very unlikely that any media-center app will ever convert me.

...but on a raspberry, running libreelec and with a bluetooth remote? that is the real kodi killer use case

I did have similar experiences with Kodi in the past. What I realized is that many plugins are of really poor quality and can mess up Kodi in very unexpected ways - the way issues manifest may not hint at a plugin being at fault. No sandboxing and a bunch of dubious Python modules. And that's besides all the possible security issues.

Nowadays I just have a basic skin + JellyConn and it's been very solid and smooth.

The Kodi plugin ecosystem is really alluring with all the possible features but it's a can of worms. Kodi itself is quite stable and predictable otherwise, in my experience.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't have much to say about Kodi media library organization - it seems a bit finicky so I'd do that either manually like you're already doing or with some other software more suited for it (Sonarr+Radarr/Jellyfin/any other good recommendations?)

Then someone advised me on buying a nVidia Shield on which I put Kodi. And from there it was a completely different experience. Just controlling everything from a remote with my thumb, on a unified interface, with more information (posters, synopsis, status of viewing, resuming, sync with my Trakt[1] profile...) Then I bought a Logitech Harmony remote, so I was able to control my whole setup (TV + soundbar + nVidia Shield) with a single remote.

But I had more and more issues with Kodi, plugins failing, crashes... and with Netflix I took the habit of being able to resume somewhere (browser, smartphone) else what I started on the TV. Something not supported by Kodi because it's only a local player. So I looked at Plex and my experience improved even more.

Now with Plex I have my own "Netflix" so I can start something in a browser at work, resume it on my smartphone in the bus and finish it in my couch on my TV at home. And I can share this with friends and family! I don't have to ask them for a USB key to share files. Or setup a weird FTP access for them to download the files. They have a nice UI to do what they want : consume a media file that they know I have. It's accessible from everywhere : browsers, smartphone, tablets, media box, smart TV... And I can even play my own music on my Sonos players!

There's a lot of things for which I like to hack stuff and all that. But I don't want to have to do that to watch a movie. I want a simple and user-friendly UX. And that's exactly what Kodi and even more Plex offers.

So to me the first and biggest game changer was to have a smartphone-like experience on my TV, with a small device in one hand I was able to switch apps and enjoy my media in a nice UI.

[1] : https://trakt.tv/

Currently I'm using the ATV 4K and Infuse (and MBP SMB share) for "other" content. Works a dream.

This 100%. Mini PC's are cheap and hook to TVs just as easily.

Years back A friend who lived int he country side wanted to watch a specific Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. I had it on my server at home and I also happened to have my Linux laptop with me. So I plug my laptop into the TV, sshfs mounted my servers video directory and played it using VLC on his big screen. Took maybe 5 minutes to setup and he was thoroughly impressed that I have "my own streaming service".

It seems that a lot of people reach for Plex or similar in this situation, but setting up Plex requires a separate computer to serve the files. If all you want to do is play videos on your local network, then Kodi might be a suitable option, since it can run directly on hardware like smart TVs without the need to set up a separate computer.

This is probably beside the point, but thinking back, XBMC made a lot of sense back in 2003 when it was released. It wasn't as feasible to a) have an entire spare PC and b) hook it up to the TV easily. I certainly didn't have HDMI or even VGA on my TV back then, only composite and maybe component analog video...

I use a wireless keyboard+trackpad combo as a remote which I leave out of the way inside my living room table when not in use.

And honestly, I don't see why that's not a common practice. Super easy to use.

No Android fiddling needed at all.

(typically when I mention this, somebody will helpfully pipe up that "It's easy! You just need to download this, that and other thing; open up these ports; setup the server and TV on its VLAN; make sure that these drivers and codecs are installed and updated; etc etc etc" with zero awareness of how much extra work it is compared to "double click on movie file" :D )

I do the same on my PCs, however in my bedroom Kodi is king. I use it on a Raspberry PI which has a good CEC implementation, which means one can use both the TV and Kodi from the same remote: super convenient. I also have a Bluetooth keyboard with trackpad and a 2nd SD with Manjaro Linux ready, but they stay mostly unused. I'm in the process of replacing the RPi with a Chromebox, which has a much better desktop performance than the RPi, but have to wait for the CEC-HDMI external interface to arrive since the Chromeboxes don't support it.

I run apache and dump videos for the family in a web root and everyone knows that media.local gets them to the files - everything can play mp4 as is at this point (vlc if you want to be fancy or just a regular browser), even the boys firestick/silk has zero issue playing back FullHD 1080 mp4 in browser.

Total maintenance time averaged over a year, 2 minutes.

Wireless controller support isn't an issue I have a wireless keyboard with a touchpad built in and that is the "TV remote".

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 open-source interoperable ecosystem" and “one tap on the phone to have something playing on the big screen”...

[0]https://airflow.app/

What I liked much better than Kodi was WiiMC on the original Wii. It was similar in that you point at a SMB share and just go, but navigating with a wiimote was pleasurable in its own right. Made for a nicer experience.

One day I will invest some time and see if there is a PC equivalent to WiiMC that runs on modern hardware and supports modern codecs.

kodi is definitely a bit complex at the best of times though. trying to set up the home screen and menus exactly how you like it can be very tedious and using the jellyfin plugin is just adding another layer of complexity on top of all that.

im thinking i might just try a plain OS soon that opens jellyfin media player app on boot. it probably wouldn't be able to do as many things from the remote as kodi but maybe something like that KDE Connect that your using might be the way to go when i have to do anything complicated

I wanted to tinker with Proxmox so the Jellyfin server is virtualized, but running it directly on the host/hypervisor OS is probably a better choice in order to transcode with the GPU. GPU passthrough in Proxmox is not intuutive and I deemed it not worth the troubles for my use case.

I have a network storage shared with the different VMs and containers, an airsonic server, a podcast downloader (airsonic being not so good at that), a DNS, Kiwix, Calibre, Komga for use with Tachiyomi (lots of work to set up good content) and a few social games (pictionary, posio, codenames etc).

`ssh user@host cat file.mkv | mplayer`

it's more one of those things that spark joy because of how weird it is, but I end up using it all the time.