[HN Gopher] Kodi 19.0
___________________________________________________________________
Kodi 19.0
Author : danfritz
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-02-21 08:45 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kodi.tv)
(TXT) w3m dump (kodi.tv)
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Kodi is great. But each time I have upgraded it some things have
| improved and somethings have stopped working. Currently the guide
| doesn't show which items are being recorded and there doesn't
| seem to be any way to stop series record. But I am too scared to
| upgrade in case it breaks everything!
| covidthrow wrote:
| Check the Kodi wiki for the plugins you use.
|
| Chances are most don't work in the new version and you'll be
| left with everything you're used to broken.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| it does not have an appimage. does it?
| faitswulff wrote:
| I just want to stream media from my main computer to my devices.
| Does Kodi cover this use case?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Yes.[0] You just need to share it from your main computer over
| whatever protocol you prefer, and add it to the Kodi library.
|
| If you're talking about streaming _from_ Kodi, both the
| official web interface and Yatse[1] support that. Yatse will
| even update the Kodi library metadata based on it.
|
| That said, if streaming _from_ Kodi is your primary use-case
| then Kodi is probably not a good fit. It doesn 't really have a
| headless mode, and it'd be more efficient to just access the
| file share directly. Universal Media Server might be more up
| your alley then.[2]
|
| [0]: https://kodi.wiki/view/File_sharing
|
| [1]: https://www.yatse.tv/
|
| [2]: https://www.universalmediaserver.com/
| stryan wrote:
| Probably not, Kodi is designed more as a client. I think the
| classic setup is installing it on a HTPC or Raspberry Pi under
| the TV and it plays files either locally on it or from a NAS.
|
| If you want to stream stuff checkout Jellyfin or Plex.
|
| EDIT: To give more context since people are downvoting; yes you
| can theoretically stream from Kodi using various other apps,
| but it doesn't do any transcoding by default and isn't a strong
| choice. Quite frankly, I've also never gotten it to actually
| work but perhaps that's just me.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Thanks!
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Yes, I do it with dlna (upnp).
| nkg wrote:
| I have tried a few software, but I ended up using nginx with
| the directive "DirectoryIndex". It allows you to browse a
| folder from you main computer with a browser, you click some
| media, streaming starts, nothing fancy. :)
| whalesalad wrote:
| Do people use this kind of software for anything other than
| piracy? Serious question.
| noja wrote:
| It's a video player.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Mainly use it to watch YouTube
| kyriakos wrote:
| There are legit uses but I must admit piracy is the main one.
| On the other hand some activities are legal depending where you
| live.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I use it via libreElec for my set top box.
|
| I have ripped my entire Blu-ray collection to mkv, and also
| watch disney plus and Netflix on it.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Kodi is a media center for playing whatever media you already
| have, even if it is your own rips or your own purchased
| downloads. Kodi was already a popular application for years
| before someone decided to sell prepackaged devices running Kodi
| that included a third-party pirate-streaming plugin.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Even if you don't use any plugins for streaming pirated
| content a lot of people use it as a player for downloaded
| torrents or streaming from seedboxes.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| I've used kodi since it was XBMC, "backups" was always its
| main focus, the amount of content available as a DRM free
| download is extremely limited and if we are realistic the
| amount of people that do their own rips form movies they own
| can probably fit in a movie theatre.
|
| Kodi never went full on popcorn time but it's pretty useless
| for anything but a large and quite likely pirated media
| collection.
| forty wrote:
| You can have a DVD reader plugged to it and I also have a
| DVB-T adapter to watch TV. There are also emulators to play
| games nowadays (how legal that is most likely depends on
| the country you are in).
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Probably not, unless you create backups of Blu-ray movie you
| buy the legitimate use of Kodi and Plex is questionable, Plex
| at least offers streaming channels.
|
| I'm still waiting for a decent service to centralize all
| available content amongst my streaming providers Apple TV seems
| to only work with Amazon Prime atm.
|
| I would pay for a service that does this, bonus points if they
| can also tie in an automatic vpn to bypass goeblocks so you'll
| have access to the entire library of a given provider
| regardless of your location.
|
| I tried building one at some point but no provider offers a
| decent API to get that data and scraping them was too hard and
| Netflix makes it very hard to do.
| zodiakzz wrote:
| Your waiting is pointless for a device as walled as an Apple
| TV because such an app won't be allowed on a FAANG app store.
| easton wrote:
| It doesn't need to be, Apple is building that app. In fact,
| they already have it on there, the only notable holdout for
| the centralized progress/search functionality is Netflix.
| Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+ and Prime are there already.
|
| https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Apple-TV only shows me prime video, I also have Disney+
| and Netflix, it seems that Disney+ is supported based on
| their site but not Netflix.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Some of us use it for watching legally recorded OTA
| broadcasts.
| mopsi wrote:
| I use it as a media player for screens in a retail store. Runs
| nicely off a Raspberry PI.
| r_singh wrote:
| I tried to use it to build a dynamic digital signage solution
| for the medical industry and it was a nightmare.
|
| I persisted and wrote a plug-in that pulled data from a file
| that was updated with an API. I was impressed at first, but
| soon, the inconsistency of the experience on different
| platforms killed it for me.
|
| Ultimately it was easier to run Android on an Odroid and use
| React Native to build an app.
|
| I got the use-case all wrong though. A good use case is running
| Netflix on a Pi.
| covidthrow wrote:
| Yes. My wife and I have a strict "pay for what you consume"
| policy in this house.
|
| I'm a former "industry" professional, so I have the utmost
| respect for people being compensated on whichever end they
| process/release material we prefer. (Usually Blu-ray, but
| sometimes digital if we can't find Blu-rays.) In fact, it's so
| important to us that we have only a handful of pre-owned
| movies/TV; all stuff we can't buy new.
|
| Obviously it's a bit of a legal gray area to rip Blu-rays we
| purchased, but we don't do anything that would prevent content
| creators/platforms from receiving compensation. We don't
| format-shift (i.e. If we have a DVD, we don't obtain an HD
| version) and only rarely platform-shift (i.e. download a Blu-
| ray if we've only purchased the streaming rights) if that's the
| only option.
|
| Legally shady but ethically sound stuff we do:
|
| - torrent TV shows that we own the same-resolution discs for
| (it's faster than ripping/transcoding hundreds of hours of
| video)
|
| - torrent TV/movies we've purchased effectively-lifetime
| licenses for (willing to remove if for a good ethical reason a
| platform revokes said license; hasn't happened yet though)
|
| - pre-download Blu-rays we order if it'll take some time to get
| here
|
| - torrent the very limited number of broadcast TV shows we
| record and strip ads from (this is probably the most
| questionable thing we do, ethically)
|
| Far as music, most platforms at this point allow some form of
| non-DRM download, so we generally don't do anything unusual. We
| use several unauthorized plugins for our music streaming
| services, but do not download/keep anything we haven't
| purchased.
|
| We absolutely _do not_ "preview" stuff. If we want to
| "preview", we rent the movies and watch them there. If we
| choose to purchase, we may torrent, but generally just wait to
| rip.
|
| No doubt we're in a minority, but Kodi is an invaluable way for
| us to consume our ethically-sourced content. (Even our
| children's friends seem to have ethics with this stuff, i.e. if
| they "gift" some MP3s to a peer, they'll also give them a gift
| card so they can purchase that content. Not sure how common it
| is, but I certainly don't remember doing this during the early
| days of CD ripping and Napster.)
|
| I don't have a huge problem with some people fudging a little
| more than we do, but take great offense at people who use it
| simply for the pirating plugins.
|
| I don't, for example, take much issue with people geo-shifting
| stuff they can't otherwise obtain. (The content creator is
| still in the same $0 profit situation their publisher put them
| in.) But stuff like Popcorn Time is really not cool for pretty
| much anyone except people who can't obtain the content for
| whatever reason.
|
| Make of it what you will. But guns don't kill people; _people_
| kill people.
| paulie_a wrote:
| That's not legally shady, that is just plain illegal
|
| Now personally I dont pay attention or care about copyright
| infringement. I commit plenty myself and gave done so for
| decades. I also pay plenty on services and such for content
|
| I'll continue to commit copyright infring and purchasing
| media. But I am not going to pretend it's just legally shady,
| it's illegal, I know it and just don't care
| tom_mellior wrote:
| You seem to torrent a lot. Do you do it without seeding?
| covidthrow wrote:
| We do not torrent a lot. I was outlining the ways in which
| we "bend the rules" when we do. 90-95% of our digital
| collection is self-ripped.
|
| And no, we do not seed or even upload. That can make it
| difficult to obtain stuff sometimes (bad/low reputation)
| but we'll hop proxies if we need to.
|
| And before you ask, we don't feel bad about leeching. It's
| one thing if someone else wants to contribute to piracy,
| but I'm not willing to myself. This is a mode of
| convenience, not necessity. The likelihood that we would be
| contributing to someone with similar ethical principals is
| pretty low, so we're thankful to the folks that provide,
| but could take it or leave it.
| darknavi wrote:
| Do you still watch your physical media? Your "pay for what
| you consume" policy jives with me but I will virtually never
| watch a physical Bluray.
|
| I wish it was easier to buy DRM free digital media directly
| from the people who make it. I don't like the ewaste of
| buying something on a medium I never intend to use and I'd
| rather pay the creators directly instead of having every
| person in the physical goods chain take a cut of their
| profits.
| covidthrow wrote:
| We sure do! We've had server outages/maintenance, vacation
| travel with a self-imposed no-distracting-technology policy
| where we still wanted to do family movie nights, and of
| course as gifts. We also limit the children to our own
| library, but they do not have unfettered access at night,
| so if they want to watch something in their room to fall
| asleep to, they are allowed 1 or 2 discs at a time.
|
| We've got philosophical/psychological issues with the
| unending smorgasbord of streaming services, so the children
| aren't allowed to use those alone for the most part. They
| have full access to our family library, but they often
| prefer the discs for some reason. (Our oldest has a DVD she
| watches frequently and refers to it as "retro".)
|
| We've got external SSD drives with our favorites (since a
| few server-downtime left us wanting something more
| convenient--we keep most of our 3+ year old discs in a
| fireproof safe), but new stuff is often watched by the kids
| on disc.
|
| And before you ask, no, the safe isn't "for the discs".
| It's just large enough to have plenty of room for them in
| CD cases, and that's a pretty reasonable backup in case of
| disaster. Not sure I understand why some of our friends
| happily show off $80,000 worth of Blu-rays or $100,000
| worth of vinyl in their living rooms. I'd hate to have to
| recreate our collection, so why bother if we can easily
| protect it?
| Bayart wrote:
| There's a surprising number of people who archive and read from
| NAS/server their physical media. I've always been tempted to
| believe it was nothing more than a cope-out to justify the
| existence of software that facilitates mass piracy (because I
| myself don't see the point of it for anything else than analog
| media), but it seems to be at least a very active niche.
| parrellel wrote:
| It's a nice interface for a media pc / diy dvr, and having
| searchable metadata is nice. I'd have it set up right now but
| they are terrible with plugin compatibility between versions,
| and the hacks various people have done to provide front-ends
| for legitimate streaming services are touch-and-go.
|
| The blatant piracy angle does seem to be the bigger market at
| this point.
| clircle wrote:
| Kodi is very awesome, but never worked well for me. This bug
| rendered it unusable. Hope it has been or can be fixed.
|
| https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=344992
| NortySpock wrote:
| I've been enjoying Kodi 18 "Leia" as both a NAS video client for
| the TV and as a game system emulator.
|
| Multiplayer arcade games from the early nineties have been
| especially well received when we have company over... Cadillacs
| and Dinosaurs, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles work great as 2-3
| player brawlers.
|
| Raspberry Pi 3 is great for the sprite-based graphics but
| basically can't keep up with 3D graphics; no big deal though as
| long as you respect that limitation.
|
| I'll keep an eye on Kodi 19 Matrix and see if I spot a compelling
| reason to update.
| alibert wrote:
| If anyone has free time and is willing to, I think the Kodi team
| is looking for Android developers as the Android version is
| unmaintained.
|
| https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=360369&pid=3012332#...
| jahlove wrote:
| ugh, I suppose that's why the android TV (shield TV) version
| feels so unpolished?
| izacus wrote:
| That explains why there's no actual support for AndroidTV
| services and background refresh.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Why would you want to run Kodi on Android when you can run it
| on Linux ?
|
| Not trying to be snarky, really want to understand.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Cause there are hundreds of cheap android TV boxes one can
| buy which don't run Linux. Also kodi for android runs on
| amazon's fire sticks and Googles new chromecast (the Google
| tv one)
| covidthrow wrote:
| Many people have Android TV on their TVs, or boxes like
| Nvidia Shield.
|
| While a Raspberry Pi is a pretty simple way to get Linux/Kodi
| on the TV, getting it to _integrate_ well is a whole other
| story. (Remotes, CEC, other services like Netflix, etc.)
|
| I'm your typical Linux hacker of 20 years, but even I
| switched from Raspberry Pi to Nvidia Shield a couple years
| ago because the pain of using and maintaining it is so much
| lower for an interface that should be as simple as "pick and
| play".
| pjmlp wrote:
| Android TV already has apps that do a much better job than
| Kodi, so the question remains.
|
| To pick one of your examples, Netflix has its own app.
| covidthrow wrote:
| Netflix has a better app to use the Netflix service, but
| it's totally useless for our own collection.
|
| Kodi is easily the best game in town to consume self-
| hosted media. Or, at least navigate it.
| boudin wrote:
| I run it on an Android TV. I'm thinking of plugging small
| device running Linux though, like a raspberry pi because my
| tv (a sony from 2015) is not maintained anymore as the last
| update introduced a huge amount of bugs (the tv can't play a
| lot of h264 videos, h263 videos doesn't work at all).
| bonzini wrote:
| This is why my next TV will just be a 43" monitor, not
| anything "smart". After all that's how I am using my
| current TV set, which does not even have a DVB tuner. Since
| modern TVs are effectively computers that are controlled
| with a remote control, I might as well use a real computer
| and manage myself the software that it runs.
| heyitsme wrote:
| Just to add what others said, could also run it on android
| tables. Sadly, the linux-running tablet options aver very
| limited.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| You can use streaming apps on the same device not so with
| linux. On Kodi android you can even get 4k hdr netflix with
| the input steam addon.
| sosuke wrote:
| Easy to install and use on several Android TV boxes out
| there. NVIDIA Shield perhaps?
| covidthrow wrote:
| I've gotta say, this was the most irresponsible Kodi release
| yet.
|
| It's never been _fun_ to upgrade Kodi (something inevitably
| breaks), but this is by far the worst upgrade of all. And now
| to find out that the _automatically updated_ version that
| showed up on my Android TV is _unmaintained_..?! That takes the
| cake.
|
| Even though Python 2 was set to EOL with _6 years_ warning (12
| if you count the original timeline), Kodi didn 't announce a
| change until last summer, I believe. So of course the vast
| majority of completely useful, basic utility plugins weren't
| updated, there was no enforced transitional upgrade path, and
| now we're stuck with an unmaintained Android version that
| contains this massive codebase change and 80% broken plugins.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for all the work the Kodi
| devs do. It's an immensely helpful program and by far the most
| used in my house. But this whole thing reeks of bad decisions.
|
| There are no doubt going to be a significant number of issues
| found once plugins are upgraded (how can you tell the new
| system is stable enough for release when there are so
| exceedingly few plugins that work anymore?), and Android users
| are indefinitely in the dark as issues arise.
|
| This version didn't _have_ to be pushed out to Google Play, and
| knowing there was no maintainer makes such a choice hugely
| irresponsible. "We had to upgrade from Python 2.6 in case
| there are CVEs in the now defunct version!" makes sense. But
| now we have an unmaintained version in Android that broke
| everything, so if there are CVEs... guess who's not getting
| them? (Granted, it's sandboxed, so I'm not sure the concern
| makes a lot of sense on Android, but still.)
|
| The Python 2/3 netsplit has been such a thorn for so long, so I
| can't entirely blame the Kodi devs. And it's not like a Kodi
| 18/19 netsplit would be a "good" idea. But this automatic,
| breaking change with no warning and no maintainer is seriously
| bad form.
|
| "We're lucky we got the final Android 19 Matrix build out at
| all," is definitely not how I see it. "Lucky" would be Android
| users missing this very broken upgrade until they got all their
| ducks in a row and maybe more plugins are updated.
|
| (And the whole, "well fix it/maintain it yourself," is a pretty
| poor response to bad project management in a project of this
| size, in case anyone is so inclined to suggest that. I maintain
| enough other OSS right now, thank you.)
|
| _walks off stage_
| romanvm wrote:
| It was announced in January 2018 that Kodi 19 will move to
| Python 3 so addon devs had plenty of time.
| covidthrow wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying that.
|
| After my Kodi 19 broke, I went searching for some
| discussion on the plugins I use. Pretty much every
| discussion I saw where the dev of the broken plugin
| acknowledged the transition did so during last summer.
|
| Not sure if it was just coincidence, or if Kodi said,
| "look, y'all, we're moving forward! Get on it!"
|
| That makes this release a little better. Still doesn't make
| releasing a known-unmaintained version on a platform more
| palatable, though.
| hedora wrote:
| I wonder how hard it is to move a big codebase like this off
| of python to a language where programs have a longer half
| life.
|
| Alternatively, has anyone considered creating an LTS python
| version? Back in the old days, debian's perl maintainers
| effectively did this for a subset of cpan, and it worked
| well.
| beagle3 wrote:
| Python 2.7 was the previous LTS version: it lived for 8
| years IIRC, of which 5 weren't originally planned.
|
| Even LTS versions get sunset at some point.
| covidthrow wrote:
| Both Lua and Ruby--very embeddable scripting languages--
| have had excellent track records of forwards compatibility.
| (Usually requiring extremely simple changes if that.)
|
| Python went the way of Perl 5/6 (though to a much lesser
| extent) with their upgrade and broke several fundamental
| language features.
|
| To this day, I still don't understand the aesthetic reason
| people seem to prefer Python over something like Ruby. I
| get all the institutional reasons (Python was adopted by
| academia), and I get the performance reasons (Python used
| to be much faster), but with the exception of scientific
| stuff, the library support is pretty darn identical between
| the two languages.
|
| And, at least among the few people I taught Ruby to that
| had previous Python experience, every single one said, "oh,
| this is a _lot_ easier to understand /use."
|
| Obviously, opinions are like... well. But my very humble
| opinion of Python is that its reputation is undeserved, is
| _not_ as intuitive as a pseudocode language as Ruby is, and
| frankly I think the really painful, protracted transition
| from Python 2.6 to 3 is more a product of people who really
| only understand 1 programming language not wanting to
| change. (I see it as the modern BASIC.)
|
| But I'm not here to start a flame war. Just saying there
| are other reasonable languages that are easy to learn and
| much more stable than Python's 2/3 transition.
| [deleted]
| dchuk wrote:
| Has anyone migrated from Plex to Kodi who can weigh in on whether
| it was worth it? I have a solid little raspberry PI based home
| media streaming & download setup, with Plex as the central media
| app, but I've been curious about if kodi is wholesale better in
| some regards.
| covidthrow wrote:
| We use Emby Server to maintain watch status sync and various
| not-Kodi-friendly devices in our house. The TVs use Emby
| through Kodi because of Kodi's superior interface and
| processing.
|
| Kodi 19/Matrix broke that, however, so now we're just streaming
| directly from the NAS until it's resolved on Emby's end.
|
| While the 2 experiences are nearly identical, we like the per-
| user/other device stuff that Emby brings in. (As well as
| outside-the-home streaming when we travel.) If you don't need
| or care about that stuff, just pulling from a central data
| store works very nicely in stand-alone Kodi.
|
| The Emby and Plex apps are trash compared to Kodi if you care
| about flexibility/customization.
| colordrops wrote:
| I couldn't figure out how to bypass logging into Plex with the
| latest version, so I dumped it and moved to Jellyfin which is
| fully open source. It does all I need, including having both
| Roku and Android apps, and supports DLNA so I can stream to
| various devices around the house. Don't miss Plex at all.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Unfortunately there's no support for Samsung tizen TVs which
| is keeping me on plex
| dexterdog wrote:
| Samsung TVs are so horrible with spyware that it is best to
| keep them off the network and use an attached device like a
| Shield or Roku. This is also true with most other "smart
| TVs"
| kyriakos wrote:
| I understand the spyware part but one thing i noticed is
| that i dont get any ads which a lot of people I saw
| complaining about online. I think ads are location based
| and i'm outside their zone.
| Vaslo wrote:
| I use both. Plex is better for the less technical members of my
| family. I burned all my wife's Workout DVDs and she uses it
| with ease. For HDR movies I prefer Kodi. My understanding is
| that plex transcodes from the originating machine where as Kodi
| will transcode on the machine that receives it - so the HDR
| films get transcoded on a machine with a graphics card.
|
| For some systems they come as simple apps you can just fire up,
| or you can have the separate apps load up. Not hard to switch
| between them.
| oefrha wrote:
| Transcoding on the receiving end doesn't make sense to me. If
| you're trying to save bandwidth, transcoding on the receiving
| end is obviously pointless. If you're transcoding just to
| play an unplayable codec, well, why not just get a better
| player that supports the codec? What am I missing?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Kodi doesn't do any transcoding, it's up to the player to
| support the codec.
| [deleted]
| heyitsme wrote:
| I have a computer on my network that runs an nfs server and
| hosts media, then use kodi on nvidia shields (or other
| computers) to access it. It works extremely well... as in not
| even a single issue for years now. I should stress that this is
| at the level of just serving files, as I don't show any
| metadata associated with the media (as it's mainly personal
| home movies, etc).
| forty wrote:
| How do you authenticate to the nfs server? Did you setup
| kerberos ?
|
| I have always been reluctant to go that path, it felt to
| complex for my home use case. I generally use ftp instead for
| this reason, but I guess it's not as efficient.
| heyitsme wrote:
| I don't password protect the media files on the nfs server
| - they are visible password-free from any machine on my
| local network. Of course if someone has sensitive material
| and/or the local network is shared, say, then some extra
| setup is needed.
|
| EDIT: another common use-case for me is basically grabbing
| lots of youtube videos/playlists via youtube-dl, which then
| lets me watch them on anything and everything than can run
| kodi commercial-free without jumping through hoops (i.e.
| browser addons or sideloading third party youtube apps,
| etc)
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| I share my media on an Ubuntu server via NFS - all I've
| done is set the shared media library as read-only for the
| devices it's shared with, and specify the (local, reserved)
| IP it should be sent to. The only authentication is the
| fact that it's LAN-only, and being sent to the right
| (local) IP
|
| Kerberos would be _far_ too complex to be warranted here -
| all that 's needed is nfs-kernel-server and /etc/exports on
| the server side.
|
| Granted, my network is reasonably locked-down (MAC address
| filtering, (reserved) IP addresses available matching the
| number of devices on the network), but security beyond that
| has never really crossed my mind.
| madaerodog wrote:
| Kodi V19 is going to give dyslexics readers like me shivers :P
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-21 23:02 UTC)