Just curious to know if anyone has been using the same distro for multiple years/decades and what or if you have it takes for you to want to switch to a different distro?
Just curious to know if anyone has been using the same distro for multiple years/decades and what or if you have it takes for you to want to switch to a different distro?
the creation of a non-kodi htpc/media center alternative that works like a smart TV OS and works on a raspberry pi would get me to change my streaming device.
i stream jellyfin from a home server, and jellyfin on kodi is painful to use :(
an OS that can be controlled with tv-controller buttons and has an interface similar to any of the other players in this space would make me throw away my nvidia shield tv in a heartbeat
It is? What issues are you having?
I’ve used the Jellycon plugin for a while and it worked amazing.
kodi is really good for local media, but none of my media is local. instead of using the smartTV-style jellyfin UI, jellyfin indexes the media from the server and throws up a text-only list of media in a folder structure. if i rip another movie, it needs to be indexed.
though it is pulling the index and functioning as expected, it makes the experience feel like browsing in dolphin for spreadsheets instead of getting ready for movie night.
the experience was bad enough where i just plugged the old streaming stick back in and hid my failur. i didnt tell the wife about my experience (she hates the streaming stick and wanted an OSS option). i said i would deliver one, so she thinks i just haven’t done it yet. :(
Ah wait, maybe I can help!
When you tried it, were you using the Default Kodi skin? Because if so, the list view it uses by default does indeed look crappy, but it’s customizable!
When you open the Movies or TV list, look at the bottom left, you should see a icon that looks like this:
What this means is, you can press the direction listed to open a options menu. So for example pressing Left when this is shown opens this sidebar:
Try changing the display mode from “List” to something like “Poster” and you get this:
The movies you see on this screenshot are all coming from my Jellyfin server, not too bad eh?
And this is just the beginning, if you look into the built-in Add-ons store in Kodi, there’s tons of third-party skins you can install, and thanks to the “Playlists” and “Widgets” system in Kodi, you can really fine tune your setup!
This is what my Kodi homescreen looks like with the Arctic: Zephyr Reloaded skin and a bunch of tweaking. It’s setup to show the next episodes of what I’m watching right away:
It’s all still coming down from my Jellyfin server. The icons on the left are shortcuts to open the full library view of the server instead of the local media, allowing me easy access to my library instead of having to navigate a bunch to reach the Jellycon Lists. You can customize these views too:
Now, setting this up can get pretty annoying, specially as all these settings seem to be 15 menus deep into Kodi and the skin settings and you might find yourself going back and forth quite a bit, but I think the end result is well worth it.
If you ever fancy giving it a try again, I’d recommend installing Kodi on your computer and playing with it there. When you got something you’re happy with, transferring the settings over Raspberry shouldn’t be too hard. Hope this helps!
whoa - this looks amazing!
i am definitely still in the working phase of wanting something, so i will be checking this out again within the week. thank you!