*** Official Kodi (née XBMC) Thread ***

[Phate]

Has anyone got any experiences with XBMChuntu?

I'm thinking about changing my installation to this and having it run this so it boots straight into it.

But a quick question is - what will its access for network drives and shares be like? easy enough without problems?

Also USB with films etc on - again no problems reading these I assume?

I am a proper Linux noob so you'll have to bear with me.

Jake

 

[Jonners]

Only the installer, SD card reader and a SD card. Just plug in the card and run the installer, it'll quickly download and copy the required files to the SD card, once done, insert it into the Pi and start it up. That will then run another installer on the actual Pi and download the latest RasBMC.

Let the installer do its thing to the SD Card, popped it in to my PI Model B, loaded up, the installer is downloading the files, fingers crossed this time works...

 

[Jonners]

Right we're all good here, it now works but it's very slow sometimes when double clicking or clicking programs then get more.

Now I need to get my head round installing iPlayer and the likes...hmmms

 

[Frozennova]

Need some help with smart playlists.

I'm setting them up to use as custom channels in PsdeudoTV.

I'm trying to set one up for Bond films, which XBMC hasn't scraped into sets.

Creating the playlist to find films by EON Productions gets me around half but not all so I've resorted to searching by Actor, however as Daniel Craig and Timothy Dalton are also in a couple of other films in my library these show in the playlist too.

Is there anyway of either excluding them or an easier way of creating a Smart Playlist to grab just the Bond films

 

[NZB]

Has anyone came across a working XBMC addon for Netflix yet? XBMCFlicks is useless. Only our living room TV is a smart TV so looking to get it working in the bedroom, kinda annoying having it on a browser window in there and having to use a wireless mouse instead of a remote.

 

[wildest_jjk]

Hey guys,

I have very limited knowledge on media player applications and need some advice on whether or not XBMC is right for me?

Just a bit of information on the setup I have in case it helps with my questions. I have quite a high powered HP server that will be running ESXI shortly, this can have software installed if needed. Alongside this I have a custom built server that is going to act as a NAS datastore.

In my room I have a desktop PC with Windows 7 and an Xbox 360 (soon to be an Xbox One). I am also considering buying a Smart TV but this isn't important if there are better options for media. Currently I have a standard HD TV.

Ideally I would like to be able to view my films that are stored on my NAS, record live TV to my NAS and stream this back, view online video (Youtube, iPlayer etc) and maybe some other things that I am not aware of.

Would XBMC be a good choice and provide all of the functions I need it for? Is it going to be better than the Samsung Smart Platform and the Xbox One? What do I need to install it on, do I need to buy something or can I have it on my server/desktop?

Sorry for all the questions, any help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

 

[Confused]

The only thing you can't do natively with XBMC is record Live TV - but there are a number of solutions available for this which are supported via an XBMC plugin.

XBMC does not *need* a central server, each instance of XBMC can exist quite happily on its own, be that with a local database or a shared MySQL database.

By running a copy of XBMC 24/7 on the server, you can ensure that all your clients always have instant access to the latest media, without having to run a scrape on the client. At the moment, assume that XBMC needs a display, so no command-line-only running of it, but that's the only limitation to running it on a server.

I have mine running 24/7 on my WHS2011 box, which also has a TV tuner card and is running ArgusTV for that purpose, as well as MySQL and a number of other applications.

 

[wildest_jjk]

Thanks for the response! That's really helpful.

How would I set this all up on the server though?

What would I need at the client side to run XBMC?

Thanks

 

[Confused]

It depends on exactly what you want to do, and what OS you want to use.

I'll assume Windows, because that's what I know


Shared Database: MySQL
This will allow you to store your media metadata centrally, and will allow watched status etc to be shared between multiple clients. This isn't needed, but I think this is a really great feature - for example: stop a film downstairs, retire to bed and resume it at the *exact* same point!

Media storage:
This can be pretty much anything - SMB sharing, NFS sharing, FTP, Webdav etc - this can be anywhere that is accessible by your clients, be it locally, or even over the internet!

LiveTV: ArgusTV
Install this on a PC/server on your network that's preferably always on that has TV tuner cards. You can specify where to store the Live/recorded TV (same machine or networked location). XBMC's add-on will point to ArgusTV to load the EPG etc.


On the client side, you've got a lot of options - from an Android box, Raspberry Pi, AppleTV, Mac, or a full-blown PC, running either Linux or Windows Pretty much anything you can think of!

 

[Frozennova]

You won't be able to run XBMC on a vm running through esx. I tried running it on windows 7 as an esxi vm and it throws a graphics error of some description when you launch it.

 

[wildest_jjk]

Oh that sucks then! So I would need to have WHS or something then?

 

[MeMeMeMe]

Need some help with smart playlists.

I'm setting them up to use as custom channels in PsdeudoTV.

I'm trying to set one up for Bond films, which XBMC hasn't scraped into sets.

Two methods:

First Method:
* Remove each bond film from your library (by context menu)
* ensure there are no nfo files in these movies folders
* go to your movies source (Videos -> Files -> Movies)
* Edit content, and change scraper to themoviedb, or universal movie scraper (better)
* Update your library.

This will find your bond movies, and add them to the james bond collection.

Second Method:

* Go to Tags in the movie library, create James Bond Movies tag.
* Create a playlist, and use Tag -> James Bond Movies

After you do it, export your library to separate files, so that nfo files are created that store the data. That way if you ever need to rebuild your library, you w2ont have to go through this again.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

Oh that sucks then! So I would need to have WHS or something then?

WHS doesn't work either, for me anyway. For XBMC to run, it needs a video card connected to a tv or monitor. You cant run it in headless mode.

However, for your purpose you don't need it to. I have a server with all my movies on it.

This is the setup I used to have:

I also have three separate PCs, each with their own copy of xbmc. During setup of XBMC, I set up video sources on each install which point to the shares on the server. So, each XBMC has its own library, and can play music, video, etc.

I recently switched over the MySQL method that's described in the first post of this thread.

For that, you install mySQL on your server. Then you set up one of your XBMC machines to use that library. Once the media is all scanned in, you just copy a couple of text files to the other machines, and they are set up.

Once that's done, they all share a single library, and if you watch something on one machine it gets marked as watched on all of them.

XBMC is fantastic for everything you'd want to do with your media EXCEPT watching and recording live tv. There are plugins for that, but my impression is it's still maturing in that and isn't fully reliable.

I personally use a plugin called QuickWMC which allows me to load Windows Media Centre from with XBMC, watch and record live tv there, and drop back to XBMC when finished.

 

[wildest_jjk]

This is sounding quite confusing really!

Thanks for the advice though. If I set it up on my PC is there any way to get it working so that if my TV is hooked up to my computer I can have it as a second display or something. Then XBMC loaded on my desktop will run on the TV?

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks

 

[NZB]

Yeah, just plug it in via HDMI then in XBMC go to System > Video Output > change display mode to Fullscreen #2. There's an option for full screen windowed on that same page if you need it but i find it doesn't play well with other playback options.

 

[Frozennova]

Two methods:

First Method:
* Remove each bond film from your library (by context menu)
* ensure there are no nfo files in these movies folders
* go to your movies source (Videos -> Files -> Movies)
* Edit content, and change scraper to themoviedb, or universal movie scraper (better)
* Update your library.

This will find your bond movies, and add them to the james bond collection.

Second Method:

* Go to Tags in the movie library, create James Bond Movies tag.
* Create a playlist, and use Tag -> James Bond Movies

After you do it, export your library to separate files, so that nfo files are created that store the data. That way if you ever need to rebuild your library, you w2ont have to go through this again.

Thanks, Just removed all my media and rescraped and everything is in sets now. I think it was down to using couchpotato creating the NFO but not adding the sets information.

 

[Pete1989]

Anyone else interested in using XBMC over ChromeCast? I was think of having a tablet running XBMC and then 'cast' it to the TV. Essentially using the tablet as a large touch screen tablet.
From what I've seen of ChromeCast though it seems audio is going to be the problem.

 

[ZXSpectrum]

Anyone else interested in using XBMC over ChromeCast? I was think of having a tablet running XBMC and then 'cast' it to the TV. Essentially using the tablet as a large touch screen tablet.
From what I've seen of ChromeCast though it seems audio is going to be the problem.

Can you do that thought? I thought the idea was that it actually streamed the content over the net rather than streamed it to the tv from the tablet. So basically your tablet would initialise the video from say youtube or Netflix and you can control it from the tablet but the actual video is being downloaded and played on the Chromecast unit?

 

[Pete1989]

Can you do that thought? I thought the idea was that it actually streamed the content over the net rather than streamed it to the tv from the tablet. So basically your tablet would initialise the video from say youtube or Netflix and you can control it from the tablet but the actual video is being downloaded and played on the Chromecast unit?

I thought the tablet/pc told the ChromeCast where to find the video. So it could be on a local network or YT etc. it's not going to work out if the box. I think people over on the xbmc forum are working on something.

 

[wildest_jjk]

Yeah, just plug it in via HDMI then in XBMC go to System > Video Output > change display mode to Fullscreen #2. There's an option for full screen windowed on that same page if you need it but i find it doesn't play well with other playback options.

Is there anyway to lock it to only display on second screen? As soon as I stop extending the displays it comes onto my main one. I know this is normal though.