The Kodi/XBMC Thread - Watch things and stuff

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Kodi/XBMC Thread - Watch things and stuff

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

For people considering Advanced Launcher vs. alternatives for emulators, you can get AL looking pretty good:

This is using the Transparency skin.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2013 05:33

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:01

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

kri kri posted:

I think these programs wanted to scrape data for shows is from the time when xbmc did not do as robust a job as it does now in terms of scraping. There is no reason to write .nfo files from these programs in my opinion.

Also I don't think refreshing a show reverts the artwork any more, as long as you have local thumbnails it will use those always.

I still store nfos for my movies so that I can manually edit genres in a way that makes them useful - no "action," "action-adventure," "action-packed," "high action" BS genres, just one "action" genre that actually has all and only my action movies. I don't trust internet geeks to tag those consistently enough, same as with my MP3 tagging. That still doesn't mean using Sickbeard for metadata, though, because 1) I let XBMC handle metadata for TV, and 2) using Sickbeard would be just as much relying on Internet geekery. I use Ember for my movie nfos.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2013 03:42

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

The other issue is that if you follow the xbmc wiki guide, be sure you remember 'xbmc' is the username and 'xbmc' the password. That confused me for a while because I use "xbmc/xxxx" as my user/pass for connecting via the web interface or connecting with XBMC remote (entered inside of xbmc itself in the Settings->Network section), so I kept configuring advancedsettings.xml to use those, but that's not correct. I followed the wiki exactly, so it was something like CREAT USER 'xbmc' IDENTIFIED BY 'xbmc'; which means it's xbmc/xbmc instead in advancedsettings, NOT xbmc/xxxx.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2013 21:09

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

berzerkmonkey posted:

As a side note, sweet Jesus, renaming everything so XBMC recognizes it is a real time consuming pain in the rear end...

It's not if you just use sickbeard to mass rename everything perfectly. I guess it has to be close enough for sickbeard to figure it out, but how else are you naming your files if it can't?

# ¿ Apr 3, 2013 18:23

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Try to teach your mother or techno-phobic roommate how to steam from Mac to Windows over the network using VLC, then try teaching them to use a properly set up XBMC install. There's a world of difference in usability and presentation.

It's getting more and more capable with time, too. My parents can use Airplay to stream cell phone videos and pictures straight to the big screen TV for all of us to watch. The add-ins extend this basic principle to other functionalities - without teaching my dad various websites, he can use the ESPN app to watch games from ESPN3, play music from Grooveshark, etc.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2013 02:03

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

outlier posted:

So I got a common problem - stuff isn't showing up in my XBMC library. And after much hacking around, renaming, shifting stuff ... it still isn't being recognised. And in a peculiar way.

We used to use Boxee, but about 2 months ago shifted to XBMC. Of course, there was the usual teething problems but now almost all of our movies are now being recognised. However almost none of the TV episodes are being identified, and in weird ways. For example, I have both seasons of "Romanzo Criminale" in a folder, with the files named "Romanzo Criminale.S01E02.What the title is.mp4". And XMBC sees the folder and the first three episodes - that's it. They're all named in the same fashion, so why just the first three? I thought maybe that the subsequent ones are being labelled as watched and not shown, but marking the series as unwatched doesn't change anything.

All the other TV series we have showing strange behaviour - all of "Terriers" was picked up, all but one of "Kings" shows up, a handful of "Game of Thrones" is found, several other shows have not a single episode picked up. I've used FileBot to rename stuff to a consistent, correct and XBMC-friendly way but it doesn't seem to have made any difference.

Any pointers on what I can try next? Could identification have crashed oartway through in some way and is not restarting?

Right click on the show, go to show information, then refresh. Likely it's reading an nfo file somewhere with incomplete listings. Once you've told it to refresh all episodes it ought to fix itself. If this is the cause, avoid using nfo files for tv with xbmc. Better to rely on the scrapers.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2013 17:40

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Lowen SoDium posted:

The OP has some recommendations for PC hardware, but they are all low end for video playback. If you want to play games, you will pretty much need to build a gaming PC. Anything that could play modern games is not going to have any problems with XBMC. Your primary concern is going to be fan noise. It is possible to build a silent or quiet gaming PC, but you might end spending a little more to do it, and getting a little less power for it.

Myself personally, I have a Intel Atom/ION XBMC PC on my TV and a high end gaming PC that is also my primary desktop PC in the same room. I ran a Redmere HDMI cable in wall from my game PC to my TV and I switch the PC's displays to the TV when I want to play games using Steam Big Picture. This was the best solution I could come up with that would allow for me to use my PC with a keyboard and mouse normally and easily play games using Steam Big Picture with out buying 2 high end gaming PCs.

Basically the components just don't exist (or didn't exist 1.5 years ago when I made mine, I guess) to match all of these requirements:
1) mATX/mITX case that looks decent
2) CPU + fan that fits in said case
3) High-end low-profile video card
while staying cool enough to really stress these components. Noise isn't such a problem because modern motherboards can ramp up the fans when necessary and run silently otherwise, so my HTPC is silent during movies but sounds like a vacuum during serious gaming / emulation. It's definitely a bunch of compromises, and it's not the smallest, or nicest-looking, or most powerful for gaming, or quietest, or cheapest option. Still, I'm happy with it and it can emulate the hell out of the Wii using Dolphin.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 23:07

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Rutibex posted:

If I wanted HDMI I'd just get a netbook.

So why don't you? If you want to play emulators later than maybe Sega Genesis you're going to need processing power of some kind anyway. Also HDMI is completely standard these days, including on Raspberry Pis and other such options.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 18:04

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Rutibex posted:

I already have a netbook. I want something to replace my old Xbox that can connect to 100% of TVs I encounter rather than like 40% that have HDMI ports. I travel a lot this isn't going to just sit in my basement. I'd also like to maybe get a few for my nephews for christmas who only have old TVs.

So why doesn't your netbook work? Serious question, as this seems to be a strange niche to me you're asking for - not the device you have that would work, but instead an additional thing that would also do basically that but less well. Literally 100% of HDTVs have HDMI inputs, so you're looking at truly old TVs that don't. Maybe get one of these for those that don't? http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Universal-Composite-Converter-Standard/dp/B0080KN18K

There's a new Chrome USB thing, but any TV lacking HDMI surely won't have USB.

I think you're basically looking at an RPi or just watching TV on your netbook if you're on the road somewhere that the hotels don't have HDMI-ready TVs, and otherwise using the same netbook via HDMI. Maybe there are other options, but none I know of, especially since a lack of modern TVs doesn't bode well for the WIFI speed in terms of streaming for options like a Roku or WDTV.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 18:56

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

All of this is better suited to the. Htpc thread really, but anyway:

-You can have one box of a two box setup just be your main everyday pc and run flex raid in the background, though that's not free.

-Nothing more powerful than a raspberry pi is going to have a relic like composite out. Xbox 360s modded are only like $200 these days and not hard to find. Decade old tvs for them with hdmi off of craigslist won't be all that pricey either.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 23:27

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

EC posted:

XBMC 13 Gotham has a new preview release. Here's the details:

I bolded the stuff that looked interesting.

Yesssssssss, finally with the caching. This will be huge for my brother's place.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 23:43

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

I've never understood why people would use these gutter skins when Transparency is right there.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 22:42

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:01

berzerker: Aug 18, 2004; "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Hogburto posted:

If I wanted to share my media with family over The Internet, how do I arrange it so the kids only see kids cartoons?

I use subsonic for this, not XBMC. Costs like $5, which is well worth it.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 04:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Kodi/XBMC Thread - Watch things and stuff