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!
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okay, i went at it for a few hours and got the ux to something minimally acceptable to me; however, the wife disagrees. the same pain points for me are hers, as well.
i am not sure if this can be modified, but if so then i havent figured out how to resolve it. i have tried out a few skins, but i have changed to arctic zephyr to make sure the language i am using translates correctly.
the biggest issue we currently have with UX is selecting a show/movie to watch. the multi-step process just to get into a poster list is something i am looking to curtail. the following examples are how i can browse movies by genre to select/play a movie
on android TV’s jellyfin app:
on Kodi jellycon app:
i believe i can reduce the steps count by 1 or two on kodi by booting to the videos or videos>addons menu, but in the current steps there is selectable content in androidtv>jellyfin app on step 2. in kodi>jellycon, selectable content doesnt appear until step 8.
the steps to get here are still wife-unacceptable. it feels too much like using a computer to her instead of sitting down to consume passive media. do you know if there is a way to change this to be a bit more similar to jellyfin/netflix/prime/d+/p+/hulu/max/curiosity stream/every other major streaming platform by lowering the barrier steps to selectable content?
I ran into this too. My bad, I included a screenie of the menu used to fix it but didn’t explain it proper.
On this Screen, you’ll see two panes. The Left one are the items on your homescreen, the right one are all their settings:
For me, the Videos Menu isn’t useful, so I scrolled left until the the little ‘X’ button has highlighted and deleted it.
Next up, the Movies item:
Hover it and scroll right a couple of times till you reach the right pane.
Select ‘Action’ and you’ll see a popup:
Scroll down to Add-On > Video Add-On > JellyCon > Jellyfin Libraries > Select your movie Library (In my case it’s just called Movies) > “Movies - Genres” (You might have to scroll down a bit to reach this option) > Finally select “Create menu item to here”.
After you’re done with this, go back to the skin settings, scroll down to the ‘Extras’ section.
This eluded me for a while, but this skin doesn’t make it very clear when there’s menu items out of view, so while the settings menu looks like it ends at the “Video / Music OSD” category, you can actually scroll further.
Keep scrolling down until you reach the ‘Extras’ section.
On that menu, make sure “Enable forced views (experimental)” is enabled, this will be useful in a sec.
Now when you return to the home screen and hit the ‘Movies’ item, you’ll be thrown directly into the genre selection!
Now, the genres can only be presented in a list unfortunately. It looks a bit goofy with the blank poster on the left.
Sorry about this. Since I have my movies shown all at once in alphabetical order, I hadn’t noticed.
If you’d prefer to forgo the genre selection and just get all your movies at once like I do, check the ‘Extra tips’ at the bottom of this post.
Anyway, select one of the genres and you’ll be thrown into another list view, hit Left and you’ll open the View Settings.
From here, customize your view as your like, there are many views to choose from so you can finally escape from that dreadful list!
If you’re curious, the one from my original poster is called “Poster Flix V2” with the “Clearlogo” option enabled.
Just like the settings menu, there’s more options that it seems, make sure to scroll down!
After you’re happy with it, open the view menu again (depending on the “View Mode” you’ve selected you might have to hit the Up arrow instead of Left this time around. Enable the ‘Lock View for Movies’ option.
Now your movies will always use the style you’ve selected.
After this setup, your workflow should be:
1. Open Kodi
2. Select Movies
3. Select Genre
4. Play Movie
Much better than before right?
Hope this helps!
Extra tips:
You can customize your view for TV Shows, Seasons and Episodes separately. Simply open the View Options menu when browsing, customize your view and choose the ‘Lock View’ option, just like you did for your movies.
Go back to the menu from Step 1, scroll to the item you want, scroll right to reach the right pane, on the Widgets section select Widget 1 > Widget 1 again > Add-On > Video Add-On > JellyCon > Custom Widgets > Scroll down and choose “Episodes - Next Up” (or any other widget from the list you want) > Use as widget > Customize the name if you want and hit OK.
Customize the view settings like if you’d like (I was using the ‘Landscape Widget aspect’ on my original post)