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Comment by fipple | Hacker News Reader

All the fuss about Kodi makes me think I should get a box. Is it worth it?

Kodi makes BitTorrent only marginally easier to use. It integrates a VPN a little more seamlessly than a laptop running your general-purpose OS of choice. All this makes a much bigger difference for a non-technical user, but for the average HN commenter the benefits are much less obvious.

Kodi has one of the most arcane UIs I've used in years. Also, you need to find and set up plugins to get streaming going and this is a complicated process. The streams can be good but not worth all the hassle.

A younger more daring me set up SportsDevil back in the day (like a couple of years ago) so I could watch the Florida Gators play while living across the country. It was SUCH a pain to get a reliable stream. And even then, it was potato quality. With GoogleTV providing all the channels I need, and at a 35 dollar a month price, I can't see any reason why I'd go back to this route.

That’s because KODI is really just a media player with a plug-in framework.

The plug-ins are NOT part of KODI’s core functionality.

Although it could be argued the native stuff are plugins too, they are built on the same framework but source your media from locally attached storage (USB, SD card, HDD) or network server/stream (RTSP, SMB, FTP).

(At least with OSMC) the current default skin is terrible IMO, install the older Confluence skin and things are much simpler.

YouTube and twitch plugins work well for me.

In short: no. Kodi itself is the environment, the problematic work is done by plugins that look for free movie streams. It all takes longer than Netflix and other paid services. Nothing to get too excited about.

True, but not even including these streaming sideloaded plugins, what percentage of Kodi users are playing legitimate content?

And if more than 0%, where in the world are they getting the DRM free digital files?

If you want to try it, just get a Raspberry Pi and install it yourself.

Or just set it up on your computer.

I gave it a try, and found it clunky and annoying to use, so I've since built a solution that meets my specific needs.

If you have a huge media collection, maybe. It's just a convenient HTPC like setup that you can hook-up to your TV.

You can easily install it on an existing computer and try it out if you don't want to spend money right away.

Kodi is what used to be XBMC, once it was obvious a “10ft” interface was desirable beyond the needs of OG XBox hackers it was revised to run on PC (XBox is 99% a PC anyway).

Eventually nobody knew why it was called XBox Media Center when nobody really used it for the XBox. So they changed the name to KODI because it vaguely resembles REWIND STOP PLAY icons:

|< [] |> |

K O D I

So that’s a little history, but I still mourn the loss of legacy screensavers like the excellent ‘matrix’ and the native ProjectM/Milkdrop support which hasn’t isn’t present in the Pi version or newer PC builds for years AFAIK.

Anyway, this is like banning Chrome because you can go to a porno website.

Modding my xbox to run XBMC and play DivX rips is what got me into Home Theatre in the first place.

I now use an AppleTV 4K to stream UHD movies from a NAS. But the concept is the same.

Thanks for posting that explanation - it makes the official name mildly better. Although I'll probably just keep calling it XBMC.

I had thought it must be named after someone's baby brother.

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