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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

Do people use this kind of software for anything other than piracy? Serious question.

Kodi is a media center for playing whatever media you already have, even if it is your own rips or your own purchased downloads. Kodi was already a popular application for years before someone decided to sell prepackaged devices running Kodi that included a third-party pirate-streaming plugin.

Even if you don't use any plugins for streaming pirated content a lot of people use it as a player for downloaded torrents or streaming from seedboxes.

I’ve used kodi since it was XBMC, “backups” was always its main focus, the amount of content available as a DRM free download is extremely limited and if we are realistic the amount of people that do their own rips form movies they own can probably fit in a movie theatre.

Kodi never went full on popcorn time but it’s pretty useless for anything but a large and quite likely pirated media collection.

You can have a DVD reader plugged to it and I also have a DVB-T adapter to watch TV. There are also emulators to play games nowadays (how legal that is most likely depends on the country you are in).

And how many people do you think use it as a DVB-T/DVD player?

I don’t understand really why is it so controversial to admit that Kodi’s sole existence is dependent on piracy as it provides a good UX to a large library of media files.

Same goes for Plex, everyone knows what it’s used for.

Sure there can be legitimate uses for this software but without the piracy angle we know that it wouldn’t be maintained or even really exist.

Kodi started as a homebrew media player for the Xbox to play additional media formats and files from sources other than the main DVD drive.

No idea, but at least I do use it for legal content. I believe it even works with some steaming DRM nowadays (even though I don't use that). No idea what others are doing, but I don't see why people would use kodi to see pirated content more than other video player/media center. A pirated video file should be readable everywhere.

There's a surprising number of people who archive and read from NAS/server their physical media. I've always been tempted to believe it was nothing more than a cope-out to justify the existence of software that facilitates mass piracy (because I myself don't see the point of it for anything else than analog media), but it seems to be at least a very active niche.

I, for one, use it mostly with legal extensions to watch public videos and listen to internet radios, because I have an old TV without smart features, and it does the job well.

I use it too to "cast" Youtube videos to the TV (very easy to do with the "Kore" app (or "Send2Kodi" for iOS users)), as I don't want to use Chromecast.

It's a video player.

I tried to use it to build a dynamic digital signage solution for the medical industry and it was a nightmare.

I persisted and wrote a plug-in that pulled data from a file that was updated with an API. I was impressed at first, but soon, the inconsistency of the experience on different platforms killed it for me.

Ultimately it was easier to run Android on an Odroid and use React Native to build an app.

I got the use-case all wrong though. A good use case is running Netflix on a Pi.

Mainly use it to watch YouTube

It's a nice interface for a media pc / diy dvr, and having searchable metadata is nice. I'd have it set up right now but they are terrible with plugin compatibility between versions, and the hacks various people have done to provide front-ends for legitimate streaming services are touch-and-go.

The blatant piracy angle does seem to be the bigger market at this point.

Yes. My wife and I have a strict "pay for what you consume" policy in this house.

I'm a former "industry" professional, so I have the utmost respect for people being compensated on whichever end they process/release material we prefer. (Usually Blu-ray, but sometimes digital if we can't find Blu-rays.) In fact, it's so important to us that we have only a handful of pre-owned movies/TV; all stuff we can't buy new.

Obviously it's a bit of a legal gray area to rip Blu-rays we purchased, but we don't do anything that would prevent content creators/platforms from receiving compensation. We don't format-shift (i.e. If we have a DVD, we don't obtain an HD version) and only rarely platform-shift (i.e. download a Blu-ray if we've only purchased the streaming rights) if that's the only option.

Legally shady but ethically sound stuff we do:

- torrent TV shows that we own the same-resolution discs for (it's faster than ripping/transcoding hundreds of hours of video)

- torrent TV/movies we've purchased effectively-lifetime licenses for (willing to remove if for a good ethical reason a platform revokes said license; hasn't happened yet though)

- pre-download Blu-rays we order if it'll take some time to get here

- torrent the very limited number of broadcast TV shows we record and strip ads from (this is probably the most questionable thing we do, ethically)

Far as music, most platforms at this point allow some form of non-DRM download, so we generally don't do anything unusual. We use several unauthorized plugins for our music streaming services, but do not download/keep anything we haven't purchased.

We absolutely do not "preview" stuff. If we want to "preview", we rent the movies and watch them there. If we choose to purchase, we may torrent, but generally just wait to rip.

No doubt we're in a minority, but Kodi is an invaluable way for us to consume our ethically-sourced content. (Even our children's friends seem to have ethics with this stuff, i.e. if they "gift" some MP3s to a peer, they'll also give them a gift card so they can purchase that content. Not sure how common it is, but I certainly don't remember doing this during the early days of CD ripping and Napster.)

I don't have a huge problem with some people fudging a little more than we do, but take great offense at people who use it simply for the pirating plugins.

I don't, for example, take much issue with people geo-shifting stuff they can't otherwise obtain. (The content creator is still in the same $0 profit situation their publisher put them in.) But stuff like Popcorn Time is really not cool for pretty much anyone except people who can't obtain the content for whatever reason.

Make of it what you will. But guns don't kill people; people kill people.

Do you still watch your physical media? Your "pay for what you consume" policy jives with me but I will virtually never watch a physical Bluray.

I wish it was easier to buy DRM free digital media directly from the people who make it. I don't like the ewaste of buying something on a medium I never intend to use and I'd rather pay the creators directly instead of having every person in the physical goods chain take a cut of their profits.

We sure do! We've had server outages/maintenance, vacation travel with a self-imposed no-distracting-technology policy where we still wanted to do family movie nights, and of course as gifts. We also limit the children to our own library, but they do not have unfettered access at night, so if they want to watch something in their room to fall asleep to, they are allowed 1 or 2 discs at a time.

We've got philosophical/psychological issues with the unending smorgasbord of streaming services, so the children aren't allowed to use those alone for the most part. They have full access to our family library, but they often prefer the discs for some reason. (Our oldest has a DVD she watches frequently and refers to it as "retro".)

We've got external SSD drives with our favorites (since a few server-downtime left us wanting something more convenient—we keep most of our 3+ year old discs in a fireproof safe), but new stuff is often watched by the kids on disc.

And before you ask, no, the safe isn't "for the discs". It's just large enough to have plenty of room for them in CD cases, and that's a pretty reasonable backup in case of disaster. Not sure I understand why some of our friends happily show off $80,000 worth of Blu-rays or $100,000 worth of vinyl in their living rooms. I'd hate to have to recreate our collection, so why bother if we can easily protect it?

You seem to torrent a lot. Do you do it without seeding?

We do not torrent a lot. I was outlining the ways in which we "bend the rules" when we do. 90-95% of our digital collection is self-ripped.

And no, we do not seed or even upload. That can make it difficult to obtain stuff sometimes (bad/low reputation) but we'll hop proxies if we need to.

And before you ask, we don't feel bad about leeching. It's one thing if someone else wants to contribute to piracy, but I'm not willing to myself. This is a mode of convenience, not necessity. The likelihood that we would be contributing to someone with similar ethical principals is pretty low, so we're thankful to the folks that provide, but could take it or leave it.

That's not legally shady, that is just plain illegal

Now personally I dont pay attention or care about copyright infringement. I commit plenty myself and gave done so for decades. I also pay plenty on services and such for content

I'll continue to commit copyright infring and purchasing media. But I am not going to pretend it's just legally shady, it's illegal, I know it and just don't care

History of fair use and lack of precedent says it's not as definitive as you assert.

Have fun in court on that one

It is extremely definitive you will lose because it is copy right infringement

Fair use doesnt apply to illegally downloading a vid torrent because your copy is in the mail. That is clear cut

Probably not, unless you create backups of Blu-ray movie you buy the legitimate use of Kodi and Plex is questionable, Plex at least offers streaming channels.

I’m still waiting for a decent service to centralize all available content amongst my streaming providers Apple TV seems to only work with Amazon Prime atm.

I would pay for a service that does this, bonus points if they can also tie in an automatic vpn to bypass goeblocks so you’ll have access to the entire library of a given provider regardless of your location.

I tried building one at some point but no provider offers a decent API to get that data and scraping them was too hard and Netflix makes it very hard to do.

Your waiting is pointless for a device as walled as an Apple TV because such an app won't be allowed on a FAANG app store.

It doesn't need to be, Apple is building that app. In fact, they already have it on there, the only notable holdout for the centralized progress/search functionality is Netflix. Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+ and Prime are there already.

https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/

Apple-TV only shows me prime video, I also have Disney+ and Netflix, it seems that Disney+ is supported based on their site but not Netflix.

Wow neat! Happy to be proven wrong. This opens up the possibility of an open source app by reverse engineering the Apple TV app.

Some of us use it for watching legally recorded OTA broadcasts.

I’m happy for all five of you out there..

I use it via libreElec for my set top box.

I have ripped my entire Blu-ray collection to mkv, and also watch disney plus and Netflix on it.

I use it as a media player for screens in a retail store. Runs nicely off a Raspberry PI.

There are legit uses but I must admit piracy is the main one. On the other hand some activities are legal depending where you live.

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