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Comment by kornhole | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if you have been following the news about Apple expanding its advertising business. If you don't want a corporation collecting data about your viewing, you could modify your approach slightly and try kodi.tv. I have Librelec running on a RPI with attached SSD as house media server. The add-ons catalog is large and growing, but it won't have all the channels you might want.

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Does kodi / librelec have decent Netflix/Prime/HBO Max/Apple TV+ apps? I was under the impression they don't really support the big streaming apps and aren't really of use outside of watching torrented content.

Kodi didn't the last time I checked.

Note that unless you're running Windows or Mac, 4k from Netflix is not available anyway. In fact, 1080p would not be available, according to their system requirements. Linux tops out at 720p on both Chrome and Firefox. I have to assume this would extend to Kodi on whatever platform you're running Kodi on.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

Correct, if you use Linux you can pay a monthly fee to Netflix for the privilege of installing spyware on your machine to view 720p video.

Meanwhile torrents are a search away and they give me a no-nonsense .mkv file in 5 minutes, to watch wherever and whenever I want: phone, PC, TV, internet or no internet. The choice is easy.

> for the privilege of installing spyware on your machine

Not sure about this. Firefox and Opera both support 720p.

But, because of their choices here - or the terms of the content deals they've signed, idk - Netflix doesn't get as much money from me as they could. 720p is not sufficiently better than 480p (to me) to warrant paying them for 'standard' service, let alone their premium tier at $20/mo. So I just get their basic service.

Their loss, really, although collectively the Linux customer base is probably tiny enough that it's inconsequential to them.

> Not sure about this. Firefox and Opera both support 720p.

Don't you have to enable widevine to get Netflix in Firefox?

Yes, good point, I don't typically think of that as spyware, but it is.

On some devices Kodi can pass through to the platform native DRM if that supports higher resolutions, but bluntly you will be wasting your life waiting for updates as it breaks constantly.

Or the official apps right, that page is just about browsers (and implicitly unofficial apps)? So you could have the Kodi & Netflix apps on an Android TV (e.g. Nvidia Shield) device and have 4K Netflix.

I imagine Netflix gathers a lot of viewing data, and I can see a time when ads make it into the streaming platforms natively. Cable TV started out as an ad-free offering, and now it's almost 50% ads.

If you can't wait for the p2p download then you are already lost.

Needing the latest an greatest or not being able to wait a year to watch something means they already have you firmly in their grip.

Just pay the media troll toll if you can't wait.

Like I really want to deal with torrenting, Plex servers, etc. Been there done that. I travel a lot and don’t want to deal with downloading media ahead of time.

I also stopped pirating music the day iTunes was introduced

How many devices are you allowed to register again?

What if your CC on file expires?

Well I guess you can just ask (beg) if you need assistance accessing 'your' music library

You do know that iTunes just sells MP4s, right? They work in VLC. You can replicate your iTunes library to a NAS trivially and have it Just Work (now, the iTunes client isn't very smart about network drives, so you're better off having a local library that's backed up to said NAS, but that's not the issue at hand).

iTunes has sold regular non DRM encrypted music since 2008.

Haven't a lot of torrent sites gotten in trouble or implemented rules to mitigate against their sites providing content before the official release since they come out so fast and not always from official sources?

I've never heard of issues of having to wait any significant amount of time from an official release on the streaming companies.

Yea I've never seen a wait period after the official release either. This guy must be confused.

Torrenting is great but TBH I'm not going to waste my time setting up Sonarr/Radarr and maintaining tracker accounts to torrent stuff that I can watch through services I already have access to.

The reference was to new gear and new media both.

New gear usually needs time to marinate before it gets some hacking freedom.

New media is best ignored -- if you are always waiting with baited breath for 'the next new thing (TM)' they already have you and you will pay happily.

I personally ignore all new content and the odd time I want to see what's new there is more than enough waiting for me to download...

I'm not consuming every new song or film as they are released or even within a year of release because that is a waste of your attention and it's controlling you like a dog begging for treats.

The intention of the comment was -- if you just can't wait.. then pay your master. Seems you made your choice.

It has some and more. There are many add on channels with content you won't find on any of the commercial boxes. For example, Films for Action is a great channel addon with a curated set of alternative films. They don't fit the desired narrative of commercial systems and would be difficult to get any airtime from corporate broadcasters.

I think there are hundreds of channel add-ons. You can also connect a TV receiver. I like playing content from Newpipe on my phone directly to Kodi. You will find that button in Newpipe settings.

Kodi has Netflix and Amazon Prime apps that I've used. They get the job done, though they ain't pretty.

What's the advantage over Plex then? I've installed Kodi before but it didn't seem nearly as polished as Plex. Plex is doing away with plugins but I've never needed those anyways for Movie/TV content.

Unfortunately yes, I saw the news about Apple. I'm waiting to see what will happen concretely, but I'm not very optimist. We'll see and maybe it will be time to move to another device :'(

The “news” about Apple was Bloomberg guessing about Apple’s plans with zero evidence. Pretty sad example of the success of clickbait.

Your TV probably has more than one HDMI input. So you can try kodi.tv by repurposing an old computer you have laying around. I haven't yet convinced my partner to ditch her Comcast set top box. So we use both. Kodi is my first choice for viewing anything. The other box is being used less and less.

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