re: Kodi gone to crap

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currently use Kodi and don't have a problem with it on any of my devices, but I am also interested in Plex, but really don't want to have to spend time ripping my DVDs and downloading torrents for the next year.

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You can do the same with Kodi. In fact you can set up the shows you like, and as episodes come out, it does it automatically with art work. Then it notifies you that you have a new show. Same with movies.

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You can do the same with Kodi.

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here we go....


I dont want to sound like a dick but what i talk about this i kinda do.

XBMC is the original XBox Media Center that was on the xbox machines when they came out. Their vision was to have the gaming console also be the media center of the household. Well the consumer didnt really pick up on it so Microsoft, dropped XBMC and uploaded its source code to the interwebs.

Well then coders took it and created very elaborate access to repositories and the forums ran with it. Everything was hunky dory until some idiot thought it would be a good idea to rename it to Kodi and market it as a all in one answer to cutting the cord. the it exploded and all the good streams got bogged down with has since made it hard to get something of good quality.


Well Plex is the same thing as XBMC/Kodi. It is a media center. you can do the same things. But Plex has marketed it self to where you run our own server and you are not pigeon holed to other peoples crappy streams. But you do have to have a way to get access to the media. Thats where torrents come in.

And with plex i have my OTA antenna hooked up where i can watch those channels anywhere in the world with my plex app.

Please make a guide or link something for all this. I feel real stupid right now and I want to do this when I get my PC built.

(no message)

Kodi works great for me. I use Genesis reborn and have solid streams 95% of the time. I tried terrarium about 6 Mos ago and wasn't impressed. The streams were good but it didn't have several of the shows I watch.

I'm using it now for LIVE TV. 209 channels. Best TV Guide in the world.

And here's the thing.... it's the same links that people are charging others for.

You can add your server and movies in your library to Kodi also. And yes, lately I've had a hard time getting scrapes too. The first time since going with the Durex build.

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Anyone know of a way to put my cable box through to Plex so I can watch cable tv anywhere? I assume it can't be done.

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There are a few options. The first and easiest is a Sling box. You should probably look at the Slingbox m2 (component) or 500 (HDMI) and stop reading. Production was halted, but they continue to support the product and the streaming service is still working without planned stoppage of support. They even dropped the fee for the mobile app a year or so ago in favor of using some ads.


More complicated:
You say "cable" box. Assuming you have cable (and not Google Fiber, AT&T u-verse, LUS fiber in Lafayette...), you can buy an HDHomerun Prime and rent a cable card directly from your cable company for <$5m. They must give it to you- it's an FCC violation for them not to. There are a few options for live streaming the channels. I think Plex may allow this, but Emby has been doing this a while pretty well-being you need a computer with it installed (it's essentially the same idea as Plex, but it's a different open-source community's product). It's free. They offer a "plus" version with monthly, annual, and lifetime contributions similar to PlexPass.
A bit more in-depth, some to all channels will be copy protected. You may not be able to access them through the streaming software. You can view them all anywhere in the house with a computer running Windows Media Center. There's even a crowd focused on making Media Center compatible with Win10. Silicondust (the people who make HDHomerun) are working to get their software Cablelabs certified. Their community has held their breath something near or over 2 years now. I don't believe it natively allows out of network access.
I can confirm that using this with a CableCard works with Emby to be able to stream at pretty good quality remotely on nonprotected channels. Without the "premium" Emby, you must find your computer's public IP to access it, but it's available in the free version, and this is a fairly easy thing to get around (one quick example would be a free remote software like TeamViewer and googling "what is my IP?" when your last known public IP stops working.


A little bit even more complicated- and I'm actually going to be attempting this in the next week-
Hauppauge makes a piece of hardware which comes in PCIe (Colossus 2) and USB (hd-PVR2) forms. It has HDMI and component input. It supports 1080p @30hz (I believe) inputs. It also has Toslink input if you're using the component input so you can still get 5.1 channel sound.
Support is tricky, but theoretically you should be able to use a handful of (free) programs to use it as an input for, again, Emby (my choice...may look into Plex before this is all done) to view the input of your cable box. The card has an IR in/out port which will allow you to 1) control the computer functions 2) have the card tell the cable box to change the channel

There are a few problems with these last two. Namely, you need guide data for it to be really useful. Easy way to get it: Windows Media center. It's free. Problem: Colossus 2 isn't really supported under WMC. So you're stuck with actually writing a little code to download from your provider's website or Zap2it and transform it to a usable input (difficult) or paying $30/yr for Schedules Direct. I believe there is an additional pay-for-data service that isn't pricey and, in my opinion, totally worth it.


There are a ton of people using Colossus and WMC to view their DirecTV boxes on their computer. There are fewer instances looking online of people posting about the Colossus 2. What I've never found was someone actually using this input to broadcast to themselves on Emby (or Plex. Again. Not certain if this is supported) and posting about it.


I'll be happy to update once I've tried if you're interested.

I can stream 4K YouTube and before I cancelled it, 4K Netflix no problem with my 100mbps connection.

That's exactly what Im wondering. I'm sure I could stream Amazon and Netflix just fine. YouTube 4k works flawlessly. It's the super high Def torrent files that won't stream. I'm not sure there's a fix for that aside from downloading them myself. I just don't have a big HD to leave them on there for weeks to seed.