Kodi for Dummies

Factual Questions
1

I had a conversation a few weeks ago about TV viewing habits. My friend told me about Kodi: greatest thing since sliced bread. Any movie, any TV program … live TV …local channels … all streamed, all free.

So I went out and bought an Amazon FireStick, and found a YouTube video on how to download and install Kodi. So far, so good.

But I’m a bit stuck on how to actually use the thing. The process so far that I can tell:

Open the Kodi app. Navigate to an “add-on” – I’ve got several, with names like “Bennu”, “Elysium” and “Covenant”. Pick one at random. It brings up a rudimentary menu, with choices like “TV”, “Movies” and Search.

Search for a title. It then scans (the entire internet?) and brings up a list of … somethings … that may be possible sources for viewing. I pick one. Sometimes it starts my viewing choice; sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s in Spanish. Sometimes it doesn’t fit my screen.

I’ve yet to find a way to view local channels or live TV.

Am I doing it right?
What, exactly, are “add-ons”?
Which one do I choose?
Where do I find live sports?
Any way to improve my chances of finding what I’m looking for?

2

If you wanted to talk just about Kodi, I’d be glad to help. Kodi in and of itself is NOT a tool for illegally streaming videos. Just like the FireTV OS and built in apps aren’t either.

It’s the further add ons that are the problem. Frowned upon here.

Reported

3

You can’t be surprised that the free sources of pirated material are unreliable?

4

Given the conversation that led to this experience, I was under the impression that reliability was not an issue. But if this conversation is off-limits, so be it… Snark included.

5

Moderator Note

Let’s keep the conversation to legal uses of Kodi, and not to uses that may be in violation of copyright.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

6

Kodi has legal uses?

7

Kodi (aka Xbox Media Centre) is a free-and-open-source media player that works well on an Amazon Fire Stick- you should install the latest version from their web site.

Add-ons, from the user’s point of view, are installable applications that you run in order to customize Kodi or view certain content. For example, there is a Youtube add-on, a Netflix add-on, a BBC add-on, and so forth.

Now consider a random app that streams some random content. Is that legitimate? Obviously that completely depends on the laws where you live and on the particular stream chosen. Some of the add-ons rely on user-contributed links and caveat emptor. If that is a problem for you, you should stick with the official add-ons. By default Kodi will not install third-party add-ons; you have to enable that explicitly.

You can search for add-ons by name, so for example “sport” comes up with Fox Sports, NBC Sports, MLB, ESPN, et al., or you can view add-ons by category. You may want to browse the list of most popular Video add-ons or search online for add-on reviews.

Local channels and Live TV do not necessarily work entirely through add-ons. Have a look at http://kodi.wiki/view/PVR and http://kodi.wiki/view/Live_TV . There is some setting up to do. Similarly if you are trying to integrate it with your existing media library.

8

The OP is asking for how to get a bunch of services for free that aren’t free legally. Discussion of legal uses of Kodi aren’t going to help him.

9

But discussion of legal uses of Kodi may be informative to other posters.

10

I just want to re-stress that Kodi in and of itself is not a pirating platform. No more than Windows or Android or anything.* But it is set up so that other providers can supply add-ons. Some of these do allow pirating easily. It’s these add-ons that have unfortunately tainted Kodi.

One consequence is that movie studios and such are pressuring Amazon to stop selling those cheap $30 Kodi boxes. And they don’t seem to care about the specifics as to whether it is just a straight Kodi box or one with extra sleazy stuff tacked on.

This is part of a longer term program to suppress computing devices that are not locked down by the supplier. I.e., you can only run approved programs. This is not a good thing, IMHO.

I have a couple of DVRs. Unfortunately they have “only” 1TB drives on them. I like to record whole seasons of shows for later semi-binge watching. (1 episode per night.) There’s not enough room for all this so I dump them off the DVR to my server. (Sometimes stripping out the commercials along the way.)

When I get around to watching them I do so via Kodi on my FireTV devices.

This is a perfect legitimate use of Kodi although the studios may not be happy about it.

I also have an antenna and NextPVR set up on my server so when cable goes out (which is often), I can record/watch OTA channels via Kodi on my FireTV devices.

Also legit.

And on and on. There are hundreds of perfectly good uses for Kodi and many of it’s add-ons. You can even legally watch certain “channels” that carry old TV shows or new non-studio content. You can watch YouTube via Kodi all day long, for example.

  • While Kodi is not an OS, there are distros like OpenElec that can boot straight into Kodi. I do this on a Raspberry Pi.
11

So what was Kodi designed to do?

And does “cheap Amazon Kodi box” mean “Firestick”? If so, how is it different from Roku?

12

These small devices you plug into your TV are known as media streamers. They contain a small computer with some memory and you connect them to your TV and the Internet using Wifi or an ethernet cable to your router.

They are intended to run programs that give you access to video streaming services over the Internet. They present a nice menu on your TV for allowing you to select which service you want to use with a remote control.

Amazon, Roku, Apple and many other companies sell these and they commonly bundle many media streaming services such as BBC IPlayer, Nexflix, etc and many others that may not require a subscription.

Now the hardware in these little gadgets is commonly available and many other companies can produce these media streamers to plug into your TV. Moreover, they also run regular computer operating systems like Android or Linux.

Kodi is a media playing program designed to run on one of these media streamers and it can do much the same thing as Amazon, Roku, etc, but it goes way beyond their carefully curated set of streaming services. Kodi can, through various add-on programs that create extra menu items, access a great many alternative streaming services that are available across the Internet. It can also show your own photos and the media files you may have on your computer and display them on your TV. It is even possible to run Kodi on a the Firestick media streamer sold by Amazon as a replacement for their own media playing program. Amazon is also a good place to buy these third-party media streamers. Just search for kodi on Amazon.

One of these generic media players loaded with Kodi is perfectly legal. However, some of the add-on programs that can be downloaded and added to Kodi have been known to allow access to media streams breach copyright laws in some countries. These streams are typically full of movies and TV shows. Getting Kodi add-on programs to work can be a bit tricky for the inexperienced. But sellers who ship such Kodi-equipped boxes fully loaded with potentially illegal add-on programs do so at risk of prosecution. There has just been a court case about this in the UK.

There a plenty of websites dedicated to reviews of Kodi add-on programs and comparisons between media streaming gadgets. As internet access gets faster and more reliable, it is becoming easier to watch TV through Internet-based media streaming services. It is becoming THE way to watch movies and TV shows, especially in resolution.

Large media companies have always sought to control the distribution of audio and video whatever technology was used: tapes, CDs, DVDs, Satellite and Cable subscriptions. Now video streaming over the Internet is the new battleground.

Incidentally, Kodi also runs quite happily on a PC or Mac.

13

When I buy a DVD or Blu Ray, I rip it to my server (in its original quality) and the disc goes into storage. My server is a Raspberry Pi running ArchLinux, and I have three raid-5 arrays with a total of 40TB connected to it.

I have Raspberry Pi’s running OSMC (a customized Kodi implementation based on Debian) connected to the TVs in my house . If I want to watch one of my tv shows or a movie, I just use the remote to navigate to the movie I want and select it. The nice thing is that it downloads all the art and movie information (synopsys, actors, etc).

I don’t have to have a huge bookshelf in the living room (I own over 850 movies), I don’t have to have a Blu Ray player connected to each TV, and I don’t have to run around the house with discs.

I also have my entire CD collection ripped and can listen to music streamed from my server anywhere in the house as well.

My usage of Kodi is legitimate. I don’t stream pirated content from the internet, I don’t torrent copyrighted content and save it to my server. If there’s something I want to watch that I don’t own, I have Netflix and Hulu, or I rent it.

Kodi is a great piece of software.

14

Even Kodi themselves acknowledge that their platform has many illegal hangers-on. I think it’s fair to say that 10-1 people are getting Kodi boxes with illegal intentions, and posts like the OP don’t inspire me to think that they are part of the 10%.

That said, I recognise them by their previous name, XBMC. Simply human nature that anything that can be used to enable to get free shit, will be, I guess. Not sure if the name Kodi can be redeemed at this point, though.

15

Kodi users who steal the food from the mouth of media executives and movie stars, bypassing their subscriptions, will no doubt be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. So too will the operators of video streaming services that contravene copyright. Media companies spend a lot of time trying to close them down. So some Kodi addon programs stop working when the streams they collect are closed. This can be annoying.

This cat and mouse game has been going ever since Edison tried to enforce his monopoly on moving picture machines and forced the movie makers to move to Hollywood.

If the media companies get their way on net neutrality, internet subscriptions will be sanitised to ensure only the video streaming services favoured by big media corporations are viable. They contrive to get laws passed in their favour, raise taxes on media formats and influence regulatory authorities to enrich their profitable cartel.

Criminalizing your potential customers and suing your rivals is never a good business strategy. They will quieten down with all this bullying once they come up with a business model that delivers reliable profits.

I use Kodi for the educational videos and free documentaries.

16

No doubt. Our prisons are already bursting at the seams with all those Napster-using scofflaws.

17

Here’s an article on Kodi at Wired. How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy | WIRED

18

Something else to consider: Advanced users of piracy software, the kind who are watching everything they want to, end up spending money on things like high-speed internet plans, VPN accounts, seedboxes, network attached storage devices, usenet access accounts (EU & USA!), usenet indexing services, RealDebrid services, etc… It’s only free with low expectations; there are still monthly service fees that rival the cost of a Netflix and Hulu account. Personally, I just use Kodi to enrich uranium and watch tv via the poorly named Playstation VUE service.

19

Care to enlighten us clueless folks about this terminology? Google was uninformative.

But Google did teach me what “RealDebrid” was. It’s unclear to me how legal it is, but at least I learned a new bit of vocabulary. Thank you.

20

Enriching uranium was sarcasm, not terminology; I apologize for the confusion. As to the legality of it, the usual download rule applies: it depends on the content.