Kicking Cable to the Curb

[kiba]

Weird, another amazon delivery by a guy in an uber... that's the fifth or sixth time I've seen that, I know Uber delivers stuff now but... a $90 box is ok I guess but I felt kind of bad having a guy last week uber a thermos to me. Kind of feel like I should tip, I don't ofc, never agreed to having my stuff delivered by an uber.

The fire TV is pretty cool, has an SD card slot, which I didn't know about. I sideloaded firestarter so that the VPN connects and then strait to kodi when they turn on the box. If I wanted to I guess I can root it and run some kind of generic Android TV launcher but my stepmother does a lot of shopping and Alexa.

 

[mikepetro]

Is firestarter a menu loader?

 

[kiba]

It's actually called something else now from when I had mine but yeah it's just an alternate launcher. Most of the time the thing will just be waking up from sleep though so it only actually works when you unplug it or restart.

 

[kiba]

gpu must be pretty good, i just tested a few of my gf's emulated games. I don't have the fire controller though, but they run.

For the price I think it's a pretty good deal, big improvement over the old one, real gpu and enough memory for a 4k stream. (even though it's pointless at 30fps) if I didn't use shadow play and was on a budget I might get it.

 

[2legsshrt]

Wow have you seen the prices of the latest and great streaming media players, thats what they call them on Amazon now. Makes a SS1 look cheap but they are still hanging on to Kodi 16.1 FT?? version which plays all the sources. I still am able to watch anything available in 1080 or HD tho. Haven't been watching it that much lately tho. Just kinda got burned out trying to find something. Have watched almost everything from2016 and most of the available ones from 17. Sometimes we just go to a good year in our lives and watch something. None of the ones on Amazon show that they have addons already installed now but I bet they do.

 

[Ken_A]

I'm having a devil of a time getting Battlestar Galactica into my TV section on KODI.
Here I have the complete series + the 1980 + the movie and all I can get to show up is the darned movie.
the TVDB has the chapters split up, but my DVDs don't. And I have extras I want in there too.
back to trying, but if anyone has any suggestions of how to correctly build the .nfo files....

 

[kiba]

Wow have you seen the prices of the latest and great streaming media players, thats what they call them on Amazon now. Makes a SS1 look cheap but they are still hanging on to Kodi 16.1 FT?? version which plays all the sources. I still am able to watch anything available in 1080 or HD tho. Haven't been watching it that much lately tho. Just kinda got burned out trying to find something. Have watched almost everything from2016 and most of the available ones from 17. Sometimes we just go to a good year in our lives and watch something. None of the ones on Amazon show that they have addons already installed now but I bet they do.

Which ones? I went through just about all the ones on amazon looking for a good one for my dad & the two best were still by far the shield and the fire box, the rest are all the same as far as I could tell, the hardware is totally non-optimized for streaming with a whole bunch of cpu cores, (always more cores) which, does nothing for streaming media, you'd get by just fine with a 2 core cpu. but they all have the same crappy integrated mali-whatever 'gpu' that isn't an actual, proper gpu like on the shield or fireTV & can't go higher than 30fps.


I didn't see any that were as much as the smart stream though. The reccommended/top rated Chinese ones were still all at least $10 less than the fire TV. honestly though I can't believe SS is still using 16.1, the latest versions of certain 'things' have improved so much Idk why they wouldn't take advantage of that. The version of those 'things' they're using has now been unsopported for a long time and has bugs that've been corrected in the current versions, & that build they are using is vulnerable to viruses, which has been patched in 17.3. not only that but the providers are always changing, being shut down, updated etc, without support for url resolver you will eventually just run out of providers. We're at 17.3 now, at this point their excuse doesn't make sense, it's way more stable, works better, more secure etc.

 

[kiba]

After looking at the specs on all those Chinese boxes I kind of have my doubts the Chinese understand what we're trying to do with them as all of theirs are set up and optimized for computing rather than streaming, like a raspberry pi box... they've kind of always been bad with that kind of stuff unless they have a company over here telling them exactly what to do.

 

[2legsshrt]

no - at the kodi site that says that you need to upgrade to 17.2,,,, no 17.3

I heard that is something put out by Mr.Know or TVAddons.

 

[2legsshrt]

Which ones? I went through just about all the ones on amazon looking for a good one for my dad & the two best were still by far the shield and the fire box, the rest are all the same as far as I could tell, the hardware is totally non-optimized for streaming with a whole bunch of cpu cores, (always more cores) which, does nothing for streaming media, you'd get by just fine with a 2 core cpu. but they all have the same crappy integrated mali-whatever 'gpu' that isn't an actual, proper gpu like on the shield or fireTV & can't go higher than 30fps.


I didn't see any that were as much as the smart stream though. The reccommended/top rated Chinese ones were still all at least $10 less than the fire TV. honestly though I can't believe SS is still using 16.1, the latest versions of certain 'things' have improved so much Idk why they wouldn't take advantage of that. The version of those 'things' they're using has now been unsopported for a long time and has bugs that've been corrected in the current versions, & that build they are using is vulnerable to viruses, which has been patched in 17.3. not only that but the providers are always changing, being shut down, updated etc, without support for url resolver you will eventually just run out of providers. We're at 17.3 now, at this point their excuse doesn't make sense, it's way more stable, works better, more secure etc.

Are you talking about the FTMC build. Thats the one thats on there. Their reasoning is the only box that they have sold that will work with 17 is the SS1 so they don't want to cut a bunch of their customers out. To me I'd say it is time for them to get a new box you can't really punish the rest of us because people are using 2 and 3 year old boxes.. At least they could come out with it for us SS1 owners and still support the old ones. It is kinda irritating to me also.
The boxes I looked at were on an ad that came up on FB and they were name that I didn't recognize which wouldn't take much but they were between 150 and 200. Supposed to be the greatest one around. HMMM. Of course the Shield has always been a little expensive but from what I've heard still the best.

 

[kiba]

Are you talking about the FTMC build. Thats the one thats on there. Their reasoning is the only box that they have sold that will work with 17 is the SS1 so they don't want to cut a bunch of their customers out. To me I'd say it is time for them to get a new box you can't really punish the rest of us because people are using 2 and 3 year old boxes.. At least they could come out with it for us SS1 owners and still support the old ones. It is kinda irritating to me also.
The boxes I looked at were on an ad that came up on FB and they were name that I didn't recognize which wouldn't take much but they were between 150 and 200. Supposed to be the greatest one around. HMMM. Of course the Shield has always been a little expensive but from what I've heard still the best.

Yeah my thoughts exactly, Idk the version or w/e but I remember you saying at first they said it's not stable when at the time they had a stable release (17.1) that nobody was having any trouble w/ and then they decided later to continue using the out of date one to keep customers in the loop who can't update, who may or may not even still be using them. Seems like a bit of an oversight on their part bc one of the main reasons people get a more expensive box is to have access to future firmware updates to allow them to use the newest software, but most importantly, they've got people running a build that's vulnerable. Their whole thing is targeted at people who maybe aren't the most technical, possibly letting some hacker into their network would probably be very bad for them & they'd most likely not have anything in place to stop it or just never know until it was too late.

Do you still have the link for those 200 dollar boxes? I'm just curious what the specs on it are. The shields are very good and I like them but the fire TV is also surprisingly very good. If I didn't ever use shadowplay I might have gotten one or two instead of all shields. The specs on it put it at like #2 imo.

 

[kiba]

url resolver was just updated today, not sure what all the update was but it was a decent size one for a dependency.

Also the one that starts with 'e' was updated to be compatible with RD sources a while back.

 

[Ken_A]

I'm having a devil of a time getting Battlestar Galactica into my TV section on KODI.
Here I have the complete series + the 1980 + the movie and all I can get to show up is the darned movie.
the TVDB has the chapters split up, but my DVDs don't. And I have extras I want in there too.
back to trying, but if anyone has any suggestions of how to correctly build the .nfo files....

It was a real B%$^h trying to figure this one out, but I finally GOT it. I've gotten most of the first season on the KODI and away I go!

 

[DavidOck]

Er, so you just gonna leave us in the dark?

 

[Ken_A]

Er, so you just gonna leave us in the dark?

How about this?

I'm just so proud of myself.
More seriously...
1 You need the correct folder structure.
... Series name
... ... Episode 1 name
... ... Episode 2 name
Etc...

You shouldn't put a season 1 2 3 folder in

In the main directory, you need an nfo file called tvshow.nfo
NOT BATTLESTAR_GALACTIA.nfo

Different deal with the episodes

You have to have the correct ending pattern, but it don't matter what you call the video
I used the episode name, so my directory structures went
Battlestar Galactica
.. tvshow.nfo
... The Long Patrol
... .. The Long Patrol_s01e06.1.mp4
... .. The Long Patrol_s01e06.1.nfo

You could call the episode Fred or Mary if you wanted too, but both files MUST MATCH and BOTH MUST HAVE THE ENDING PART
_s01e06.1 means season 1, episode 6, part 1.
You don't have to have the .1, .2, etc at the end if there is only one part, but I left it like that to keep it simple silly
You can use
_s01e06
_s01e06.1
_s01e06.a

But you can only have a maximum of 9 parts to an episode

The KODI WIKI has the format for the data in the .nfo files

Also, you MUST have one sub folder per episode

In KODI, you go into the files section, browse to your parent directory and set content.
Choose use local data as your scrubber

If your files match what is on theTVDB (dot) com, just make sure to set your file names to what is there. Then when you set content, chose theTVDB as your scrubber, and you won't have to have .nfo files.

 

[kiba]

Oh that's what you're doing... I do it a bit differently with plex and emby & it seems to just work, like this...

Root-each media ssd on the server has just series/movies/music separated into folders
•Main folder with specific title and year, like "Battlestar Galactica (2004)"
->season 1
->season 2
->etc
-->this is the important part & the files need to be labeled like S01E01.mkv
-->S01E02.avi
-->etc
--->subs folder inside seasons with .nfo file

As long as I do them all the same way plex and emby will pick it up, grab any missing info off imdb and plug it through plexbmc.

 

[Ken_A]

you are doing the same basic thing, but adding folders for Season 1, Season 2, etc...
KODI WIKI recommends not to.
but if it works, do it!!!
I've got season 1 in, and will work on getting season 2 in.

 

[kiba]

Yeah, but I'm only using kodi on the client end, averting else is handled on the server by plex and emby

 

[2legsshrt]

This is the one I saw that was so expensive,
https://www.amazon.com/Strongest-In...79011&sr=8-20&keywords=streaming+media+player
Supposed to be the latest and greatest, so they say probably can find the same specs for $40

 

[kiba]

Yeah the thing is supposedly 64 bit, I guess that's why it's expensive, it's android though, Idk if any android apps are made to run in 64 bit.

8 core cpu but it seems like it has the same integrated gpu as all the other ones.