Kodi Boxes

So, I've decided that I want to stop paying $100/month for shit that I don't want to watch, including about 20 sports channels.

The issue I have here is that I'm an older guy and not even sure where to begin with this stuff. I checked the catalog for a thread, found nothing.

All that being said, does anyone have a good point to start from on these things? Based on my own reading I've discovered that as with most tech, it's best to start from scratch and go from there, which in this case would entail buying a decent blank rig and then loading it up with which ever apps needed. So, to my questions, 1) What hardware, and 2) What software?

Also Kodi box general I guess.

Other urls found in this thread:

meltdownattack.com/
hooktube.com/watch?v=I5mRwzVvFGE
news.softpedia.com/news/raspberry-pi-devices-aren-t-affected-by-the-meltdown-and-spectre-vulnerabilities-519255.shtml
osmc.tv/
flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-case-ke
flirc.tv/more/flirc-usb
ubuntu-mate.org/download/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I just use a chromecast that can pull movies and tv shows from my plex server. Sonarr to automate the downloading.

I don't have any if theres an easy reppacement for sports though.

It won't matter because all that stuff is going to get throttled anyway

Hurry up and hoard your pirated media now, when there's still a chance

Honestly just get a (modern) tv antennae and Netflix. Just torrent premium channel shit like GoT.

To clarify, I don't want the sports. When I got this cable package, I had about 10 different versions of TSN on my guide along with others. When asked about it, the cable provider said it was what came with the package. I don't watch any sports whatsoever.

I'm Canadian. I know Americans are in for a shit storm with NN bullshit, and I feel sorry for you all.

I have a chromebook that I primarily use for torrenting.

It has Arch installed with iptables configured to only allow network traffic through PIA's VPN. If the VPN connection drops, all network traffic drops with it.

From there I either watch torrented material on the chromebook plugged into a TV or transfer it to another PC.

Works well enough. Only pay for internet + VPN. No TV packages at all.

better dead than maple

This is the end game for me as well but without the higher cost of another laptop/pc. I've seen boxes for as little as $50 (no name Chinese hardware with no support), and as much as $300 (Nvidia Shield). I was hoping someone may have had some insights into what I should be aiming for, as I generally distrust random blogs that claim to know the difference.

Sup Forums, please.

Kodi has been getting shittier or at least exodus. Quality is garbage

>sport channels
Buy a Roku and get Sling. $40 a month would probably cover any channels you watch.

lol canadians P2P is already throttled
and american servers are throttled to shit by ISPs regardless of canadian laws or accessing american servers canudia

>tfw nothing happened and we still have to deal with shills heralding the end times
kys

openelec is just something you can download, flash to the sd card and run it on a PI.
Everything works right away, connect it through hdmi and you can use the arrow keys on the remote to control it (nobody implemented t9 on my TV and I doubt anyone who works with TV's are smart enough to do so).

Openelec sucks for stuff they don't have apps for, so use openelec to get a feel for what can be done and then recreate it on a distro that support the things you want to use it for if offline content is not ideal.

I still get download speeds around 700mbps when using P2P so I'm not sure of what you're referring to.

>$40 a month
100 a year from a reseller, otherwise you're a goy

>So, I've decided that I want to stop paying $100/month and I want to start pirating all that i can.
fixed

First the hardware: The little boxes are called SBC, the tiny computers are made by many brands but you should look into the one with more power. There are several types, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, Odroid C2 and the last contender is Rock64. The Rock64 has "high definition" decoding and 4GB of RAM, the second best option is an Odroid C2 which can do "high definition" but only 2GB of RAM. Of course you can just plug any computer to your Tv.
Software: LibreELEC is a distro (the operating system you install instead of Windows on these machines) and a very easy to setup, braindead easy. I use it as a last resort when nothing else works, it does Kodi and nothing else, and Kodi is the easy alternative, if you can get to the addons to do it for you. If you rather make a minimal system like me, you can take advantage of all kinds of software and do stuff like getting high quality series or movies to watch. To get a minimal system I advise to get a server like distro like Ubuntu server, set up transmission-daemon and use a simple transmissio interface (either be the "ncurses" or the web interface). After you've set that, to watch videos directly from the terminal use MPlayer. This setup has the advantage for you to have all the benefits of HD without performance hit.
Media sources: Try get into private trackers, do XDCC on IRC, or get an internet service like Netflix, whatever. The trick here is to know a provider with good content.

NOTE: There are boxes already set with all the configuration you need, but they are usually overpriced and are configured to be limited on what you can do with them.

Just get a fire stick and install kodi onto it with no limits build. I can set one up in 10 minutes and you can get fire sticks for dirt cheap usually. Got mine brand new for $25.

>fire stick as a media center

IDK about you but its easiest out of most of the ones I've ever used. It has every app you need and Kodi support on it is best with builds. A lot of builds have "fire stick lite" setups. Don't get me wrong I just use htpc for my living room but in the bed room and shit I just use a kodi stick.

>fire stick
>kodi
Pick one. Fire Stick is mediocre at best with its own OS. Put something else on top of it and you're essentially emulating an emulator with a machine barely powerful enough to stream above 720p most of the time.

Kodi is comfiest and smoothest on very small form-factor computers, ie Raspberry Pi, Rock64, etc.

Your country is New China and your PM is an insane SJW

Its a fucking $25 stick that can run off usb power and have a small form factor remote with voice. What kind of autistic idiotic douche bag are you? Fire stick runs kodi well enough that from start of power I can have a movie running in 3 minutes.

If it's playing from the local internet, yes. But OP doesn't seem to want to torrent a bunch of media. He wants addons and streaming. So, therefore, a Fire Stick is NOT the best option, especially for stability of the stream, because it's Wi-Fi only. No ethernet. Like I said, RPi is my Kodi box and it streams flawlessly. Boots in less time than a Fire Stick, too.

I stream UFC fights and murican football games all the time. Works fine as long as you know which apps you want to use. Wifi isn't a problem as you aren't chimping out on your internet or have a shit router.

If you want 4k Netflix etc to work, you need a certified device like the NVidia Shield.

Also - with a commercial device like this, you don't need to babysit and maintain it like a bedroom science project.

Forget the cheap kodi boxes. Get a nvidia shield and load up the ad free version of TerrariumTV. If you don't want to spend the $ on the shield, get a primetv box, which can also sideload apps.

Beware of not locking yourself into another yet service. Cut the cord.

>Netflix
lol get a load of this fucking pleb

t. only watches anime

I Don't watch anime it's worse than SJWflix if that's even possible. I don't watch any television any more it's fucking garbage you gormless pleb

>SJWflix
Terry Davis is that you?

100% this
Gave up on a scratch built htpc because I had to constantly fuck with it to keep it working
Bought a couple shields and repurposed the htpc as a media server

Getting the less than legal channels in kodi will be a little harder to set up but the thing won’t shit itself every few weeks

Nope. I hope he comes back soon though.

This is the answer, set up a plex server with sonarr and radarr, link to deluge for managing your torrents. Works great.

What server do I need to run Plex? I have a shitty Intel C2350 one that runs quickbox but it's not strong enough for Plex

As strong as you need it to be. I run Plex on FreeBSD with two Xeon E5-2680 v2s.

I just want to stream to a single chromecast, no need for conversion I think

This. Now for movies and series I just use stremio

Im also grandpa.

I just use xiaomi tv box, watch only youtube and pirated torrents tho.

You're wasting your time going down the Kodi route.

Covenant is almost dead, all the scraper software devs have been given cease and desist orders from lawyers working for the major motion picture studios and you can't get any decent streams anymore.

Even Newsgroups have gone to shit with no decent releases and unfinished downloads.

Either torrent or pay for a sub with Netflix, Amazon or the like.

nas. plex. torrents. sickrage.

i have a Netbook from 2008 (BLAZING FAST CPU!!!)
it's used as my general all-in-one server.
literally only good for file sharing.
i have plex installed on it only because of the DLNA interface.
DLNA doesn't do transcoding.


CPU is so bad that i tried setting up a simple FTPS server and HTTP server but the CPU couldn't handle it. CPU couldn't push more than 12MB/s with encrypted FTP and plain HTTP.
I was able to get 1Gbps speed with non-encrypted FTP. totally not worth it.

What sort of hardware is necessary for a dedicated plex server? Would it need decent horsepowers for real time encoding and stuff?

Using Kodi with Quasar and Incursion

Incursion is a fork of Covenant and is updated regularly
Quasar uses torrent and is great for HD content

You want Plex w/ Plex Pass so you can do DTV. Kodi is last decade-tier shit. Horrible horrible UX. Just run Plex on a NUC and use a USB drive or a NAS or whatever you have for storage.

>Incursion is a fork of Covenant and is updated regularly
>Quasar uses torrent and is great for HD content
Nice

Kodi box seems marketable.
Can i enter a partnership and spread it here?

I don't use Sonarr because I just manually add torrents I want to watch, never really got the appeal of Sonarr, I don't care about watching shows right when they come out. I'd rather wait until all the episodes are out anyway

this is what i do, torrenting, chromecast and plex are the easiest way to go
anything thats a desktop processor thats from within the past 6 years should be ok, idk about 1080p or higher tho

I see people selling Kodi Boxes at mall kiosks all the time. Probably being done as we speak.

Well shit, now i want to get on this cash-cow.

>Kodi Boxes
why would people buy a kodi box?
get an android box, you can install other apps too besides kodi and they are very cheap

get a laptop with a broken screen, just be sure it hdmi out. pay 50 bucks for it on your sales page from you rprefernece, set up kodi or anything you want.

Hey man, I don't buy them. Uninformed/uninterested parents do.

thats pretty much all most of these pieces of shit are

There is no SBC / Pi eqvivalent that does Hi10 1080p h.264 decode.

If you want Daiz autisum encoded animu, you need an Nvidia shield.

>no SBC / Pi eqvivalent that does Hi10 1080p h.264 decode
WRONG

I use a Pi3 as a Plex and torrent server and it servers videos of up to roughly 1.5GB perfectly over ethernet to an Amazon Fire TV and an Amazon Fire stick. No complaints, quality is great and I'd highly recommend it

None of these do 10-bit AVC. They may do 10-bit HEVC though.

All 10-bit AVC is done in software, and these weak-ass ARM cores aren't good enough.

Get convenant

Not OP, but thanks. Sup Forums is full of a lot of angry people but you took the time to write something helpful and detailed.

TL;DR:
1. Raspberry Pi 3, $35 (with the case in image: Flirc Kodi-themed Raspberry Pi-case, $11), external USB-hdd
2. OSMC (great Kodi-build for Raspberry Pi), dvdbackup, genisoimage

Long version:
The OP image in question is Flirc's Raspberry Pi Kodi-themed case, which provides at least 10 celcius cooler performance. At best up to 20 C. It's around $11. Only the quite new, year or two old, full aluminium case that is around $50 - $60 provides better passive cooling.

Raspberry Pi is Meltdown / Spectre-proof. Raspberry Pi 3 with OSMC can playback x264 1080p content fairly well, so OP, you are off to solid start. No matter what you'd prefer, OP, I'd seriously recommend you to getting know with Meltdown / Spectre-vulnerability and plan from there, otherwise you'll end up vulnerable piece of junk that has no purpose being connected to the internet.

1. Raspberry Pi 3 ( any RPI should be Meltdown / Spectre-immune)
2. Kodi, I've been personally using OSMC, works great with HDMI-CEC that makes use of telly's own remote, but there's Flirc's usb-dongle that allows almost any remote to work with RPI.
3. There's Youtube and other legit streaming websites plugins available.
4. Consider external closure HDD, connected with USB, for storing your own favourite content, series, movies. I've never used streaming pirated media with Kodi.
5. If using local media, you can easily copy dvds to hdd with linux, dvdbackup and genisoimage:

$ dvdbackup -M -p
$ genisoimage -dvd-video -udf -o TellySeries.S1E01E02E03E04.iso /dvdbackup-folder

Meltdown/Spectre:
meltdownattack.com/
hooktube.com/watch?v=I5mRwzVvFGE
(skip to 1:31 for short version)
news.softpedia.com/news/raspberry-pi-devices-aren-t-affected-by-the-meltdown-and-spectre-vulnerabilities-519255.shtml

OSMC:
osmc.tv/

FLIRC:
flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-case-ke
flirc.tv/more/flirc-usb

Linux:
ubuntu-mate.org/download/ ( 16.04.03 )

almost all new rockchips can do 10 bit avc
also nvidia shield can prob decode anything in software

Make it simple and consolidate: less tools
Amazon Fire Stick (very cheap) and install kodi on it.
Movies and other stuff shared by a router with an external usb hdd.
All the devices must support wifi 802.11ac to avoid problems of slowness of the network.

Does anyone know of a good streaming service that works on a pi/kodi?
The "big" ones seem to require proprietary players as well.

It's funny seeing the news, well tabloids publishing "news" about Kodi, about how the shitty preloaded Chinese boxes are fire hazards, how they steal all your information for terrorism, etc

you cannot play hi10p stuff on arm shit boxes, go and buy a cheap nuc with at least an i3.

is there any guide outthere

The best experience (if you want a TV remote-like PC and not a keyboard/mouse on your TV experience) is "Android TV"

Buy a xiaomi mi-box, it comes with a month of free subscriptions to a ton of shit and you can kind of try everything. There's also the nvidia shield which is a higher end system but basically has the same interface, for just streaming video there's no reason to get the shield.

The kodi piracy shit is a pain in the ass and isn't just "free", you're constantly having software going out of date and stop-working after a few months, then you sift through a bunch of google garbage to find out what the current "thing" is, you have shitty sources that can be annoying as fuck to activate (click here on this ad malware infested site to register your ip for this stream!), and overall just poor performance or quality.

Paying for cable TV in 2018 is absolutely retarded, there's far better paid services that come with that mibox that are much cheaper and more convenient. The piracy stuff can be a hassle.

All these Amazon shills.

Get an android box, better than anything like chromecast/chroombook/laptop.
H96 Max for about 100$, make sure to get the 4 GB version for smooth 4K playback.
Ask me anything.

Which Android box is best for fapping to anime tiddy

This with pic related, it's the comfiest Sup Forums machine as well.
The only things that I miss are Root Access, and ability to run chroot into debian/arch and ability to run some retro windows games.

>unrootable chink botnet garbage
lel kys Chen

...

>6.0.1
useless root

YO STRING

>6.0.1
are there any custom roms at all for that chinkshit?

>6.0.1

>Set up "secrect society"
>Solely desicated to subverting the airwaves
>Create blockchain based public seed boxes, or encrypted seed boxes
>Place them all over the world
>People can stream and download materials off of it