On 2015-02-22 07:24:31 PM, Michael Fothergill wrote: > I notice that you can run something called kodi on linux that allows TV > channel shows to be downloaded and watched on your PC.
Last time I looked at this, which was admittedly awhile ago, it was downloading these shows from a TV torrent site. This sort of task is not something that you need XBMC/Kodi for, and I found their implementation of it very lacking. I ended up using transmission and an rss feed to do the same thing but without XBMC/Kodi mucking things up. > You could however, try what they call freesat and run that in conjunction > with either chromecast, netflix or Amazon instant video. > > But I think at least in principle, a lot of the free stuff you could get > with freesat you could find online via kodi, and (if I understand it > correctly) if you used e.g. Amazon instant video there would be a way to > access it via kodi along with the free stuff. For whatever reason, Netflix and Amazon video only seem to work happily inside of a browser these days. I know that in the past Netflix explicitly didn't work on Linux, and required doing some virtualization if you wanted to use it. I still don't know if they will stream HD to a Linux box. In the end, I decided that downloading was better than streaming. > I read somewhere online that if you ran Amazon instant video via kodi on > your PC it wouldn't allow you to get HD channels for security reasons but > you could get the HD channels if you used the Amazon fire box. Just FYI, Amazon also blocks HD if you try to play it through the Chromecast. > For me at any rate, it seems that if you have a pc and a TV then you should > not need a TV box..... > > I am interested to know a couple of things. > > Has anyone tried using e.g. kodi and Amazon instant video in the debian > world, and, what other software other than kodi are people currently using? I've been using Debian's XBMC on an old laptop connected to the TV for a long time. *Mostly* it works really well and is much better than any commercial product I've used. That said, the XBMC version that comes with Debian is old, and a lot of the scripts in the XBMC repository don't apply to it. I installed Kodi a couple weeks ago, but eventually got rid of it because it wasn't getting along with Xmonad. In my time using it, I still noticed some of the scripts were broken or just low quality, and required digging through forum posts in order to make them work. I think that a lot of the HTPC software tries to hide the fact that it's running on a computer, or encourages you to never leave its own interface. I think that this is a mistake. I use XBMC to access a nice list of video on a media server. I use mpd to listen to music. I use a web browser to watch web videos. I use a console to launch emulators. I control everything with a IR reciever, a logitech harmony remote, and a wireless keyboard. From reading your responses, it seems to me that if I subscribe to Amazon Instant Video and then hook up my TV via HMDI as in effect a monitor for the pc and load up the browser I should be able to watch the channels effectively on the TV. The mouse I use is wireless so I reckon I could choose the channels with that. So I would not need the IR receiver or a remote etc. The xbmc does not seem much better than freesat. I think a freesat box plus the Amazon through the browser would work for me. Thanks. MF Hope this helps, MM > > wireless keyboard. > > Hope this helps, > MM >
