Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Our KODI adventure began many years ago with other software: MythTV. MythTV is open source Digital Video Recorder (DVR) software used for recording cable, satellite and over-the-air television shows. At the time, we didn’t have a proper television but we did have a rather large and heavy 22 inch CRT monitor. Our computer at the time was an Athlon XP-based computer, slightly underpowered, but it did the job. MythTV is great software, but when our provider started talking about switching from analog to digital, we knew it would be an uphill battle to decrypt their new signal. Our cable provider also kept raising prices and lowering service standards. So we looked at our viewing habits and noticed that we mostly watched the weather channel and the odd movie. About this time, DVDs started coming down a lot in price. We were very close to a source for inexpensive DVDs, so our collection was growing and growing. As a DVR, MythTV is awesome, but it’s not so terrific at storing media… which led us to XBMC (now known as KODI).
Notre aventure KODI a commencé il y a longtemps avec un autre logiciel : MythTV. Myth TV est un logiciel Open Source de magnétoscope numérique, utilisé pour l'enregistrement d'émissions de télévision reçues par câble, satellite ou en direct. À l'époque, nous n'avions pas de téléviseur à proprement parler, mais on avait un écran CRT de 22“ qui était plutôt grand et lourd. Notre ordinateur en ce temps-là était un ordinateur Athlon basé sur XP, qui n'était pas très puissant, mais qui faisait son travail.
MythTV est un logiciel formidable, mais quand notre fournisseur a commencé à parler d'un passage d'analogique au numérique, nous savions que décoder le nouveau signal serait un combat incessant. En outre, notre fournisseur de télévision par câble augmentait les prix sans cesse, tout en diminuant ses services. Nous avons donc analysé notre consommation TV et avons remarqué que nous ne regardions guère plus que la chaîne météo et un film de temps en temps.
À peu près à cet époque-là, le prix des DVD commençait à baisser énormément. Il y avait une source de DVD peu chers près de chez nous et notre collection augmentait de jour en jour. En tant que magnétoscope numérique, MythTV est génial, mais pas si bon que ça pour le stockage des médias… ce qui nous a amené à XBMC (alias KODI de nos jours).
Our XBMC/KODI setup started on the same machine we ran MythTV on, an old Athlon XP-based system with a 1TB hard drive. The Athlon desktop worked, but it drew lots of power and lacked SSE2 CPU instructions. Video playback on systems with SSE2 instructions was much better than on the Athlon, which struggled sometimes even with standard DVD video. We had a solution to solve both the power and playback problems: a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook. The netbook had only a 250GB hard drive, but adding the 1TB desktop drive was a simple matter of attaching it via an external drive cage. Initially we installed XBMC via XBMCbuntu, a customized Lubuntu install which booted directly to XBMC. We added remote control support using a standard Microsoft-compatible remote control and USB receiver, and the LIRC software package.
The netbook seemed like a good idea at the time and worked well with XBMC versions 10 through 12, but, as our DVD collection grew, so did our storage needs, so we added another external hard drive (2TB). The Inspiron Mini 10 had plenty of USB ports so we could actually connect a third drive plus the USB dongle for the IR remote.
About a year after we set up the netbook as our XBMC server, the first Android boxes started to appear. One of the nicest looking boxes was the Pivos XIOS DS Media Play. The XIOS DS was an Android box that could be flashed with a customized version of Linux that booted to XBMC. We bought one and discovered you could either run XBMC on Android or run it in Pivos’ scaled down Linux distribution. Support for external devices was simpler on Android, but XBMC ran much better on the scaled down Linux distribution. The one really annoying feature of the XIOS DS was the remote controls. We bought the extra “sense” remote in addition to the included remote, and neither were as feature-rich as having a Windows Media Centre remote attached to our netbook.
Ultimately, we switched back to the netbook because running a full-blown Linux desktop added a lot more flexibility than running Android or Pivos’ scaled down Linux distribution.
We’re fans of simplicity, but our netbook setup was getting out of control. When we had one external hard drive, the setup wasn’t so bad, but after we added a second and third external hard drive, our media center was starting to look like a web of cabling. Each external hard drive needed both power and a USB connection to the netbook. Sure, cables could be tidied with zip or velcro ties, but the power bricks all still needed to be connected to the wall which meant adding more power strips. Rather than simplifying our setup, running a netbook was actually complicating the setup.
Thus we switched back to a ‘full blown PC,’ initially a 3.2GHz Pentium D, and later (currently) a Core 2 Quad Q8300 CPU. One of the awesome things we love about Linux is being able to scale. Dropping in a new CPU doesn’t mean having to buy a new license like it does on other operating systems. We’ve used the same Asus P5K motherboard ever since, and while it’s on the old side and the Core 2 Quad CPU consumes more power than a Core i3 processor, it’s done a great job. We picked up an open box special on a 1GB NVidia GeForce 210 PCIe fanless card for $29 from a local computer store. All 3 drives now sit in a single box and the only cables coming out of that box are power, video, ethernet, and the cable for the IR remote.
There are far fewer cables at the back of our television now, and the performance is a lot better than it was on the netbook. The Q8300 and GeForce 210 are strong enough to handle Bluray content without stuttering, and the P5K’s gigabit ethernet delivers Bluray media via SAMBA just fine to other PCs in the house.
I use SAMBA to share all our content, but all our SAMBA shares are read-only to help prevent all that data from possible crypto-infections. So how do I transfer our media? Via SSH. All the ripping is done on a Linux desktop, then transferred via gigabit to our KODI server. Our Windows machines can connect to read the data, but not write to the shares. That said, no one in the house uses Windows to connect to the shares.
In one room we have a Zotac ID81 box running Xubuntu + KODI. The box is a little on the sluggish side, and is prone to sleep issues, but it plays the Bluray content fine (thanks in part to the fact we have it running on an SSD).
In another we have a Zoomtak T8H. The Zoomtak runs Android, but KODI 17 runs really well on it and the box has no issues playing shared Bluray content. Although both small KODI boxes have wireless, we deliver all content over our wired gigabit connection; wireless is just too unreliable and limiting.
Currently our main KODI server houses 2 x 3TB and a 2TB hard drive. One of the 3TB drives is full only with media we’ve transferred from part of our Bluray collection. The other part of the Bluray collection is starting to fill the other 3TB drive (which also houses our OS - Xubuntu). The entirety of our DVD collection is stored on the 2TB drive with room to spare. This includes television shows on DVD. Our DVD collection is larger than our Bluray collection, but we store all our Bluray content as uncompressed data, so the space requirements are pretty large - with several movies cresting 45GB each.
The other part of our media centre is a Linux desktop where we do all the media ripping. Years ago, when we talked to people about XBMC/KODI, they would look at you with blank stares. Now everyone is talking about XBMC/KODI because of its streaming capabilities, but we tend to use it mostly for its ability to play and scrape our existing media.
DVDs and Blurays are cheaper than they’ve ever been, especially if you don’t mind checking out thrift shops and/or waiting for department store specials. One local chain ran a special at boxing day where almost all of their new DVDs were $1.00. Granted the titles were not new titles, but they weren’t all B movies either. Our collection grew a lot that boxing day. Yes, it takes time to rip and transfer the media, and it requires storage space for the physical media, but the convenience is wonderful.
All our DVDs and Blurays are stored in boxes in our storage, and we can sit for hours watching a playlist of movies, television shows, music videos, music, or photographs. KODI has a convenient “Party mode” that takes a random selection of music or music videos and plays them - nice to have when guests are around.
Initially we stored DVDs as they were in their packaging in boxes in our storage, but storing DVDs in their original plastic storage meant more boxes. To save even more space, we threw out the plastic packaging and started storing the DVDs and Blurays in DVD storage sleeves. We stored the paper inserts and covers in a couple of shoe boxes in case we ever wanted to go back to the old plastic storage containers.
Another thing we like to do is start some music playing, then navigate to our photo collection and press play; this starts a slideshow of photographs with music playing in the background. Whenever we have family around, we typically use KODI as a giant picture frame for all the photographs we’ve taken on vacation.
At one point, we were using a MyGica ATV 582 where we’re currently using the Zoomtak T8H. The MyGica was a nice box (except for the remote, but we tend to not like any of the remotes except the full-blown media center remotes), but we bricked it while trying to reflash it with an older Android firmware (we reset the box thinking the flash was stuck). MyGica was very responsive in the forums. The ATV 582 was a nice box, but we felt Android 5.0 was simply too sluggish on it. Zoomtak on the other hand was very unresponsive. Although we love the aluminum chassis of the T8H, and find that it runs the latest KODI just fine, we’d probably look first at a new MyGica box simply because they seemed more supportive.
For the future, we’ve considered replacing the desktop box with a small NAS box and another Android box, reducing the footprint, but maintaining the large storage, but NAS boxes with space for 4 drives tend to cost as much as a decent PC.
Next month, I’ll share our configuration files for our KODI server and describe how the other media centers mount the drives.