On a related note here's an arch linux package that rips Widewvine out of chrome and adds it to chromium - download the source files by clicking the "Download snapshot" button on the right, or just view the main script by clicking "View PKGBUILD" also on the right.

Edit: Forgot link https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/chromium-widevine/

There are a few solutions to this.

And... they are using chromium. Can I be sympathetic to Google because they have to pay people money to support this?

Sure, but bear in mind that they are paying that price so that they can control the internet.

Yeah they didn't make Chrome in order to "build a better world" or whatever. They saw what Microsoft did with IE, and how it enabled the pushing of products, data collection, platform tie-in, etc. And Google thought they could do even better and make people feel good during the process, unlike how they felt using IE.

I hope Kodi makes some decent progress. I installed it a few weeks back and it is a rough experience. The docs on how to do simple things seem to be nonexistant because they don't want to be sued and shutdown entirely.

Kodi's been around for like 15 years now so if you're hoping for it to become something else, I would stop holding your breath. I'm not thrilled that it's non-free nor about some of the changes they're making, but I've found Plex to be pretty pleasant to set up.

> I'm not thrilled that it's non-free

Could you explain what you mean by that? Kodi seems to be GPL 2 licensed: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master/LICENSE.md

I think he was referring to Plex being non-free

I think Kodi has made amazing progress. I've not had issues getting it installed on different devices since the 15.x days. Currently run it on 4 different dedicated devices in my apartment as well as some mobile and media devices.

> The docs on how to do simple things seem to be nonexistant because they don't want to be sued and shutdown entirely.

What docs are you looking for? They have a very extensive wiki as well as an active community on their own forum.

I’ve been running it since the earliest beta versions when it was literally Xbox Media Center - a media center for modded Xboxes (original).

I’ve ran it on all kinds of hardware from laptops, Android phones and tablets, Raspberry Pis (version 1 through to 3), Intel NUCs, etc. And obviously not forgetting the Xbox. Until very recently it was my go to media center.

I even went as far as to write some plugins for it. But they were for version 8 or something. It was probably 10 years ago and hasn’t been maintained.

I’ve never used a media center - free or non-free - that was as easy to set up nor ran as flawlessly as XBMC / Kodi did

As a (former) plugin developer and long-time user and community member, I don't think you're exactly the best person to evaluate today's install usability for a non- or even somewhat-technical new-ish user.

I'm really not sure what the point of your post is but what I can tell is you've completely misunderstood my post (and possibly Kodi too?) because several of the conditions you highlighted (eg "todays", "non-technical") wasn't even in the scope of my monologue.

Besides, non-technical users wouldn't be ripping DVDs to a NFS / SMB share in the first place (or using a home server / NAS for bittorrent / usenet / etc if that's how one prefers to accumulate their video archive). So why would they want a Media Centre that's designed for playing local or networked content?

Maybe what you're referring to is the stuff that has been in press a lot in recent years; the stuff incorrectly named (imo) as "Kodi-boxes" (or similar). I say "incorrectly named" because they used 3rd party plugins for illegal streams but those really have naff all to do with the Kodi media centre itself. It's like calling illegal downloading "Windows-boxes" because someone uses a bittorrent client on Windows 10.

I guess you could argue that Kodi now fills a niche that is dying out - that's certainly the case for me as I tend to use Netflix et al on my smart TV. But for playing local / mountable files, Kodi still leads the pack in terms of ease. Which is hardly surprising when you consider that's what the media centre was built to do.

I didn't know it existed and it wasn't for lack of trying. I landed in the forum a few times which didn't help. Bing or Google a simple query where you would expect the official Kodi website or Wiki to show in the results. For example: "How to stream Netflix on Kodi".

Up until a few months ago, natively playing netflix was not possible with a released version of Kodi. Now it is using the link I posted!

what kind of device do you use?

I have: 3x raspberry pis 1x intel compute stick

iPhone (running MrMC) Apple TV (MrMC) but MrMC hasn't been updated to the latest Kodi yet so I can't use those in a shared env.

As a long time Kodi user, I'll just say that the combination of Kodi on my PC hooked up to a big screen and the Yatse app on my phone was a total game changer. A WiFi remote control on the device I basically already had in my hands anyway changed the way I interact with media at home.

> I can't imagine Google gave the OK to Kodi to use widevine so maybe you can see what they did?

Kodi uses the OS native implementation of the DRM, or Chromium with Widevine.

Interesting... I mostly use Kodi for NAS media and run it under NVidia Shield TV because running it on an HTPC was so limiting of an experience for Netflix, etc. Almost ironically also have a Fire stick, because Hulu won't port the updated interface (for live tv) to the Android TV version despite working on Fire devices.