Switching from WDTV to Kodi/OpenELEC/Chromebox??
#1
Time to move up to newer technology.

I am a retired American expat living in the mountains of western Panama. I am fairly tech savvy, a lifelong audio enthusiast, and have reliable 15mbps internet service here in Panama. I currently use a WDTV box for streaming video from my NAS and the internet. Kodi has recently been getting excellent recommendations here in the expat community, and I am considering moving to it.

I have used Firefox as my laptop browser since it's early days, and really like it's open architecture and the many apps and add-ons that are available for Firefox. I see the same flexibility and creativity with the Kodi platform and it's configuration options and open-source apps.

I have narrowed down my box options to an ASUS Chromebox with a Logitec wireless back-lit keyboard I will likely install OpenELEC and Kodi in dual boot configuration. Then I could also use Chrome as a web browser for my big living room TV - a big plus for me. (Ubuntu Linux can be installed on the Chromebox and then you can use Firefox as a browser, but the special Linux for Kodi does not support web browsers - so I cannot have both.)

My goal with Kodi is to use it for streaming video, both from the internet via the Kodi apps and from my Synology NAS (NFS) via an ethernet cable from my OpenWRT Linux-based wireless router. My router is configured to use the "Unlocator" DNS system to avoid regional blocking - because as an American, I would like to be able to watch American TV and videos.

For audio, I would really like to feed the digital audio signal from the Kodi box to my DAC/amp like I do with my WDTV, but it doesn't seem like that will be possible. My Sony Bravia LCD TV has digital optical audio out, so if I cannot get USB digital audio out via Kodi on the Chromebox, I can use the TV digital audio output.

Also, I really hate to have a 40" LCD TV turned on just to listen to music, and may keep the Squeezebox just for music and internet radio.

I'm not a big sports fan, but I occasionally like to watch F1 auto racing, 49'ers football or special programming. I haven't subscribed to cable TV for many years, and I'm wondering if I can watch occasional programs like that with the Kodi system without expensive subscriptions?
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#2
(2015-06-17, 04:39)Xulonn Wrote: I'm not a big sports fan, but I occasionally like to watch F1 auto racing, 49'ers football or special programming. I haven't subscribed to cable TV for many years, and I'm wondering if I can watch occasional programs like that with the Kodi system without expensive subscriptions?
Utilizing free over-the-air television via a USB TV-tuner and a PVR backend together with Kodi is probably the best option IMHO if you get signal in your area, follow guide here http://kodi.wiki/view/PVR .

My second suggestion would be to also get an Amazon Fire TV (Stick) as an supplementary source to be able to run Android apps for channels which are not available via addons for Kodi.

Chromebox are great but not being able to run Android apps will limit your options for streaming legal content via official apps, and there is no discussing illegal accessing pirated content.
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#3
(2015-06-17, 12:01)RockerC Wrote:
(2015-06-17, 04:39)Xulonn Wrote: I'm not a big sports fan, but I occasionally like to watch F1 auto racing, 49er football or special programming. I haven't subscribed to cable TV for many years, and I'm wondering if I can watch occasional programs like that with the Kodi system without expensive subscriptions?
Utilizing free over-the-air television via a USB TV-tuner and a PVR backend together with Kodi is probably the best option IMHO if you get signal in your area, follow guide here http://kodi.wiki/view/PVR .

My second suggestion would be to also get an Amazon Fire TV (Stick) as an supplementary source to be able to run Android apps for channels which are not available via add-ons for Kodi.

Chromebox are great but not being able to run Android apps will limit your options for streaming legal content via official apps, and there is no discussing illegal accessing pirated content.

Thanks Rocker - I will look for and check out lists of free Android-only streaming content to see if I am interested in it. I assume that I am much older than most of people at this forum, and my tastes are likely different. Music is no problem for - I record and playback online radio streams, which is legal for personal use, so I do not need Kodi for audio-only music - especially since you cannot feed the digital signal from Kodi on a Chromebox to a DAC in a home stereo. .

Amazon Prime sounds like a good choice for me, but I don't want to spend yet more money add a Fire TV Stick for now. I occasionally order from Amazon and have the goods shipped to a forwarder in Miami who delivers the goods to me here in Boquete, Panama and the free 2-day shipping included with Amazon Prime would cut my overall expenses.

Legal streaming sources are what I want for my occasional sports viewing. I'm an American, but U.S. media often focuses on inane an trivial aspects of sports figures rather than action, strategies and a hard focus on the competition. I am much more interested in relevant commentary and analysis. European - particularly British - commentary on sports like F1 racing is much more to my liking, and I hope I can find ways to legally access that programing for a minimal cost.

One of my most important goals is to find good legal channels for less popular old and new videos and movies - international films, art house films, documentaries, etc. There is a lot of good stuff on YouTube, but the longer videos are such low resolution, that they are truly not watchable on a 40" HD flat-screen TV.

On the local content side, most of my relatively modest collection of movies and video files on my NAS are H.264 encoding in either MKV or MP4 containers. I use MediaCoder for high-quality format conversion of video files, but will I need the MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs for some streaming content?
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#4
(2015-06-17, 19:55)Xulonn Wrote: will I need the MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs for some streaming content?
Those are very rarely used for online streaming content today, and many modern hardware devices can software decode them with raw CPU power anyway.
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