[jrich523]

So I currently run Kodi on my PC and a living room PC which i use to play movies I have and thats about it.

I have a laptop in the bedroom that I use but its just too old for Kodi right now and the laptop in the living room is starting to crash.

Now Im looking at getting new players for the living room and bedroom and based on what i've read i'll likely go with a Pi or Chromebox.
Im not so much asking what hardware to use, but input on that would be appreciated as well.

That being said I once upon a time did the mysql setup (which is why kodi is on my desktop) but at some point i screwed that up and my living room kodi just uses the shares as its library.

Also currently everything is windows based. Not opposed to changing that though.

Now that I need to replace PCs/Devices I have a couple of questions?

• Is using mysql with kodi on my desktop still the best option (found script to schedule updates, but thats not awesome), Is something like PLEX a better option for a shared media server? My large disk needs to be replaced as well, so moving this to a NAS or some other device isnt out of the question either.
  
• I'd like to move away from my standard cable box and move this in to kodi as well, Im currently an Xfinity subscriber, is there an easy way to share that between systems? some sort of way to have it come in to my pc (acting as a server) and then allow the two rooms access to it? I ask mostly because the bedroom doesnt have coax available to it.
  
• Is there a way to make sure that all setups have the same plugins? like youtube/netflix/amazon prime and such, I find it a pain that its all local and I have to go to each to make sure its installed/configured. I ask this partly because I might end up with a 3rd setup, and recreating it later might be a tough one for me to remember
  

I guess what im asking is, if you had to start from scratch and you werent terribly concerned about money, how would you make Kodi your one stop shop?

[LeKodeur]

Hi jrich253 - too many too hard questions ! My two cents anyway:
- Don't throw away your hardware. I have a 14 years old AMD desktop that still runs Kodi nicely (not H265 (HEVC) video material obviously) under Ubuntu. For media center use I would recommend Ubuntu (or other Ubuntu variants ... there are many, including Openelec, Kodibuntu etc.) rather than Windows, you'll get more out of your hardware
- I have 5 installs of Kodi throughout my house, including a Android Tablet. I maintain just the one Kodi video library for all my movies and shows (which are stored on a separate NAS as NFS share) and have the other four Kodi installs lookup that one video library (i.e. effectively that's one shared Kodi video library for all my Kodi installations).
- My understanding of plugins/addons is that they need to be installed/integrated and configured for each instance of Kodi ... you can't 'share them' across your Kodi installations as they can't run 'outside' Kodi (like a PVR Backend does ... which can stream to several Kodi PVR clients (PVR Addon)). You can make sure all your installs have the same plugins/addons available for installation (located in your Kodi addons folder) but you still need to install/integrate/configure them separately within each instance of Kodi.

Hope this helps ... a little? ... Although I'm sure there are much more knowledgeable Kodi users out there who may differ and give you better advice! ... and I might learn something too

[Fail$tyle420]

Hi jrich253 - too many too hard questions ! My two cents anyway:
- Don't throw away your hardware. I have a 14 years old AMD desktop that still runs Kodi nicely (not H265 (HEVC) video material obviously) under Ubuntu. For media center use I would recommend Ubuntu (or other Ubuntu variants ... there are many, including Openelec, Kodibuntu etc.) rather than Windows, you'll get more out of your hardware
- I have 5 installs of Kodi throughout my house, including a Android Tablet. I maintain just the one Kodi video library for all my movies and shows (which are stored on a separate NAS as NFS share) and have the other four Kodi installs lookup that one video library (i.e. effectively that's one shared Kodi video library for all my Kodi installations).
- My understanding of plugins/addons is that they need to be installed/integrated and configured for each instance of Kodi ... you can't 'share them' across your Kodi installations as they can't run 'outside' Kodi (like a PVR Backend does ... which can stream to several Kodi PVR clients (PVR Addon)). You can make sure all your installs have the same plugins/addons available for installation (located in your Kodi addons folder) but you still need to install/integrate/configure them separately within each instance of Kodi.

Hope this helps ... a little? ... Although I'm sure there are much more knowledgeable Kodi users out there who may differ and give you better advice! ... and I might learn something too

+1 Well said

[kyle84]

As for your Comcast cable, get yourself a HDHomerun Prime and set up a PVR backend (I use ServerWMC). You can then share the live tv with all your Kodi installs.

[jrich523]

As for your Comcast cable, get yourself a HDHomerun Prime and set up a PVR backend (I use ServerWMC). You can then share the live tv with all your Kodi installs.

Awesome, thanks Kyle, I'll look into that.

[jrich523]

@LeKodeur

Thanks,the Bedroom laptop has had some failures to boot and is likely on its last leg. Also I partly want something small that I can attach to the back of the screen to make for a neater setup.


Do you use the mysql? I was under the impression (and maybe its wrong) that if I use the DB i'll be able to transfer my currently playing movie from one place to another. Like, if I want to head to bed and finish whatever it is im watching.

Yeah I know you can just copy/paste the plugin folder but I was curious if anyone was doing anything neat. I had considered setting up a share and doing a link/junction in the filesystem to trick kodi in to looking at the share, rather than local. Which would also help with the advanced configuration file. If for some odd reason a dev is looking at this, having customizable paths for these things would be sweet

[LeKodeur]

@LeKodeur

Thanks,the Bedroom laptop has had some failures to boot and is likely on its last leg. Also I partly want something small that I can attach to the back of the screen to make for a neater setup.


Do you use the mysql? I was under the impression (and maybe its wrong) that if I use the DB i'll be able to transfer my currently playing movie from one place to another. Like, if I want to head to bed and finish whatever it is im watching.

Yeah I know you can just copy/paste the plugin folder but I was curious if anyone was doing anything neat. I had considered setting up a share and doing a link/junction in the filesystem to trick kodi in to looking at the share, rather than local. Which would also help with the advanced configuration file. If for some odd reason a dev is looking at this, having customizable paths for these things would be sweet

I don't use the MySQL solution to share my video library, I just use the upnp based solution which works fine for me. The MySQL solution seems straight forward enough though ... did you add the following in ALL your advancedsettings.xml files (for each Kodi device) to ensure you can resume play from other Kodi devices:
<videolibrary>
<importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate>
<importresumepoint>true</importresumepoint>
</videolibrary>

I see where you're going with your 'centralised' addons folder ... but I'm a little doubtful there is an easy way of doing this as I don't think that Kodi can be tricked to looking-up the local addons folder somewhere else on a remote share ... you can try the <pathsubstitution> operand in advancedsettings but there is no 'Special' tag to substitute just the libraries (ref. http://kodi.wiki/view/MySQL/Sync_other_parts_of_Kodi). Yes perhaps post a 'new feature request' ... you never know!

[nickr]

Mysql is the way to go for library sharing.

Once you have a addons setup on one machine, you can copy to another machine. The relevant bits to copy are .kodi/addons/ and .kodi/userdata/addon_data/

[ilovethakush]

Hi jrich253 - too many too hard questions ! My two cents anyway:
- Don't throw away your hardware. I have a 14 years old AMD desktop that still runs Kodi nicely (not H265 (HEVC) video material obviously) under Ubuntu. For media center use I would recommend Ubuntu (or other Ubuntu variants ... there are many, including Openelec, Kodibuntu etc.) rather than Windows, you'll get more out of your hardware
- I have 5 installs of Kodi throughout my house, including a Android Tablet. I maintain just the one Kodi video library for all my movies and shows (which are stored on a separate NAS as NFS share) and have the other four Kodi installs lookup that one video library (i.e. effectively that's one shared Kodi video library for all my Kodi installations).
- My understanding of plugins/addons is that they need to be installed/integrated and configured for each instance of Kodi ... you can't 'share them' across your Kodi installations as they can't run 'outside' Kodi (like a PVR Backend does ... which can stream to several Kodi PVR clients (PVR Addon)). You can make sure all your installs have the same plugins/addons available for installation (located in your Kodi addons folder) but you still need to install/integrate/configure them separately within each instance of Kodi.

Hope this helps ... a little? ... Although I'm sure there are much more knowledgeable Kodi users out there who may differ and give you better advice! ... and I might learn something too

I would disagree with these two things.

Buy a chromebox and install openelec. Greatest investment you will ever make. Especially considering he said money wasn't an issue, and even if it was, its $150.