My thoughts/usability
#1
Hello all. Been using Kodi for a few years now and I have to say, it's one of the best pieces of software ever written. Whatever it doesn't do directly, someone's probably made an add on or skin that will do it.

I only have a couple of minor gripes with the way I use it. I am a basic user. I stream nothing. Videos are pre scanned with mediaelch and everything resides locally.

This creates actor thumbs in each folder (same as export to separate files would). That means if I have 10 Jim Carrey movies, there is 10 identical pics of him taking up space on the drive. It may seem like a small amount of space but multiply that by 100's of my favorite actors and it adds up. This is the least bothersome of my gripes but maybe a single folder for this would save on redundant information.

That leads me to my second gripe. After I thoroughly enjoy a Jim Carrey movie, I like the fact I can select him from the cast and see a list of his movies that I own. The problem is that the search results do not show a watched check mark. When viewing an actors movies (sometimes over a period of days or weeks), it'd be nice to have an easy view of what you've watched.

Going to a movie an actor you are searching for and selecting cast is easier than trying to find them in the actor section after you have a large movie collection. The list is just too big, filled with people you never heard of with no pic available. Maybe some sort of "favorite actors" option would helpHuh

Another fairly new feature is the "are you still watching" prompts. Personally I hate it and have actually gone back to a previous version to avoid it. Can this be turned off somewhere? I miss the "play from here" that use to show up on the context menu. I realize some people watch from their beds and may fall asleep and wake up with all their shows marked as watched but this is not an issue for me.

My last issue is the ratings. I just don't agree with tmdb or IMDb! Lol. I understand tracktv will let you assign personal ratings so I will check that out but I think to be effective it should ask you for your rating after you first watch it. Like a quick pop up message before it marks something as watched.

Just as a side note, I do not use Kodi for music because I couldn't find a simple way to just grab and play my smart playlists from iTunes. My collection is far too big to be navigating in Kodi but if I had quick access to my smart lists it would be quick enough to be usable.

There you have it. Thanks for taking the time to read. Would love to hear how other users feel and how they use Kodi. Feel free to chime in and sorry if I missed an add-on that does what I want already.

Sent from my B3-A20
Reply
#2
We have a "are you still watching" nag screen now? Seriously? Are you sure this is not coming from your TV?
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
Reply
#3
(2016-10-12, 07:30)Memphiz Wrote: We have a "are you still watching" nag screen now? Seriously? Are you sure this is not coming from your TV?
Probably an addon
Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting, read this first
Interested in seeing some YouTube videos about Kodi? Go here and subscribe
Reply
#4
(2016-10-12, 07:31)Martijn Wrote:
(2016-10-12, 07:30)Memphiz Wrote: We have a "are you still watching" nag screen now? Seriously? Are you sure this is not coming from your TV?
Probably an addon

Possibly this addon: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=228435
Reply
#5
Those actor points are genuine problems though, and would be neat to have them fixed.
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
Reply
#6
(2016-10-12, 07:58)curti Wrote:
(2016-10-12, 07:31)Martijn Wrote:
(2016-10-12, 07:30)Memphiz Wrote: We have a "are you still watching" nag screen now? Seriously? Are you sure this is not coming from your TV?
Probably an addon

Possibly this addon: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=228435

It's definitely the "Next Up Notifications" add-on, see the 4th screenshot on that thread there's a setting "Number of episodes before still watching query" shown.
Reply
#7
Another example of a skin putting needless requirements in addon.xml. This is a good example why skins shouldn't be allowed to do that. The user has no idea why this happens and no idea how to turn it off.
Reply
#8
Isn't this done to be able to properly skin the addon dialogs?

Addons can't create their own dialog their way because of font limitation. If this was resolved, I'm sure we'd see less addons being directly included in skins. Smile


Sent from my iPhone
Reply
#9
(2016-10-12, 05:31)Spawk Wrote: That leads me to my second gripe. After I thoroughly enjoy a Jim Carrey movie, I like the fact I can select him from the cast and see a list of his movies that I own. The problem is that the search results do not show a watched check mark. When viewing an actors movies (sometimes over a period of days or weeks), it'd be nice to have an easy view of what you've watched.

I think it would be a great idea to have search results for actors (and directors too) show up in the same form of a smart playlist.

That would solve OP's problem that the movies in the results lists are shown without the 'watched' indicators. It would also make the interface more consistent, since the list would be (or could be) the same as the users' normal movie lists. It would also add options for filtering ('hide watched' or something) and especially sorting options.

The current search results lists is so inflexible, I guess it's still from the XBox days?

(2016-10-12, 05:31)Spawk Wrote: Going to a movie an actor you are searching for and selecting cast is easier than trying to find them in the actor section after you have a large movie collection. The list is just too big, filled with people you never heard of with no pic available. Maybe some sort of "favorite actors" option would helpHuh

Yeah, this list is quite useless when you have more than one or two films in the database. For me it's the the first thing I remove from any new skins' movie submenus since I never use it. I doubt many others would use it in its current form?

Perhaps a 'filter by number of appearances' or 'top 100 of most occurring actors' (or something) would help to make this list more useful? With a large database, you simply end up with a list of hundreds or perhaps thousands of unknown extras. My fullblown Windows HTPC takes a while to load it, I don't even want to think about how long the RPis take to load or render that list.
Reply
#10
(2016-10-12, 05:31)Spawk Wrote: Videos are pre scanned with mediaelch and everything resides locally.

This creates actor thumbs in each folder (same as export to separate files would). That means if I have 10 Jim Carrey movies, there is 10 identical pics of him taking up space on the drive. It may seem like a small amount of space but multiply that by 100's of my favorite actors and it adds up. This is the least bothersome of my gripes but maybe a single folder for this would save on redundant information.

Stop using local actor artwork, and just let Kodi download them the first time they are needed. What is gained by downloading them to your media file system anyway, even without the duplicates? They are smaller than fanart and other media artwork, and are rarely displayed with a fanart's regularity, so the hassle seems even more pointless.

I highly doubt Kodi actually uses more than one when importing, either ignoring any duplicates or overwriting one with the next, so they are of no use to Kodi. I'd say Kodi's export here isn't intended as a suggestion for how this data should always be stored, it's more a quick and dirty way to get information out of Kodi, or move data from one database to another.

(2016-10-12, 05:31)Spawk Wrote: My last issue is the ratings. I just don't agree with tmdb or IMDb! Lol. I understand tracktv will let you assign personal ratings so I will check that out but I think to be effective it should ask you for your rating after you first watch it. Like a quick pop up message before it marks something as watched.

Kodi 16 Jarvis added the ability to add your own rating to movies, TV shows, and episodes, and can be set on the Information window. A quick search came up with the User Rating add-on that can prompt for a rating after watching a video.
Reply
#11
Thanks for all the info guys! I will have to upgrade to Jarvis and check it out. I have updated and "down dated?" a few times over the years and that is part of why I like to have media and NFO stuff reside on the drive. It makes rescanning way faster (and can be done offline). I also don't want to go through all the default art downloaded to replace what I already replaced in mediaelch. As an example: I prefer a scene from the movie in the background as opposed to actual fan art.

Sent from my B3-A20
Reply
#12
(2016-10-12, 12:46)BigNoid Wrote: Another example of a skin putting needless requirements in addon.xml. This is a good example why skins shouldn't be allowed to do that. The user has no idea why this happens and no idea how to turn it off.
Fully agree.
Had to assist a friend again that likes to try out any skin he can get his hands on.
He assumed that changing or uninstalling the skins would clean everything out.
Nope. It does not. Most more complex skins leave everything it can get away with.

Can be pretty annoying at times...
Reply
#13
(2016-10-12, 12:46)BigNoid Wrote: Another example of a skin putting needless requirements in addon.xml. This is a good example why skins shouldn't be allowed to do that. The user has no idea why this happens and no idea how to turn it off.

Honestly, I would love to see the feature included in Kodi's core. Of course, it would be off by default. Maybe even allow a skin to hide the feature if the skinner didn't want to support it (I feel the skin should dictate the UI, more than just being a "skin" of the same set of windows, IMO).

Add-on or core, off/not installed by default should be strongly encouraged, but it's no more confusing than something else that might be specific to a given skin. For example, some skins will make the fullscreen video paused status fade out after a while, but others are persistent. It seems reasonable to leave this up to the skinner, even if it isn't a great design choice in our opinion.
Reply
#14
(2016-10-13, 03:10)Spawk Wrote: Thanks for all the info guys! I will have to upgrade to Jarvis and check it out. I have updated and "down dated?" a few times over the years and that is part of why I like to have media and NFO stuff reside on the drive. It makes rescanning way faster (and can be done offline). I also don't want to go through all the default art downloaded to replace what I already replaced in mediaelch. As an example: I prefer a scene from the movie in the background as opposed to actual fan art.

As nickr said, it is something that needs to be handled better, but for the short term you can avoid actor thumbs while still using poster, banner, and fanart exporting.

That being said, thanks for the constructive feedback :)
Reply
#15
This particular problem (almost exclusively relating to this add-on being bundled) seems to come up about once every two months here. I've certainly helped resolve it at least 3 times for people.

Or at the very least if a skin installs it, if that skin is not enabled or is even removed then I think if nothing else has such a dependency on the add-on it should be disabled or removed respectively.
|Banned add-ons (wiki)|Forum rules (wiki)|VPN policy (wiki)|First time user (wiki)|FAQs (wiki) Troubleshooting (wiki)|Add-ons (wiki)|Free content (wiki)|Debug Log (wiki)|

Kodi Blog Posts
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
My thoughts/usability0