Kodi Community Forum

Hello all.

I am desperately trying to replace my cable TV subscription ($129/mo) but am running into snags. I don't watch much TV, but the rest of the family has their favorite shows. We have a DVR, and what isn't watched live is usually recorded. Special shows (Olympics) or entire shows (every instance of "Real Housewives") get recorded -- these are just two examples.

We have a Roku and use Netflix, but their streaming content is getting thinner, plus of course the latest seasons aren't available. Plus, not all the shows the family likes are available.

I've played with PlayOn and Hulu, and didn't like either (not enough content, hard to navigate, some of the latest shows were available but not all, etc).

It seems that every solution I try has one or two shortcomings, and we keep coming back to keeping regular old cable TV.

I just set up an unraid server for movie streaming, and am planning on running XBMC on an HTPC in the living room. I have been reading about SABnzbd, Sick Beard, Couch Potato, and other plugins for unraid that will allow us (or so it would appear) to download entire libraries of various show episodes, catalog them, and then XBMC will be notified and make them available for viewing.

Am I assuming all of this correctly? If my daughter likes "Lying Games" or something on the Disney channel, or my wife likes "Top Chef" on Bravo, is it safe to assume that we can download, catalog, and make available for later viewing every episode that has ever aired? Will the unraid/XBMC combo with associated plugins be the ultimate video-on-demand solution?

For those of you with many viewers in the house (I have several), and many different likes and dislikes, and dozens (or more) of shows to watch, have you found a single (*single*) solution that has allowed you to cut the cord with the cable company? I can't ask the kids to use the Roku and PlayOn and Hulu and XBMC etc. Or go to the various TV station homepages to watch episodes via a web browser... My family isn't super tech-savvy and that just won't cut it for anyone but me.

I'd like to make everything they'd want to watch available in one spot. Oddly enough, cable TV combined with Netflix provides 90% of what we need, I just can't justify the expense anymore, its pretty ridiculous to be paying $150+ for various subscriptions to what is essentially mind numbing, simple-minded media content. The elegance and ease of XBMC would be perfect if I could just get all the content I need to be stored on my unraid server.

Suggestions?

I've been using XBMC for years, but about a year ago I talked to the wife and we haven't watched cable for more then 3 months so we cancelled it.

Three things (really two and a half) are important ...

1) a nice remote, either a harmony or a MCE remote with either a CEC box or a RS232 cable to your TV for control
2) Content Content Content ... we have over 125 different series with over 5000 different episodes and we just now have enough stuff to watch that we don't feel like we are watching the same things over and over
2.5)Random TV options ... I have added two Favorites to the main XBMC menu one is Random TV (which plays a random episode from a random series that we haven''t watched in the last 6 weeks) and two Kids TV (same thing but from series that are marked as kids) ... on NEON (a nice skin) I think you can have up to six of these on the main menu

* all my content is stored on a freenas server with mysql ... the players are mini nettops with a 32GB SSD and 2 GB of ram ... I use a IR MCE remote on the main tv with a RS232 cable connected to the tv when the xbmcbuntu unit goes in to standby it send a serial command to turn off the tv and when I push the power button on the remote the tv turns back on. all the thumbs and meta data are stored in the mysql server and shared to all my tvs

If you don't have the equipment to get everything going be prepared to spend a little bit (especially if you dont want to mess with configuring it all) but you can normally pay everything back in less then a year if you cancel cable

switching to xbmc as you would hope doesnt really cut the expense. plus getting xbmc works just as you wanted takes a while(learning and configuring). plus, maintaining updated content is a chore (unless you are using SABnzbd, Sick Beard, Couch Potato).

(2012-10-02, 03:09)anthony.selby Wrote: [ -> ]I've been using XBMC for years, but about a year ago I talked to the wife and we haven't watched cable for more then 3 months so we cancelled it.

Three things (really two and a half) are important ...

1) a nice remote, either a harmony or a MCE remote with either a CEC box or a RS232 cable to your TV for control
2) Content Content Content ... we have over 125 different series with over 5000 different episodes and we just now have enough stuff to watch that we don't feel like we are watching the same things over and over
2.5)Random TV options ... I have added two Favorites to the main XBMC menu one is Random TV (which plays a random episode from a random series that we haven''t watched in the last 6 weeks) and two Kids TV (same thing but from series that are marked as kids) ... on NEON (a nice skin) I think you can have up to six of these on the main menu

* all my content is stored on a freenas server with mysql ... the players are mini nettops with a 32GB SSD and 2 GB of ram ... I use a IR MCE remote on the main tv with a RS232 cable connected to the tv when the xbmcbuntu unit goes in to standby it send a serial command to turn off the tv and when I push the power button on the remote the tv turns back on. all the thumbs and meta data are stored in the mysql server and shared to all my tvs

If you don't have the equipment to get everything going be prepared to spend a little bit (especially if you dont want to mess with configuring it all) but you can normally pay everything back in less then a year if you cancel cable

This is very helpful, thank you. Can you post details about your mini nettops? Are they home built or turn-key? And is the RS232 port a standard thing on newer TVs? I am still living with a tube (but my first LCD is weeks away) and am wondering if getting my TV to power on and off is simple, as yours is, or will require some mods or tweaking? Finally, what are you using to get content?

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(2012-10-02, 04:09)publicENEMY Wrote: [ -> ]switching to xbmc as you would hope doesnt really cut the expense. plus getting xbmc works just as you wanted takes a while(learning and configuring). plus, maintaining updated content is a chore (unless you are using SABnzbd, Sick Beard, Couch Potato).

I will be using all three of those on my media server. Its my understanding that I can build a very lightweight XBMC system (like the poster above mentioned) and my media server will do all the heavy lifting in terms of searching for and downloading content.

I have three TV's setup on system

The main TV in the living room is a Runco 70" (but most TV's with a RS-232 port publish there protocol), Its connected to a older PC that I had around (I think its a dual core 2.something) I have a AMD video card in it with a HDMI cable to the TV, I also have a rosewill IR remote. I installed XBMCbuntu and did some googleing, I had to change a configuration file, but it was pretty easy to find instructions, on my tv in the owners manual it said if I send a serial string of [SAB0000 it would turn the tv off and [SAB0001 would turn it on. I plugged in a USB to serial adapter I had around and typed in those lines in the right place (again it was really simple, I will look for the instructions or send them to you if you want) then I just went to the settings of XBMC and changed the shutdown function to "suspend" now everytime I hit the power button the computer suspends and turns off the tv, when I hit it again the TV comes back on and my computer is ready to go (its normally up before the splash screen on the TV goes away so there is no "boot" time at all)


The nettop is for my bed room, that tv is a Samsung 32 inch LED, I got it at xbmchardware.com it came loaded with xbmcbuntu and the remote I edited the same files for the suspend (turn tv off) and its been working great now too

The third TV has its issues ... its a little older and I decided to use a bluetooth PS3 remote (which is a bad idea) .. it works fine but I can't get the power on off thing to work and the remote doesn't have any volume buttons to I'm mapping other buttons to the volume (yellow and blue in my case)

The server like I said is running FreeNAS, I just downloaded and installed that ... everything worked right away expect mysql ... but there were lots of tutorials about making that work too (and I hear now with the new version of freenas its even easier) once I got that up and running I followed the step by step stuff for sharing my library and thumbnails copied a single file to all three of my xbmc installs and they are all in sync and running great, I can stop in one room, resume in the next, when I watch a show its marked as watched on all the other boxes and its good.

After I had all that working (which took about two weeks, working on it a hour here, hour there) I worked on the smart playlists .... there was some other tutorial that talked about that but really I found an example somewhere and changes the genre and I was done, I use neon as my skin and there is a option in the menus that allow you to add a playlist to the home screen it works perfectly, I hit the random TV button it starts playing something if I don't want to watch that show for whatever reason I just hit the next button until I find one that I want to watch.

As far as content goes, I get it every other night or so ... I use trakt.tv a free addon that keeps track of the shows I watch and tells me when new episodes are on, then either that night or the next day I get them ... I really spend about 15 mins and get that days shows, I copy them to my freenas network share and the xbmc auto library updater kicks in and puts them in the right place ... its not perfect and it takes some work but I find it enjoying and whenever I show my friends or have family over they think I'm the coolest :-)

but like I said you need a lot, you won't believe how quickly you feel like youve seen everything (especailly in the summer when there aren't new shows on)

My wife isn't a technology person at all so it took a while to get her to even look at (if your is the same way, don't push it wait until you have alot of it working with alot of content, then I just slowly started watching that when she was in the room instead of cable, after a while with the random tv option and no commericals she started using that too, then like I said after a couple of months not watching cable at all she was ok with me cancelling it)
It actually kind of funny when the Olympics were on (we are not sports people so if you are then I can't help you) we watched that from a over the air antenna and she got mad, we couldn't pause there were so many commercials it just wasn't as good

** Side note **

if your buying a new TV it should have HDMI CEC, if thats the case you can do all the power stuff over the hdmi cable, you either have to build one of your own (in that case get a intel board with that built in) or use the USB adapter CEC USB Adapter on a nettop box ... they have support built in to XBMC so you don't have to edit those files at all (I just did it because that was the stuff I had on hand)

(2012-10-02, 02:26)tucansam Wrote: [ -> ]Hello all.

If my daughter likes "Lying Games" or something on the Disney channel, or my wife likes "Top Chef" on Bravo, is it safe to assume that we can download, catalog, and make available for later viewing every episode that has ever aired? Will the unraid/XBMC combo with associated plugins be the ultimate video-on-demand solution?

Suggestions?

Hello,

This is where you may run into a snag. Not all programming is made available to download. My granddaughter loves "Good Luck Charlie" on the Disney channel and it is pretty near impossible to find the latest shows. I guess the folks who record this stuff can't record it all, I guess. My point is...that there may be some shows that you can't get by going this route.

Mark

I can speak for me and my gf and we never watch cable anymoore I have a Readynas installed with sabnzbd, sickbeard and couchpotato, everything is automated and when a new show/movie is downloaded I get a push notification to my phone. When my XBMC boots up its set to auto update the library and index all the new shows and movies.
It takes some time to get everything automated (with some technical know how maybe 2-3 hours)
My gf isnt technical but she handles Xbmc with a breeze and loves it.
Good luck setting your system up! if you choose the same setup as me just ask and I can help or get help directly from the developer here on the forum.

...

I would say it is the goal of any true media centre enthusiast to look for a convergence device that can smoothly transition between OTA TV via Satellite/Cable/Antenna with TiVo-style functionality (most importantly the multiple tuner/intuitive "elastic" feel of trick play buffering) with the ability to record, streaming from a NAS or similar for local shows, streaming from a broadband connection for movie trailers/Navi-X use and desktop environment for web browsing/email. Truly a one-stop shop for almost all your computing needs. Sadly we're not there yet. I think we're about a decade away from it all being seamless and easy for luddites, us early adopters going for that approach have to delve in and tweak settings, edit XML files and faff around with drivers until that point. (The rumoured Apple television set, if it ever gets here, will be about as limited and locked down as all the rest and as big as Apple are they're not strong enough to decimate all the satellite/cable providers.)

I personally have a somewhat interesting mix of devices around the house for content consumption, best of which is the Acer Revo R3610 with a 2TB HDD hooked up by USB2. The Revo is hidden under the main TV in a "media cupboard" which also houses the modem/router/gigabit switch for the home broadband network (all capable devices are fully wired for reliability although wireless N coverage in the house is good), a Sony 5.1 DTS/DD 5.1 surround sound amp, formerly a Virgin Media TiVo with basic package now a Humax Foxsat HDR for cost reasons and a whole buttload of cables going in and out. This rig can stream across broadband, stream locally from the 2TB USB2 drive (mostly HD stuff and selected DVDs from my collection) or stream from an old Pentium D machine set as a NAS PC with several TBs of other stuff. Sharing is done by SMB, or FTP across WAN if I'm away from home: other devices on the network like Xbox 1s and separate PCs can stream from the NAS PC or the Acer Revo directly. Cheap, effective setup.

As much as I'd like to fit twin satellite tuners to the Revo and have it work as a DVR too (just upgraded the Sky style minidish on the side of the house with a quad LNB when I got the Humax Foxsat), the rig just isn't reliable enough, especially XBMC which tends to do weird things if left in fullscreen mode with no user interaction for five or six hours overnight. I wouldn't trust that or Windows Media Centre to do a proper job of picking up scheduled recordings, and even if I did excess disk activity on the Revo piles on the DPC latency and can lead to frame skips etc on HD video, plus there's the limited bandwidth of having multiple reads/writes to a USB2 HDD. All the other PCs in the house are power hungry so I wouldn't want to leave those on either, so I have to keep the Freesat box.

Fortunately the Foxsat been modified, like almost every other piece of tech I own, so SD recordings can be streamed via SMB or FTP into XBMC, even HD content if I remember to put the Foxsat into "non-Freesat mode" so HD can be recorded unencrypted - shame it has to be manually recorded that way, but still, you then get broadcast quality copies of UKTV on the four HD channels available on Freesat which you can do what you like with. Then it can be watched from the TS file and/or archived by using MeGUI on the NAS PC to crunch it down in size while maintaining most of the video quality into a nice H.264 MKV with untouched original audio (usually MP3, DD 2.0 or DD 5.1). I can also do this with my lesser-watched DVD VOB files when i start running out of space.

Although the trick play on the Humax isn't as good and it lacks the more powerful media info integration of TiVo (finding actors in show have been in other shows is a good way to find new content, for example because I like The Wire I might also like The Hour because both star Dominic West) the fact it can be turned into a server and v12 betas of XBMC can smoothly playback 1080i TS files with beautiful deinterlacing means more control over your TV shows. If I had loads more TBs of space I would just copy things I recorded from it directly, just with a remux into MKVs, no conversion! Also as it's a dedicated TV box there's no trouble with frequent crashes, driver issues or any of the usual Windows crap I've put up with for over a decade (blue screens of death I'm looking at you). Very easy to use for most things with a very fast UI so it's got fairly decent wife acceptance factor too. For all these reasons and more, even a highly tuned XBMC HTPC with more power than mine just isn't at the stage where it can replace cable/satellite STBs, although with some work they will compliment each other fairly smoothly. I suppose technically with a CAM card in the Foxsat's CI slot and a registered Sky HD smartcard inserted the ability would exist to record all subscribed HD channels in 1080i without encryption (even PPV!), but that's a long, complicated and expensive route that might end in failure anyway. Fun to consider, though.

Anyway, back away from me waffling about my home setup, let's address a few points mentioned in the thread...

As for the HDMI-CEC thing, I honestly wouldn't bother. Get a good universal remote with macros and you can have buttons which turn on/off your TV, HTPC, home cinema amp one after the other, then set everything to the right input/output mode. Or even better, get a power saving circuit breaker which turns off everything completely by IR code, then with another IR code turns everything on at once too. This saves wasted energy of devices sitting in standby. I've tried messing with HDMI-CEC in the past and it's been far harder and more frustrating than trying to program either a Harmony style or JP1 style remote so I wouldn't recommend it.

Here in the UK, the BBC actually did a wonderful job covering the Olympics. They switched the two main HD channels (BBC One HD and BBC HD) from 1440x1080i to full 1920x1080i, still with DD 5.1 sound, and also introduced 24 HD channels with additional coverage, also in 1920x1080i but with stereo sound, plus loads of other nice things. Personally I found the 24 HD channels to be overkill and just stuck with the two hour summation things at the end of the day which the TIVo was able to grab (with a "keep only one" setting so if I missed a day I could just forget about it and watch for the current day instead) but for sports fans it was a dream come true. Beautifully shot for the most part, some great camera crews pulling triple shifts no doubt. I feel bad for others around the world who didn't have the same high quality advert free content, although in all fairness it was something of a last hurrah for the Beeb - they knew it too because it's only about now they've bloody shut up about the Olympics!

Oh I used trakt.tv plugin for a while when I was still on Xboxes only for XBMC use, I found it creepy though. If you use trakt.tv, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter together you can tell everyone everything about you in a way that's far too easy to track and exploit - where you are, what you're doing, what you're thinking, what you're watching, what you're searching, what you're buying. Like I wrote, creepy. Depending on how much you use those services of course! But IMHO some of us are far too "plugged in", walking down the road with noses pressed firm to glowing smartphone screens etc...

We cut our cable over a year ago and don't miss it at all. We use an xbmc setup similar to what you mentioned in the first post. We also have hulu, netflix, and a standard tv antenna as well. You can integrate all these into one pc using autohotkey and a harmony remote. You can get so many tv shows with hulu, especially if you are a subscriber you take awhile just to decide what you want to watch.

(2012-10-02, 21:41)ThePolarSky Wrote: [ -> ]Just realize that using SABnzbd, Sick Beard, and Couch Potato is theft. No ifs, ands, or buts.

...at least if you're in a developed country with intellectual property laws. If you're a third worlder, then I guess it would depend on the whims of your dictatorship / corrupt government officials.

You can buy those series legitimately through an online retailer. XBMC is a way to *play* content, not a way to acquire content. Fundamentally, XBMC by itself can't replace cable TV. That will require $$$ or theft.

As an avid user of sabnzbd+, couch potato and sickbeard and an occasional user of torrents I felt a need to comment on this.

Downloading movies and television shows from the internet is theft. I hate when people try to paint it as something else. It isn't sharing or "sticking it to the man" or any other BS. I steal content from the internet and in all honesty I don't really feel that bad about it. I should, because I know that very many people work hard to produce this content and by stealing it I am hurting them in the long run. The movie studios and big name actors are still going to get their cut, the only people getting screwed are the little guys.

To specifically address your comment however, why do you assume only third world governments are ran by a dictator or corrupt officials? I would posit that all governments are mostly ran by corrupt officials and given half the chance would turn their "democracies" into dictatorships overnight. I would go even farther to say that many "third world" governments probably have more transparency than the government where you live. At least people in Iraq knew where their dictator stood. Saddam may have been a racist war mongering leader who did what he wanted, but if you think the people in our government are not racist or war mongering you are living under a rock.

Politics aside, while stealing digital content from the internet may be illegal only in countries with strong intellectual property laws, it is still stealing regardless of where you live. I wouldn't get up on a high horse based on what laws your elected officials have passed under pressure from large corporations and unions. Don't be confused that IP laws represent some moral high ground based on respect for the artists and creators. At the end of the day corporations don't want anybody skimming off of their profits. If we had honest intellectual property laws in this country artists and producers would have more say over what happens to their content.

If corporations were serious about ending piracy they would take a serious look at how they deliver content to their consumers. As a former cable subscriber, looking back at the way they marketed and presented their content to users is ridiculous. Look at any on-screen display presented by your cable box. It looks ridiculous compared to the beautiful skins we have available in XBMC. The idea of having programs grouped into tiers and having to pay more to get access to a different tier is ridiculous. Why should I have to pay $10 per month to get access to 20 more channels when all I wanted was Nick Jr? It doesn't make any sense. You want to watch one show, let's say Game of Thrones on HBO? Sorry buddy, that's another $30 per month every year for a show that is on 10 out of every 75 weeks.

I think we should all support services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Play and hell even iTunes. These are the services that will eventually replace the antiquated paradigm of cable TV. But lets be honest, these services are not all the way there yet. Movie and TV studios are still dragging their feet to get content to these services. The fact that not all of these services are completely cross-platform hurt in adoption by people like us that are tech-savvy and live on the cutting edge of technology. I'm specifically talking to you, Netflix. No Linux love because you are tied to Silverlight and Microsoft? Come on already! And why would I wait a week to watch my favorite show through one of these services when sickbeard will have it downloaded to my computer within an hour after it airs. Yes I steal digital content from the internet, But I can't wait for the day I don't have to any more.

That said, and more to the point of the original poster, I have replaced cable TV with XBMC. It is a stunning way to access you digital content, and watch or listen to what you want when you want it. It hasn't necessarily been cheaper, I have paid for additional storage and built a bad-ass XBMC front-end, as well as an Acer Aspire Revo for the kids, but I don't think I'll ever go back. As more plugins are developed for services like Hulu, Amazon and Spotify the ability to get access to great legal content is expanding everyday. Until cable providers step up to the challenge of the digital revolution, I don't think I'll ever go back.

Well said Balthazar. I abstained from commenting on ThePolarSky's comment because I knew it would turn into a rant. You and i are using xbmc in a very similar fashion...

(2012-10-02, 21:41)ThePolarSky Wrote: [ -> ]Just realize that using SABnzbd, Sick Beard, and Couch Potato is theft. No ifs, ands, or buts.

...at least if you're in a developed country with intellectual property laws. If you're a third worlder, then I guess it would depend on the whims of your dictatorship / corrupt government officials.

You can buy those series legitimately through an online retailer. XBMC is a way to *play* content, not a way to acquire content. Fundamentally, XBMC by itself can't replace cable TV. That will require $$$ or theft.

Between OTA (now that PVR is an official feature for XBMC v12), free (and legal) content from Hulu, Free Cable, etc, that gets pretty close to replacing cable for me. XBMC will also work with paid content from Hulu + and Amazon Prime (BlueCop is my hero), as well. While XBMC can't directly play Netflix, it's pretty easy to set up an HTPC so that you can easily switch to it in a browser (or to the Netflix app if you are using Android).

Not yet.....I cannot miss the primetime Live news, NFL, NBA, NCAAF, Boxing, HGTV HD, Travel HD, etc......if your viewing is strictly movie, there is no need for cable and satellite.....

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