[4.3 Better Profile Support] Some ideas
#1
Hi,

I'm a huge fan of Kodi and have it set up on multiple devices. As such, I'm very thrilled to see that profiles are one area of GSOC proposals. As the wiki page isn't very detailed yet, I thought I'd share some ideas that I had about profiles, that might also be divided into multiple projects (as the wiki page suggests).

  1. Easier setup for multiple devices
    In my last attempt (admittedly still during Kodi 15) it wasn't really straight forward to have a central profile (e.g. on a NAS / server). I'd propose something like this workflow:
    • User wants to create profile
    • Kodi should ask if it's a One-Device setup ("OD") or a Multiple-Device setup ("MD")
    • If user chose "OD", Kodi can (more or less) continue with the current profile creation steps
    • If user chose "MD", Kodi should ask if the profiles should be created on the currently used device or some network device
    • For network device, Kodi will need some login and password input fields and then a way to test whether a suitable DB exists
  2. Hierarchical structure of profiles
    Scenario: I have a shared profile with my GF on the TV in the living room, but we both have Kodi on our Android smartphones as well with private profiles. Suppose we're watching some series. We're watching S01E01 together on the TV -> this should lead to S01E01 be marked as "watched" in the combined profile as well as the "descendant" profiles on our phones. After that, she's watching E02 on her smartphone and a couple of hours/days later, I watch it on my smartphone. If all descendant profiles have watched the episode, the "ancestor" profile should mark the episode as watched, too. Same goes for movies, of course.
  3. Better age-restrictions
    I know this is a difficult subject and has been discussed before, but I'm still throwing it in: If you have children, it would be nice to specify some age-restriction (or better yet: specify a birthday for that profile, so that it could automatically adapt). I'd propose that the user (e.g. the parent) that sets up the profile must choose the service (e.g. imdb) from which to get the age restrictions from. If no age restriction can be found, the content is *not* displayed at all.
    This will not be perfect, but still be a lot better than nothing (again: last time I thoroughly checked was at Kodi 15 times, so this might be obsolete). There probably should be a way for the master user to manually override the automatic setting (e.g. approve some movies and disprove others, regardless of the imdb-age-setting).
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#2
I've suggested this before here
https://github.com/xbmc/chorus2/issues/146
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=297967

Currently Web ui support one statically defined login linking i believe to the master user, if however this supported the profile users the actions could affect that users profile.

This would allow more interesting features that allow sharing of your content with remote users who can then be given different permissions and restricted views to your content.
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#3
(2017-03-02, 13:57)ripper17 Wrote:
  1. Easier setup for multiple devices
An idea for addition extension of "roaming user profiles" support that I would like is the ability to link each profile to your Kodi community forum for online login.

I like the idea of each profile logging-in online to an non-mandatory Kodi cloud service which could optional syncronize some of my personal preferenses for Kodi, such as language, country, timezone, personal pin-code, and age (for parental control).

Like the Plex Media Server it would also be nice if that my Kodi online profile could cache my login names some of my scrobblers for Last.FM and Trakt.TV scrobbler as well other logins for common streaming services, such as Spotify, YouTube, and Vimeo, etc. so that we would not have to enter that again on each Kodi device, instead we could just tick an optional box if we wanted to cache that login information from that Kodi cloud service.

Some kind of related online login with “Unique usernames (Kodi ID?)” for each profile might anyway also be needed when playing multi-player games with RetroPlayer in Kodi, as discussed here:

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=304296

That suggest to integrate logins to the MyBB forum softare that Kodi community uses here, as then we would already all have our “Unique usernames (Kodi ID?)” in place.


This concept of "roaming user profiles" is not a new idea and is already in use by many apps, (Plex being most similar to Kodi), however it original came from Windows NT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaming_user_profile

"A roaming user profile is a concept in the Windows NT family of operating systems that allows users with a computer joined to a Windows Server domain to log on to any computer on the same network and access their documents and have a consistent desktop experience, such as applications remembering toolbar positions and preferences, or the desktop appearance staying the same."
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#4
Optionally linking to some online ("cloud") service is fine - emphasis on "optional" though, please :-) I could set up my NAS with DynDNS to act as such an online service as well. If it is connected with Kodi community (forum) this might also be useful in trying to debug potential problems.

Saving login data for online services sounds like a very good idea (possibly including proprietary stuff like Netflix / Amazon Prime (with the corresponding add-ons))
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[4.3 Better Profile Support] Some ideas0