[PatK]

In my mind it doesn't have to.

Ah, the freedom to dream.

Content providers have obligations to media sources and their business; it's usually money in one form or another. In rare occasions, content is provided to boost eyeballs, advertising revenue or the collection of numerological ideas and your clicks. (read money).

[kuluba]

Kodi and its plugins are free from the limitations of the streaming services mindset.
They can, within technical limitations, parse and bend the data to their own will and make it look shiny.
If the developers of kodi and  the plugins for disney, netflix, hulu, hbo, paramount, iptv-simple, zattoo, waipu, discovery,et cetera can agree on a common standard and interface, we don't even need an external service like justwatch or plex to do it.

[PatK]

the plugins for disney, netflix, hulu, hbo, paramount, iptv-simple, zattoo, waipu, discovery,et cetera can agree on a common standard and interface

And in that you'll never get agreement. They all want content control, and none will be satisfied with a common GUI that isn't better than the competition, allows them leverage into your wallet. We continually get take-down requests from various 'free public access' web sites and defending Kodi has become a never ending task and could become a lot more expensive should the limitations of safe harbour be explored.

[RockerC]

Media Import.

What's this all about?
The general idea is to provide a framework to be able to import media items from all kinds of services and locations which are not supported by our current library scanners which are purely filesystem based. Examples are importing some or all items from a plugin or from a UPnP server. This will allow users to directly integrate these items into their usual library so when they go through their library they'll also see items that are not directly available as a file on their disks/NAS but are available through another service and can play them like any other library item (as long as the service is available).

 Yes see this media importing and library integration development project -> https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=224794

[DiMag]

See also the following two tools which are not just in the pipeline but alive and kicking in the official (v19) repository:

1. https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:IPTV_Manager: Integrates IPTV channels from other add-ons in the Kodi TV and Radio menus. (Not in the library itself -- but unbeknown to most, your video library keeps secret accounts of every IPTV/VOD source you have ever opened!)
   
2. Library Integration Tool https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=327514: Adds films, series & episodes from video plugins into your library, to be viewed, managed and played just like any other local file. (According to a comment in Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Addons4Kodi/com...ion_guide/, "It is a very very powerful tool, but [also] fairly complicated, tricky, [and] difficult to get right and use correctly. If set up correctly, it will make Kodi so much faster, as the widgets act as local library, and in turn load fast.") (I confess I havn't managed to tame it.)
   

The feature request made in this thread is a very valid one. But the thread's title should be changed to "A more holistic approach to the library to include online sources".

(Actually an even more holistic approach would also include digital broadcasts --- the gist of the IPTV Manager addon.)

[host505]

There's also this add-on that gathers most streaming services supported by kodi add-ons' content:
Source code repo
Repository zip
Will list items available in the services enabled by user, fetch the official stream's url/id, and send it for playback to the equivalent add-on.

[DiMag]

@host505 
Didn't know about this addon's existence --- even though I have been searching for something more inclusive than the ones I listed in my post (they integrate very few services, and apart from PlutoTV, none of the big ones that really matter).

Neither a forum search nor (even) Google threw up any explanatory thread. How did it end up in your radar screen? (In the github it is listed as 11 days old.)

[host505]

I'm maintaining this.
I'll be honest. I used to maintain a "banned" add-on that had this functionality as well. I shut it down and made a new one that has only official streams.
I just thought to put it under a new, clean github account.

[kuluba]

I'm maintaining this.

You should make a new topic so people a) know about it and b) can talk about it.
A common interface to streaming is a good addition to the other approach of combining iptv sources.

[DiMag]

@kuluba is right. "Kodi related discussions" is not the correct home for an active addon.

[host505]

I want to complete some things I have in mind first, then maybe. Just not too much time this period of year for me to address user inquiries properly.
But in any case I'll have to check with a Team Kodi member first, as this obviously breaks some TOS of some services - albeit I'd guess that's the case of the dedicated add-ons as well.

[DiMag]

You want my advise? Don't antagonize Team Kodi, but don't toe their line either.

[DiMag]

We need an addon that breaks down all content offered by Team Kodi's officially supported addons and re-integrates it organized by content category (cinema, tv series, new, documentaries, art/culture, etc). Or in a PVR-timeline style. (I prefer the categorization approach.) We need especially an addon that breaks down and reorganizes news content, as this is a kind of content which is typically provided free of copyright restrictions (and if not free then less burdened that similar cinema or tv series content) and is notoriously badly organized, even invisible, to begin with.

[sarbes]

No, not really. I would consider this a hack.

Ideally, add-ons would register callbacks which Kodi can use to populate its DB. Add-ons would work as scrapers at this point.

A huge issue is limiting the content to a meaningful subset of what the providers offer. Sure, I could pump in thousands of movies into the DB, but are all of those really relevant? Also, the state of metadata media providers offer is varying heavily. I'm very much against scraping online databases for content which is available for a limited amount of time, as this would pose a huge workload when probing hundreds of items. The provider offered metadata might not be enough for Kodi to discern what the user might be interested in, so that would be an issue.

A decentralized approach would work well for some general categories. Skins could show a list of content in the categories "New", "Featured"/"Most Viewed", or "Last chance". This could be scraped once a day from each supported add-on, with Kodi offering an abridged list based on some internal weighting criteria. Those items would not go into the classic databases.

I would welcome a feature where users can add content to their DB via the context menu in the add-ons. For this to work, content providers would have to offer the "time to live" in their metadata. Otherwise, I don't see any reasonable way to scan possibly hundreds of entries, checking availability each day.