Kodi 20 Released With VA-API AV1 Support, Steam Deck Controls Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Kodi 20 Released With VA-API AV1 Support, Steam Deck Controls Support

Kodi 20 "Nexus" was released today as the latest major feature release for this widely-used HTPC/PVR software formerly known as XBMC...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Kodi-20-Released

[jaxa]

- Fixes and improvements to the TV channel/show information scrapers.

I'm interested in this one.

[trex]

Kudos to everyone involved. Kodi has been a blast to use in the last few years!

[UseLinuxNotWindows]

What would help (perhaps) is an easier way to set up shared meta-data on a centralised MariaDB database. Yes, if you know what you are doing you can create an appropriate XML file (userdata/advancedsettings.xml) like I do but doing so on Android clients requires a fair bit of hacking with File Browser clients to accomplish this (and knowledge of where everything is). I develop for Android so know about these things. Many end users would not be able to do so. Having a GUI to do this in settings would help. I guess I'd better roll my sleeves up and get involved! Yes I know you have still got the database end to complete. Maybe some sort of (cross platform) server package to automatically set up a separate instance of MariaDB would help. I'm making notes...

[caligula]

I'm interested in this one.

How is the linear TV relevant in 2023?

[Volker Schmidt]

How is the linear TV relevant in 2023?

Many of us, still receive satellite or cable tv (cheapest solution, compared to an undisclosed number of payed streaming solutions). Using this together with a dvb(c/s) to ip adapter is really nice solution to distribute media inside the house.

[Danny3]

Cool!
Can anybody confirm that HDR is working on it when it's started in that special mode?

[UseLinuxNotWindows]

How is the linear TV relevant in 2023?

In many ways it isn't.

I never watch TV or listen to radio at the time it is broadcast but in the UK, Freeview/Freesat broadcast TV/Satellite is still one oi the easiest/cheapest ways to receive the programs you want to. I use MythTV to schedule recordings then use Kodi to watch those recordings. I'm old school and use Logitech Media Center (LMC) to listen to audio (as you can synchronize audio output between rooms). Yes I really do still have Logitech hardware at the moment (that will change this year).

All audio is ripped to MP3 or FLAC. Any video I want to keep I generally buy on Blu-Ray and rip to MP4 (maybe I will move over to AV1). Not only does Kodi give you a Netflix sort-of experience but everything is LOCAL off your own network. You do not need to pay for any subscriptions. It is secure. You do not need a high speed data channel to watch anything. I am trying to develop a major system for Mycroft using a local centralized AI server. That will give me Alexa/Google Dot/Siri sort of functionality in playing my own audio/video recordings as well as controlling my house using Home Assistant. Also I don't need to let Amazon, Google or Apple listen to every word I utter in the house. All speech recognition is done by local processing. It's very much a work-in-progress! That's why I want all my audio-visual meta-data in a central database. I'm trying to modify LMC to re-enable the ability to use a MySQL/MariaDB database (which used to be there). All my Kodi meta-data is held in a central database. That means I can mine it using PyTorch or Tensorflow 2.0.

As this is natural language processing, I'm more tempted by PyTorch. The idea is to have a completely LOCAL system analogous to Alexa playing local media and controlling everything - synchronized automatically between rooms. As I move from room to room, Home Assistant would know that and the AI system would interact with me in whichever room I am in. Working with multiple people is harder! I could unplug from the Internet and it would still work.

[Linuxxx]

How is the actual video player part of Kodi comparing to mpv these days?

I used to run Kodi on a first generation Raspberry Pi myself, until I discovered the phenomanal options mpv offers for improving overall video quality.

Have any remotely similar improvements been implemented for Kodi's video player in the meantime?

[scirocco]

I gave up on kodi when they made alsa very hard to use in it, its still the only way to get hd audio codecs passthro, which made it useless for me, and many years later its almost impossible to do.