by Flack » Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:26 pm
It is important to state that the Kodi box I spent all day working on came from Amazon. I don't want you to think I found this thing in a discount bin or ordered it from the back alleys of Hong Kong. This is a device Amazon sells that is designed to let you stream your media (movies, music, pictures) to your television.
01. Opened the packaging, plugged in the box. Box looks sleek. Remote didn't come with any batteries but... eh. Hooking up the box has to be the hardest part, right? The default language is English. The default time zone is China.
02. Launch Kodi. Kodi can't find my server or my library. After struggling for half an hour, I just end up pointing to the SMB shares. It finally works.
03. Many of my movie directories have folders inside them called EXTRAS that contain trailers, deleted scenes, etc. Each one of those files begin showing up in the Kodi library. A quick Google search points me to a plug-in named EXTRAS that will treat all the files inside your Extras folders as extras and not movies. Makes sense.
04. I download the Extras plug-in and install it. My movie library is so filled with garbage that I delete the database and restart the scan.
05. After scanning my movies for 45 minutes I look and find hundreds of folders called EXTRAS listed in with my movies. After more Googling, I discover the solution: you have to manually create a file called advancedsettings.xml and place it on the Kodi box. The suggested method is FTP.
06. The Android box does not have FTP, but it does have access to the Google Play store. I try that.
07. The Google Play store requires my email name and password. Since the time zone defaulted to China, I spend the next 10 minutes creating a fake gmail account, and use that.
08. I log in to the Google Play store and go through half a dozen FTP servers before I find one that's free and works. I then discover a new level of hell which is configuring an FTP server using a Kodi remote.
09. With that done, I enable the service, upload the file, delete the library, and rescan the library.
10. Nope. You have to reboot the box for it to read the xml file. I realize this 30 mins into the scan. I delete the library, reboot the box, and rescan the library.
11. As the library began to scan, I went ahead and added my mp3 and digital picture libraries. Instead of queueing them, it tried to do them all at the same time, killing my network.
12. The whole thing locked up so I unplugged it and smashed my skull in with it. The end.
It is important to state that the Kodi box I spent all day working on came from Amazon. I don't want you to think I found this thing in a discount bin or ordered it from the back alleys of Hong Kong. This is a device Amazon sells that is designed to let you stream your media (movies, music, pictures) to your television.
01. Opened the packaging, plugged in the box. Box looks sleek. Remote didn't come with any batteries but... eh. Hooking up the box has to be the hardest part, right? The default language is English. The default time zone is China.
02. Launch Kodi. Kodi can't find my server or my library. After struggling for half an hour, I just end up pointing to the SMB shares. It finally works.
03. Many of my movie directories have folders inside them called EXTRAS that contain trailers, deleted scenes, etc. Each one of those files begin showing up in the Kodi library. A quick Google search points me to a plug-in named EXTRAS that will treat all the files inside your Extras folders as extras and not movies. Makes sense.
04. I download the Extras plug-in and install it. My movie library is so filled with garbage that I delete the database and restart the scan.
05. After scanning my movies for 45 minutes I look and find hundreds of folders called EXTRAS listed in with my movies. After more Googling, I discover the solution: you have to manually create a file called advancedsettings.xml and place it on the Kodi box. The suggested method is FTP.
06. The Android box does not have FTP, but it does have access to the Google Play store. I try that.
07. The Google Play store requires my email name and password. Since the time zone defaulted to China, I spend the next 10 minutes creating a fake gmail account, and use that.
08. I log in to the Google Play store and go through half a dozen FTP servers before I find one that's free and works. I then discover a new level of hell which is configuring an FTP server using a Kodi remote.
09. With that done, I enable the service, upload the file, delete the library, and rescan the library.
10. Nope. You have to reboot the box for it to read the xml file. I realize this 30 mins into the scan. I delete the library, reboot the box, and rescan the library.
11. As the library began to scan, I went ahead and added my mp3 and digital picture libraries. Instead of queueing them, it tried to do them all at the same time, killing my network.
12. The whole thing locked up so I unplugged it and smashed my skull in with it. The end.