Kodi

it's good to use if you love movies and watching shows this is for you. kodi is still rockin!

What used to be the greatest mediacenter for the first XBOX has turned into a nightmare. We all know the pros: it is free and not windows mediacenter.

Cons?

-Requires more steps to enable "unknown sources" than Android -Is slowly closing down: bands addons, implements source verfication and so on..let's face it they what to monetize -The UX has been "reworked" by insane people, e.g. the Systemsetting have cute useless biiiig icons now but you won't be able to find anything. -Adding an AddOn from Zip from a remote source takes about 500% longer than before. -For over 10 years now people have been requesting basic functionality like adding an IPCamera stream...still not done

I guarantee it: there will be a payed subscription model before there will be an IP camera plugin.

Time to fork.

A media center rich in features and add-ons. However, the default UI is quite confusing and heavy

It's got a wide variety of films just been rekeased

I used to have a WDTV, then an Asus O!Play, and when they died, I ended up with a Kodi player as a gift. It played everything that the other players would, and unlike them, it had internet connectivity, so things like subtitles and IMDB functions could be integrated.

So in addition to playing pretty much anything, it's also great for things like when you have a "who is that guy? I know I've seen him somewhere" moment when you're watching a movie, and you can see everything else in your library with that actor/director.

I've never really used it to stream; attempts to integrate it with Amazon Prime, Netflix, or even Youtube have been more effort than they're worth. But if you want a solid video playback server for your video library, it's about the best there is.

Ok as a media player (although the GUI is quite cumbersome + frequent locks on linux). Not really a media server: it is using quite a lot of CPU even when doing nothing (just the way it is designed). So you have to start and stop it every time you use it. That is not what a server should be. The media server tag should be remove IMHO.

Forced dependencies, no way to disable any notification spam, extremely unstable and terrible, terrible UI & available skins. I would rather watch a black screen than deal with this ever again. The only thing this abortion has going for it is that it's free, but so is suicide. If you're determined to try this anyway, make sure to set up your own exit script that kills the process as the devs think a 30-90 second shut down time is normal (it very much is NOT, and when I choose to go do something else that is NOT time for you to hijack the machine for your database organization you absolute cretins).