In article , Mike Easter wrote:
> According to the Kodi description, it wants to embrace the UI paradigm
> of the 'ten foot interface'.
>
> So, I would picture some Kodi 'fiends' as wanting to sit back in their
> easy chair in front of a big screen TV and surround sound speakers to
> get 'big' audio and video experiences.
>
> The kb/mouse doesn't actually quite fit that 10' paradigm.

The Kodi folk want to give a "home cinema" feel to their interface. They
haven't really understood that the great thing about a cinema is that
there is a projectionist setting the system up and handling the
scheduling and programming -- the "user" just has to sit back and make
himself ill on over-priced fizzy drinks and popcorn.

No, I'm being a little unfair ...

.. but my point is that a keyboard/mouse (or wireless mini-keyboard
with trackpad) allows interaction that is SO much richer than can be
achieved with a TV remote and a clunky on-screen menu. I can't see why
anyone would deliberately emulate 1960s (1950s?) TV technology when
there are better things available.

> ... I'm not really 'into' using a handheld touchscreen device to
> interface w/ what I'm doing, BUT...
>
> .... I can see some 'uses' for such a concept, ie witness the
> cellphone users who 'do everything' w/ their cell.

AFAIK Kodi doesn't give you the option of controlling the thing from a
smartphone ... but if it does (now) do that, that's probably a step
forward.

I've recently started using Netflix on my dumb-ish TV, and the easiest
and cheapest way for me to do that is to use a ChromeCast device
attached to the TV and control it from my Android phone. Apart from the
fact that the phone and the ChromeCast dongle occasionally lose sight of
one another and one or the other (but you have to guess which) needs
restarting or disconnecting from the WiFi for a few seconds so that they
can find one another again it works quite well. The fact that I can also
cast the BBC's catch-up TV, my photo collection, YouTube, etc., to the
TV in the same way is a bonus.

It's the kind of thing I'd like to use a Pi for, but the ChromeCast
makes it so easy ... and there are issues with Netflix's DRM on Chromium
on the Pi that I don't have the time or inclination to investigate.

> It might be that LibreElec isn't the ideal way to achieve that
> paradigm. There are others such as OSMC or Xbian.

LibreElec, Kodi, OSMC, and Xbian are all inbred cousins; a lot of code
is common to them all. A lot of good work has gone into them, but they
seem to share the notion that it's "cool" to give a computerized media
management system an obsolete UX.



--
Cheers,
 Daniel.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05