I appreciate that the Plex developers are talented and had the desire to link Kodi and Plex. But does anyone else feel like they did this backwards? The reason I set up Plex was because it tied into my home theater extremely well. It is available on almost every device I own, so it was very easy for me to get up and running in every room of my house. Setting up a full-home Plex server took me less than half a day to link up every device in my house to the digital content on my NAS. 1) Install the server on a PC, 2) map it to my NAS, 3) download apps on all my smart TVs, and 4) enjoy!! I downloaded and set it up on my Amazon Fire Stick, my PS3, and 2 of my Roku TVs in just about an hour!
Kodi is NOT available natively on any of my devices, nor is it easy to set up. It’s not something you can just install on any device unless you want to flash/root it. It takes at least an hour to set up Kodi on a single device (faster if it’s a PC/Mac). I reckon that most people that use Kodi don’t use Plex. If someone has limitless content available to them through Kodi, then why would they need/want Plex?
I’d like to hear thoughts on this. Wouldn’t a Kodi plug-in for Plex be much more useful than a Plex extension for Kodi (assuming it would allow connections to web repositories)? Kodi could already map a local NAS and stream local content, so all the Plex extension does for Kodi is enhance a user’s local content browsing for a more pleasant (Plex-like) experience.
I feel like you are missing the point of Plex for Kodi. Just because you don’t like it or it doesn’t run on your devices doesn’t mean it is not necessary. Kodi is not about viewing “limitless content” it is for viewing content you legally own just like Plex is. Plex for Kodi leverages Kodi’s great media playback abilities while being able to use Plex’s management features and a familiar UI.
Many of us love Kodi for it’s robust playback abilities as well as its versatility. Plex just plays perfectly into that. Kodi can become the equalizer as far as compatibility between devices. For instance Plex has issues with DTS playback on the MiBox. So just using the Android TV Plex app is problematic. Using the Plex for Kodi addon eliminates this issue as all playback duties are handled by Kodi. As a veteran Plex and Kodi user I don’t really have use for most of that pirate streaming stuff so I don’t know why I would want a Kodi plugin.
I would imagine probably every Plex user knows about and has at one time or another used Kodi. Whereas there are lots of Kodi users that just heard of Kodi last week, as it has become notorious, so their knowledge of Plex is way down the road.
“Plex for Kodi leverages Kodi’s great media playback abilities while being able to use Plex’s management features and a familiar UI.”
—So then why don’t you just use Plex without Kodi? What does Kodi offer you as a home media server that Plex doesn’t? What “playback ability” does Kodi have that Plex doesn’t?
Pawdog:
I see what you’re saying and I can appreciate it. For example I went the Tablo route when I cut the cord (before Plex DVR) and it too doesn’t decode DTS (at least it didn’t last I checked). However, I still use my ‘legacy’ Tablo system instead of switching to Plex DVR, mostly because I don’t want to have to buy new hardware and because I like the Tablo interface. Thus I now understand why you would stick with Kodi and why this would be a significant add-on.
For the common user, though, I don’t see how this is a valuable feature. Like I mentioned: I decided to set up Plex and was up/running in a matter of hours on all my devices with absolutely zero planning. You can’t say that for Kodi unless you intentionally go out and purchase devices that support Kodi, which are much fewer than those that support Plex. I see this extension valuable only for current Kodi users. Good for you all: I was not impressed with Kodi’s look/feel as a media server so I dumped it about a year ago. I’m more of a ‘looks’ kinda guy, and the simplicity of Kodi just didn’t appeal to me. I guess I’m shallow like that . . .
And to both of you: no judgement from me on how you use Kodi. I know plenty of people that use Kodi and every single one of them used Genesis and now use Exodus add-ons. I understand that Kodi is intended to use ‘for legal purposes’, but then again so is Kali Linux.
I use Plex for Kodi because I can passthough Atmos/DTS:X audio, direct play all formats including those with PGS subtitles, have proper refresh rate switching for both 23.97 and 24hz with in sync audio, use 3dluts to correct my displays color, playback MVC 3d videos, while at the same time using the most recent, and arguably the best, of all the Plex client UI.
Instead of solely using Kodi which would meet my needs for playback I also want to share my database across multiple devices and access my media remotely which is where Plex comes in. In short Plex lacks a client with ”enthusiast" play back features and Kodi lacks a central media database with the ability to transcode remotely. Together you get the best of both worlds.
So what seems to be the common theme is that people use Plex for Kodi because Kodi is an awesome media player and works much better than Plex’s media player which is the “core” of any media player.
Guess if we had a better player core more like Kodi or VLC (available on most clients) that we wouldn’t need to use this type of setup. Kind of amazing when two of the best players out there provide the code you can make part of your own program.
I wish we had the ability to select an external player such as VLC in the Plex clients since this would allow much easier direct play for most files. Web browser too.
@cayars said:
I wish we had the ability to select an external player such as VLC in the Plex clients since this would allow much easier direct play for most files. Web browser too.
But then you would lose out on other features like trailers, post-play, casting, and progress tracking.
Plex for Kodi was a pleasant surprise for me. Plex is great in that it is relatively easy to set up and share media with family. Kodi has a feature that I use daily that Plex doesn’t - PseudoTV Live. I can now use my Chromebox box for both.
@cayars said:
I wish we had the ability to select an external player such as VLC in the Plex clients since this would allow much easier direct play for most files. Web browser too.
But then you would lose out on other features like trailers, post-play, casting, and progress tracking.
Why? VLC as an embedded player could do all those things. Of course you would have to wrap it with some code to add Plex features like casting, tracking etc but would not be a huge thing to do and would fix a lot of things. It would also allow direct play a lot more often since it plays almost everything natively with better bitstreaming sound support as well.
It would not be without some downsides (streaming odd formats) but it would be nice to have the option of a couple of external players. Just a “wish” is all.
@cayars said:
Why? VLC as an embedded player could do all those things. Of course you would have to wrap it with some code to add Plex features like casting, tracking etc but would not be a huge thing to do and would fix a lot of things. It would also allow direct play a lot more often since it plays almost everything natively with better bitstreaming sound support as well.
If it’s embedded then it’s not an external player anymore. If the Plex app included a different player then yes, this could be done. But as an “external player”, the file would just get direct played with no feedback to PMS, so you can’t track progress or even know when it finished playing. That external app would need to provide some sort of feedback mechanism, but that could be different for different apps. You can’t just wrap up any player and have it work.
It would not be without some downsides (streaming odd formats) but it would be nice to have the option of a couple of external players. Just a “wish” is all.
I understand the wish. Being able to do client side decoding would be great, but to include a whole new player would require a team of programmers just to keep up with that player portion.
Your over thinking it. What Plex would do is have an API or wrapper that is generic. Think of something like a record that gets passed to the 3rd party program and one for getting info back as well as a set of events (play, stop, pause, etc)…
A 3rd party developer would create a wrapper for said program such as VLC (remote control functions, progress tracking, switching audio tracks, CC, etc
So there would have to be hooks to make it seemless but they would be developed by someone like me or any other 3rd party developer. Plex would just need to provide wrapper code that would be generically tied by 3rd party programmer. This way events, progress, tracking and the like would continue to work just fine.
I never meant to let anyone think you could just select your favorite media player and that’s all there is to it. That would never work. But with minimal work a lot of players could be wrapped to work with Plex clients on many devices/platforms.
If the Plex app included a different player then yes, this could be done. But as an “external player”, the file would just get direct played with no feedback to PMS, so you can’t track progress or even know when it finished playing. That external app would need to provide some sort of feedback mechanism, but that could be different for different apps. You can’t just wrap up any player and have it work.