Which software for my media center?

[Bugses]

I just recently build myself a computer for the tv. I was just wondering which software to use? Emby, Kodi or something entirely else? I'm using Windows 8.1 on it.

[Murdoch]

XBMC (kodi) gets my vote. If you have an android phone, the Yatse remote is amazing.

[burnttoastnice]

If you had Windows 7 you could try Windows Media Center (not Media Player). Unfortunately that's a paid feature in Windows 8 upwards.

[MatthewEnderle]

Emby and nothing else...

 

[Bugses]

aesrock and Matthew - Could you please tell me, why you would chose Kodi or Emby?

 

burn - Yeah, that would've made it easier, but as far as I remember, WMC isnt happy about .srt files is it?

[Murdoch]

.

[Bugses]

What information would you like?

[Murdoch]

What information would you like?

 

What do you want to use it for? What kind of functionality do you want? What do you want to play.

 

Honestly, I've never used Emby but I'm sure it's a capable media centre. As is XBMC, largely this will come down to personal preference, or slight differences. My advice would be to try them both out, and see how they fit what you are trying to achieve.

 

Edit: Actually, I have tried out Mediabrowser in the past, didn't realise they had changed their name to Emby.

[Bugses]

I would use it for movies and TV shows, but I don't need to watch TV on it. I need it to be easy to use, since I'm not the only user. I just need it to play the usual formats and srt files.

[Murdoch]

I would use it for movies and TV shows, but I don't need to watch TV on it. I need it to be easy to use, since I'm not the only user. I just need it to play the usual formats and srt files.

 

Sorry, I'll give you a proper reply. My previous reply was a bit snarky I guess.

 

XBMC is great. It will support every file format you could throw at it, including all subtitles. The media scrapers do a great job of finding media files on your drives and downloading the meta data to arrange them in your media centre. There's a bunch of support in XBMC for addons, and a bunch of custom skins you can download.

 

I'll mention how I use mine. I have my films arranged in the format:

 

Movies\Film Name (year)\film.name.2015.1080p.x264.mkv

 

I use the universal movie scraper to download all the meta data, which it gets from IMDB including rating, I recommend this over the default scraper, using this method it literally has never made a mistake or picked up the details for the wrong film. I use the amber skin so looks a little something like this.

 

 

I use my Android phone as a remote using the Yatse remote app which has a small fee from the Google playstore. There is an official app you can get for free, but I find Yatse superior due to it's UI, voice support and the fact there is a little program you can install on your PC called xbmcstarter which you can setup to have XBMC launch from your Yatse remote.

 

So for example, if I want to watch a film, I simply launch Yatse, which I've setup to automatically launch XBMC on my pc, then I tap the voice control button and say "play The imitation Game" and it will play that film. Or I can browse through my media library within Yatse, and select whatever film / TV show I want to play.

[Bugses]

Thank you for your in-depth explanation of XBMC. How does it work with your TV shows? Can it "understand" when you have episodes in a folder, like TV Shows\TV Show Season 1\Episode 01. Can it find the media files for it, or does it "just" create thumbnails based on scenes from the file?

[Murdoch]

Thank you for your in-depth explanation of XBMC. How does it work with your TV shows? Can it "understand" when you have episodes in a folder, like TV Shows\TV Show Season 1\Episode 01. Can it find the media files for it, or does it "just" create thumbnails based on scenes from the file?

 

Yeah works similar to movies, when you add the TV shows source folder, you just set the media scraper to TV, this uses the database from tvdb.com to download all the metadata. So it will download information about the show, banner pictures, backgrounds, episode & season images, all cast info, even a brief synopsis of each episode (which you can hide if you want in case of spoilers). And yepp exactly, that naming convention and folder structure you mention works perfectly. There are some things that are picked up from local information, such as the resolution of the video, and the Audio & Video format. You can if you wish set up XBMC to use local images for thumbnails, but that's really not required as the scraper does a comprehensive job.

 

 

 

It's also worth noting, that XBMC will support subtitles within the MKV container, and it will support separate SRT files within the same folder that correspond to a particular episode or film, there's even addons which can download subs, if you don't already have them. As a fall back you can even manually select subs, like you would with VLC, which it will remember for next time.

 

There's another addon worth mentioning called "Watchdog" that will monitor your source folders and update your library whenever it detects a file change, such as adding a new TV episode.

 

Another cool addon is track.tv plug-in which syncs up with the trakt.tv website and tracks whatever you have been watching, it's a cool website, worth checking out. It can also be used to keep tabs on what you've watched across different media centres, such as Plex (which I use sometimes too for transcoding to tablets etc), or if you fresh install XBMC but forget to backup your library. It's a bit like Last.fm but for movies and TV shows, has a nice calender feature so you know when new shows are coming out.

 

In terms of controlling the media centre, you have a bunch of options, it will support mouse + keyboard, there are multiple apps on iOS & Android, game controllers, and universal remotes (such as harmony or Windows media centre remotes) with the use of a USB IR sensor. It can even support HDMI control (CEC) which sends a signal via your TV's remote, TV + HDMI cable. Unfortunately (most?) graphics cards and PCs don't natively support that standard, so you'd need to purchase an adapter for that option to work.

[Bugses]

Cool, thanks I'm gonna play around with it then.

[Moetrain]

I personally use WMC on Win8.1 and is easy for myself and my wife (pretty darn tech savvy girl) to use as a DVR.

We also use vlc for anything we haven't got on our DVR. 

 

Am planning to switch over to XBMC once I get our server built as it will handle all of our dvd's that we have ripped and recorded tv shows as well.

*note: WMC is $10 purchase with win8 and is not being supported at all in win10. 

[Murdoch]

I personally use WMC on Win8.1 and is easy for myself and my wife (pretty darn tech savvy girl) to use as a DVR.

We also use vlc for anything we haven't got on our DVR. 

 

Am planning to switch over to XBMC once I get our server built as it will handle all of our dvd's that we have ripped and recorded tv shows as well.

*note: WMC is $10 purchase with win8 and is not being supported at all in win10. 

 

I recommend using NextPVR as your PVR backend for XBMC, it works really quite well.

[Moetrain]

I recommend using NextPVR as your PVR backend for XBMC, it works really quite well.

 

I will look into it, using infinitv6 card and would like to keep the ability to record 6 HD channels at once. I just need to research it some, but I will keep in mind.

Thanks!

[SLOWION]

Plex for the backend

Kodi for the front-end with PleXBMC plugin

[Bugses]

aesrock > 

 

I'm hoping you can help me. I installed Kodi and I'm using the Universal Media Scraper too. But try and see, what it does when it tries to find some of my stuff. What am I doing wrong? I have no idea why it says Big Movie Premiere on the Twiligt one, and I have really no idea why it says "Calf Rescue at E6", because that is a Supernatural episode, haha. 

 

[Murdoch]

snip

 

Ok no problem, I'll talk you through it. I'll just firstly say, if your media is well organised and named decent it'll be easy, if it's all over the place the scrapers won't work that well.

 

So lets start with TV shows. Ideally set up a folder structure like this:

 

TV Shows\Breaking Bad\Breaking Bad Season 1\Breaking.Bad.S01E01.mkv

 

A separate folder for every show, and separate folders for seasons. 

 

Now to add the source for TV shows in XBMC, navigate to videos > files > and select "add videos". Then select browse and navigate to your TV show directory. Once you have navigated to your TV Show folder, hit "OK", then hit "OK" again. Then you'll be greeted with the "what the directory contains" screen, you'll want to select "TV Shows" and select The TVDB scraper like so:

 

 

Hit ok again and it will scan all your TV shows. Now as I said, if it gets confused, it will most likely be a naming issue. For example, if you don't have S01E01 (or something similar) in a file name, it is likely to get confused and not pick up that episode. For any show in particular that it gets wrong, double check on the website http://thetvdb.com and make sure the naming is correct. For example, I had to rename the folder "House of Cards" to "House of Cards (US)" as there is already an old UK TV series with the original name.

 

Now for Movies, it's a similar process, use the folder structure:

 

Movies\Avatar (2009)\Avatar.2009.1080p.x264.mkv

 

So Within the Movie directory you have a separate folder for each film. This works best imo, but it's not 100% essential, some friends just have their files all dumped in a folder.

 

Then again, videos > files > and select "add videos". Browse to your Movies folder, on the "this directory contains screen" select "movies" and the "universal media scraper" and check the "Movies are in seperate folders that match the movie title" check box. Like so:

 

 

It might get confused on some names, but the universal movie scraper simply uses imdb as a source. So for any films it gets wrong, check imdb, and make sure the name and the year are the same. Rename them if they are not correct. There's also another method if you don't want to rename files, right click, or hit "c" on any film within XBMC, click movie information and hit refresh, it will then give a list of most likely films matching the name, you can generally select the correct one from that list, and it will replace the meta data with that for the correct film.

 

So now after all that you should have TV shows and Films as two distinct options on the XBMC home screen. Next up, I'd go to system > addons > Get addons > click the kodi repository > services > and navigate down to "Watchdog" and install that. Now whenever you change a file, or add a file, your Libraries will update. After that I would recommend playing around with skins (System > Settings > Appearance) to find one you like, the default skin is a bit meh. Personally I use Amber.

 

Also, I've just realised, XBMC requires a bit of familiarity, but it's super powerful once you get used to it. It's also worth mentioning, it might be a pain getting your media all organised in the first instance, but once you get it all sorted, you just add stuff as you go in the correct format, and it'll be no problem.

 

Good luck & if you have any other questions, quote me in this thread, so I notice

[Adam Entertainment Company]

Kodi

[Bugses]

aesrock >

 

My TV shows are in the same folder as my movies. 

Example: 

Movies\Contact\Contact.mkv

Movies\The 100\The 100.mkv

 

Is that a problem? I do have seperate folders for seasons and shows though, but everything is inside the Movie folder.

It sounds like that might be the issue here, that I dont have seperate folder for TV Shows and Movies.

 

Again, thank you very much for your help

[Murdoch]

aesrock >

 

My TV shows are in the same folder as my movies. 

Example: 

Movies\Contact\Contact.mkv

Movies\The 100\The 100.mkv

 

Is that a problem? I do have seperate folders for seasons and shows though, but everything is inside the Movie folder.

It sounds like that might be the issue here, that I dont have seperate folder for TV Shows and Movies.

 

Again, thank you very much for your help

 

Aye, you'll need to move them to a TV shows folder.

[Bugses]

Aye, you'll need to move them to a TV shows folder.

 

Alrighty, almost done. Been 6 hours or so, since I began to move it, and when its done I'm gonna follow your guide. Thanks

[dalekphalm]

Kodi or Plex definitely.

 

Or mix it up, use Plex Media Server (on the computer that stores all your media files - can even be the same PC that is also the HTPC), and then use Kodi as your front end.

 

I found that Kodi is a bit faster and more responsive compared to the Plex client, and there are way more plugins available.

[Bugses]

This dosent make sense to me, I do this:

 

Videos > Add Videos > Browse > Windows Network (SMB) > Diskstation > TV shows > Press OK

Then this:

 

Then I navigate to Menu > TV shows. And the only show I get is this:

 

What am I doing wrong?