Interesting Plex Vs. Kodi comparison on Lifehacker

[DoeBoye]

Actually, I do run multiple instances of Kodi on a single unraid server (in my attic), serving up to TVs via HDMI cables (my house layout allows me access 3x TVs from one spot in the attic with 20' cable runs.)

 

I also run a 20' USB cable from the server to each of these locations and plug the receiver into that.

 

Ahhh! I see! That makes sense. I could do that for one of my systems, but it might be difficult for the second...

 

Thanks again for sharing everybody! (And great blog post meep!)

 

It's threads like these that really make me want to upgrade my server and start playing with VMs!

[kristisdad]

I use Kodi at home and Plex outside my network.

 

I tried emby, but don't like the "bloat" to my files.  I got rid of it.

 

Kodi is great in my Sony Android TV and my favorite feature is being able to tell it to create playlists say episodes 5 through 10 in Season 5 and not have to touch the remote for hours/days, just let it play away.

 

Then I have the other toys setup on various tvs, a raspberry pi, minix, AT2, Roku3, I don't know if I could settle with one, always updating, trying this or that, something new all the time.  My favorite toys, I just love this modern tech.

[hernandito]

 

Hi hernandito

 

Where I live, I can receive unencrypted channels via satellite (UK freesat) and digital terrestrial (Irish Saorview). I also have the option of encrypted satellite (Sky TV) but I don't subscribe and have never tried a DIY decryption on my system. Just not interested - I have all the channels I need on the free-to-air systems.

 

What follows can be set up on physical server & client machines, a single machine which acts as both client and server or, in my case, I use multiple unraid VMs for this - it shouldn't make any difference.

 

I have a Windows 7 Server that has 6x tuners from Digital Devices (https://digitaldevices.de). 4x Satellite tuners and 2x Terrestrial tuners. These all hang off a single PCIe card. Some systems will have a PCIe card per tuner or pair of tuner. To these physical cards, I attach cables from my satellite dish and antenna. You need one or more of these tuner cards that match your type of signals. (if you're dealing with encrypted channels, this gets more complex but we'll leave that for now). Cards will usually require drivers fro your OS.

 

The cards by themselves are not much use. You need software to work with them. There are multiple options here;

 

Some front end / client software has support for tuners built right in. For example, JRiver Media Centre, MediaPortal and now Emby can talk to tuner hardware directly.

 

Some front end / client software has no direct support for tuners but supports one or more 'back end' / 3rd party programs as a plug-in (see next paragraph). Jodi works like this. Emmy used to work like this before it gained native support. Plex has no such capabilities.

 

Some client software ONLY does TV. For example, NextPVR, ArgusTV and others. These programs run on the same machine as the tuner cards and provide an interface to them. Once installed, such software should detect your cards and invite you to set them up. That's to say, you would typically use the software to scan all or specified frequencies on each tuner. The software identifies available channels. You usually then select the channels you want on your system, ensure the naming is correct and set ordering. Different software has different ways of doing this but the objective is the same - tell the software about your tuners and have it tune in all your channels.

 

Typically, this software also manages the schedules of programming on the various channels. (the database that eventually populates your on-screen EPG and lets you know what shows are on which channels at what time). There are 2 ways they do this. The most straightforward is over the air (OTA). Many TV broadcasts include details of upcoming programmes in the signal itself. Typically this runs out to 2 or 3 weeks. The software can decode this programming info. from the channel and store it for your use. The other option is to use some 3rd party service (either free or paid) which supplies TV channel info, (typically in XML format) that you can add as a source to your TV software and map the data to your channels. People use this if they don't have OTA data or need schedules for longer time periods. This can be somewhat obtuse and tricky to set up. I've never needed it.

 

You also usually tell your TV software where you want to store time shift recordings and scheduled recordings and a few other settings. They're all a bit different from each other.

 

So far, you have your tuner cards set up and some software installed that can tune channels, understand schedules, allow scheduled recordings to be set up etc. Sometimes, that will be enough. The standalone tuner software will usually have display/control capabilities to allow you watch TV right in the program itself.

 

However, the fun starts when you set up a system that can integrate this tuning capability inside software that also plays back digital video, music etc. You get a unified interface, single remote control and support for multiple clients/locations/TVs around the house (and even outside!). I use Kodi for this.

 

Having tried a lot of alternatives for TV Tuning / PVR, I settled on ArgusTV. To my mind, it has the best (most configurable) recording options and has been very very solid for me. I like to use a separate TV tuner software for the same reason that I like to use separate processors and power-amps for audio - it's hugely flexible. With ArgusTV as a back-end, I can set it up once and use any client software that supports it on the front end. (or even different clients, if I want). So for example, since I set up ArgusTV, I've used both MediaPortal and Kodi as clients. (historically, MP had superior TV picture to XMBC/Kodi but once they equalised, I switched to Kodi as it is much more configurable and has many more skins to play with. In making that switch, I didn't need to touch my server - ArgusTV served up pictures to each client.

 

Anyway, this is turning into something of an essay and may serve to confuse more than inform. Sorry.

 

I'll finish with a summary of my setup;

 

I have a 'media server' Win7 VM that has tuners passed through and runs both ArgusTV (for TV tuning as described above and Emby (for media indexing).

 

On my clients (Win 8 or Win 10 VMs, physical Win 8 PCs, Raspberry Pis, Macs) I run Kodi with the PVR plug-in enabled and configured to point to the ArgusTV on the Win 7 server. The Emby plug-in is also configured (it nicely integrates with the Kodi local database but solves the problem of multi-client installations).

 

Regardless of the TV backend you use, Kodi provides an EPG/Guide interface very much like a STB would. Depending on the skin you use, this will look different but all will take the schedule from the TV software, allow you too navigate it and select channels to view or record).

 

(what happens here is when you select a channel to view in Kodi UI, it send a commend to the back-end software asking it to tune a particular channel and then streams the video from there back to the client).

 

This all works really great. Some TV backends have better support in Kodi or expose more features. For example, in my setup, I can ask Kodi to instruct ArgusTV to record a particular instance of a show, but I can't set up a 'series recording'. While ArgusTV supports this, and I can do it via the WebUI it exposes, the Kodi plug-in does't. I wait patiently.

 

Here's a few screen grabs attached of the default TV UI in Kodi 14.2 (just what I have installed on my Mac at the time of writing).

 

Hope that all helps, do fire any more questions you might have....

 

Thank you so much Meep...!! While I cannot absorb it all in one go, I will use your reply as a way to learn all this.

 

I just ordered an HDHomerun Prime... I am fearing its not going to work properly as I keep researching about the drm stuff. Looks like you guys in Europe have less complications than us American cable subscribers.

 

I do have until Jan 31 to return in case I am not happy with it.

[meep]

 

Thank you so much Meep...!! While I cannot absorb it all in one go, I will use your reply as a way to learn all this.

 

I just ordered an HDHomerun Prime... I am fearing its not going to work properly as I keep researching about the drm stuff. Looks like you guys in Europe have less complications than us American cable subscribers.

 

I do have until Jan 31 to return in case I am not happy with it.

 

Well, looking at the product details page (https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/) it seems that product supports CableCards AND Kodi. So you should be set.

 

I'm not familiar with it but it looks at first glance like it would replace all the Win7 Server / Tuner Cards / ArgusTV stuff I mentioned above.

 

 

[BRiT]

Currently WMC is the only program capable of recording DRM (copy once) cable card based channels.

 

 

Oh, and can a MOD split out all the offtopic talk about tuners to a new topic?

[meep]

Currently WMC is the only program capable of recording DRM (copy once) cable card based channels.

 

 

Oh, and can a MOD split out all the offtopic talk about tuners to a new topic?

 

Good to know on the DRM, though not relevant to myself.

 

I'd argue that the tuner discussion is very much on topic -  we're talking about a comparison between Kodi & Plex and this is a significant point of differentiation between the two.

 

 

[CHBMB]

Good to know on the DRM, though not relevant to myself.

 

I'd argue that the tuner discussion is very much on topic -  we're talking about a comparison between Kodi & Plex and this is a significant point of differentiation between the two.

 

Meep, followed your blog for the last year or so, your articles on virtualisation in Unraid are what bought me back to the fold so to speak, I'm just curious whether you've tried the MythTV or TVHeadEnd docker containers, which would not require a VM for your backend and whether you've looked at Openelec for your Kodi clients...

 

Be interested to know your thoughts on this.  I personally run TVHeadEnd docker (Passing through the DVB to the container) and my main HTPC is an Openelec install...  Links in my sig to relevant threads.

[meep]

Good to know on the DRM, though not relevant to myself.

 

I'd argue that the tuner discussion is very much on topic -  we're talking about a comparison between Kodi & Plex and this is a significant point of differentiation between the two.

 

Meep, followed your blog for the last year or so, your articles on virtualisation in Unraid are what bought me back to the fold so to speak, I'm just curious whether you've tried the MythTV or TVHeadEnd docker containers, which would not require a VM for your backend and whether you've looked at Openelec for your Kodi clients...

 

Be interested to know your thoughts on this.  I personally run TVHeadEnd docker (Passing through the DVB to the container) and my main HTPC is an Openelec install...  Links in my sig to relevant threads.

 

Hi CHBMB

 

Good to know there's at least one reader!!

 

I haven't tried MythTV or TVHeadEnd for no good reason except that I know windows and know my hardware devices work with it. They both look appealing - I've just never felt compelled!

 

I'm happy with the Windows 7 VM as a server - it runs more than just the PVR back ends, it's got Emby, SqueeeServer and a few other bits and pieces on it. It also allows me configure RamDisks for my timeshift drives and I know my way around it. In fairness, all this could be done in dockers, I'm sure, but I migrated a physical server into VM during the 6 beta days (Xen anyone?) and it just stuck.

 

I do use dockers for other stuff such as my X10 automation.

 

On OpenElec, I tried it on a RaspberryPi years ago and found the performance underwhelming. I haven't used it since or on better hardware as I've always needed more than one front end to do everything I needed. I've only recently come back to Kodi and found it meets most of my needs now so it might just be time to look at it again, particularly as we have the VM in unraid now.

 

 

[ijuarez]

What, no Emby?

Yeah, they went for the elephants in the room. I haven't played with Emby yet, but I've heard good things.  Definitely no where near the user base of these behemoths though...

 

Payed for the lifetime plex pass so im going to stick to using it. (im sure there's others)

I have emby also running, for the prons great great media server (just kidding on the prons, maybe, no im kidding) I like the user interface better than Plex home theater.

[gswarriorfan]

What, no Emby?

Yeah, they went for the elephants in the room. I haven't played with Emby yet, but I've heard good things.  Definitely no where near the user base of these behemoths though...

 

Payed for the lifetime plex pass so im going to stick to using it. (im sure there's others)

I have emby also running, for the prons great great media server (just kidding on the prons, maybe, no im kidding) I like the user interface better than Plex home theater.

 

If you didn't pay for lifetime plex pass would you still be using it? Or Emby?  I going to buy either the lifetime plex or lifetime emby very soon and would like as many opinions as possible before taking the leap.

[ijuarez]

What, no Emby?

Yeah, they went for the elephants in the room. I haven't played with Emby yet, but I've heard good things.  Definitely no where near the user base of these behemoths though...

 

Payed for the lifetime plex pass so im going to stick to using it. (im sure there's others)

I have emby also running, for the prons great great media server (just kidding on the prons, maybe, no im kidding) I like the user interface better than Plex home theater.

 

If you didn't pay for lifetime plex pass would you still be using it? Or Emby?  I going to buy either the lifetime plex or lifetime emby very soon and would like as many opinions as possible before taking the leap.

 

Emby, I like plex but i believe that emby will surpass plex if they dont focus too much on making money.