Kodi library and multiple devices

[The_Ogre]

I have an, what I find as annoying, issue.

The kids have their tablets and the wife an Android TV Box in the bedroom. I've tried to centralise everything so now all content is stored on an HTPC which I've built over the last few months in the lounge. The catch is I don't only use it as an HTPC, I play games on the TV as well.

What irritates me is the fact that if Kodi isn't active/running then none of the other devices can access the media library over uPnP. Perhaps this is an innate limitation of uPnP, I haven't done any research yet.

Any of you guys have a similar setup? How do you get around this?

 

[Pilgrim]

I have a dedicated fileserver running Kodi with a MySQL database. Most of my other devices run through uPnP but i have played with some other devices sharing the same SQL server. So far uPnP performs best on mobile devices.

Your Kodi instance hosts the uPnP service so closing it does mean no other device can run. You could try starting Kodi under a different user profile so that you don't see it, but it will use a bit of resources.

 

[bwana]

I have an, what I find as annoying, issue.

The kids have their tablets and the wife an Android TV Box in the bedroom. I've tried to centralise everything so now all content is stored on an HTPC which I've built over the last few months in the lounge. The catch is I don't only use it as an HTPC, I play games on the TV as well.

What irritates me is the fact that if Kodi isn't active/running then none of the other devices can access the media library over uPnP. Perhaps this is an innate limitation of uPnP, I haven't done any research yet.

Any of you guys have a similar setup? How do you get around this?

By installing Plex.

 

[dualmeister]

By installing Plex.

That was going to be my answer but ...

The catch is I don't only use it as an HTPC, I play games on the TV as well.

Playing games with Plex serving content at the same time ... maybe a beefy PC can, but not sure :erm:

 

[xrapidx]

Get a Pi... host the library there.

 

[dualmeister]

I have a dedicated fileserver running Kodi with a MySQL database.

My experiences with this setup are HERE

 

[The_Ogre]

By installing Plex.

I'm not against that, I think I'll install PMS later and then configure the other devices to use it as a source.

I have a dedicated fileserver running Kodi with a MySQL database. Most of my other devices run through uPnP but i have played with some other devices sharing the same SQL server. So far uPnP performs best on mobile devices.

Your Kodi instance hosts the uPnP service so closing it does mean no other device can run. You could try starting Kodi under a different user profile so that you don't see it, but it will use a bit of resources.

That was going to be my answer but ...



Playing games with Plex serving content at the same time ... maybe a beefy PC can, but not sure :erm:

]Its a 4th gen i5 with 8GB of RAM, so not too bad, but I'm not sure how much Kodi running actually chows, I'll have to check.

 

[The_Ogre]

Get a Pi... host the library there.

I was looking for my Pi the other day and couldn't find it. I'll scratch around this weekend to try and locate it. My wife has this habit of throwing things into a black bag and throwing it in the garage. Eish

 

[stricken]

For best Plex Media Server performance (i.e. serving multiple clients at the same time), be sure that the drive it transcodes on is an SSD.

 

[K3NS31]

You need to use Emby media server on a centralised machine (Can be your main Kodi machine, but a separate server would be better).
Works kinda like Plex, except it's free. And it's made to integrate specifically with Kodi.
Runs on Windows or Linux on the backend. Easy to setup. Made to solve your exact issue.
AND far less messy than the shared SQL database (altho it's essentially the same thing, the Emby devs have done all the hard work for you. They use their own Kodi compatible database which then syncs with the DB of each Kodi client on your network.) The nice thing is, if you're using lower end hardware (phones, tabs etc) - you don't need to run Kodi on them, just browse to the web-interface of the Emby server and play your media straight from there. It'll still sync watched status etc. across the entire library.

 

[The_Ogre]

For best Plex Media Server performance (i.e. serving multiple clients at the same time), be sure that the drive it transcodes on is an SSD.

Thanks for the heads up, that will have to wait until later. Right now the machine only uses mechanical drives

You need to use Emby media server on a centralised machine (Can be your main Kodi machine, but a separate server would be better).
Works kinda like Plex, except it's free. And it's made to integrate specifically with Kodi.
Runs on Windows or Linux on the backend. Easy to setup. Made to solve your exact issue.
AND far less messy than the shared SQL database (altho it's essentially the same thing, the Emby devs have done all the hard work for you. They use their own Kodi compatible database which then syncs with the DB of each Kodi client on your network.) The nice thing is, if you're using lower end hardware (phones, tabs etc) - you don't need to run Kodi on them, just browse to the web-interface of the Emby server and play your media straight from there. It'll still sync watched status etc. across the entire library.

Thanks, sounds good. So Emby it is!

 

[dualmeister]

I'm not against that, I think I'll install PMS later and then configure the other devices to use it as a source.


]Its a 4th gen i5 with 8GB of RAM, so not too bad, but I'm not sure how much Kodi running actually chows, I'll have to check.

If your PMS is just sharing the media to the other devices i.e. not transcoding and your content is hosted on a separate drive to your OS, then you might just get away with it. Best way to find out is to test it.

 

[dualmeister]

Emby is free, but you can also use Kodi on the Android based devices with the PlexBMC addon to connect nicely to PMS.

 

[stepper]

You can compile kodi headless and run it in the background. Running without issues on a PC with less specs than yours (on Ubuntu though).

 

[The_Ogre]

You can compile kodi headless and run it in the background. Running without issues on a PC with less specs than yours (on Ubuntu though).

OK, I'll read later, but wouldn't it cause issues when I launch the "with head" (LOL) version if I wanted to watch somethign?

 

[stepper]

OK, I'll read later, but wouldn't it cause issues when I launch the "with head" (LOL) version if I wanted to watch somethign?

I haven't experienced that problem as yet. The only issue I see with Windows is that if you close/exit kodi it might kill the headless process as well.
Not familiar with 'keep-alive' methods on Windows but on Linux I run a cron job to see if the headless is still running every 3 minutes.

 

[dualmeister]

Handy Plex vs Kodi vs Emby comparison

 

[stepper]

Handy Plex vs Kodi vs Emby comparison

Yay, kodi wins!

 

[dualmeister]

It depends on how you are using it

 

[K3NS31]

Handy Plex vs Kodi vs Emby comparison

Nice comparison - this part is the kicker for me, personally:

"
Well, quite frankly this is where Emby really outshines Plex in the Plex vs Emby comparison. The major advantage of using Emby vs Plex is that Emby, through the Emby for Kodi Add-on, fully integrates itself into the local Kodi media database. This means that Kodi and all of its add-ons acts just as if Kodi had scraped the metadata itself and placed it into the database.

The PleXMBC add-on (Plex for Kodi), on the other hand is a completely independent add-on which doesn’t play well with other add-ons. It connects to and interacts with the Plex server independent of the local Kodi database, and any add-ons not designed for use specifically with Plex will not function correctly as they will be pointing to the local Kodi database rather than the Plex server. There are also only a few skins which are fully Plex integrated.
"