5 ms·

No. Your expectations from one piece of software are completely unrealistic.

by a254613e 5y ago

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
bane 5y ago
Why?
- amitport 5y ago
  Every feature seems simple by itself, but considering the overall scope and the maintenance effort, you will need dozends of people working full time on this. (I worked at such a very for profit media tech company)
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Because people want a massive piece of software for free and "expect it". I mean we would all love to have what you typed out there but it would be a massive effort and not likely to happen anytime soon. Jellyfin and Calibre do a lot of what you have there but probably not even the majority of it and certainly not flawlessly
- patrickk 5y ago
  The scope gets bloated and the app unfocused. Most people wouldn’t read eBooks or comics from a big screen interface for example, but use a dedicated app for that. Keeping a cinema app primarily focused on video means it is leaner and meaner for the majority use case.
harrisi 5y ago
Is this sarcasm? I don't mean any disrespect or negativity, I just don't understand. I'm not familiar with this space, but I don't see why the aforementioned expectations are unrealistic. The only issue I can imagine is big media companies strong arming a player in this space (which I assume is what happens to existing companies mentioned). There's nothing technically impossible mentioned.
- 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
  More features == more complexity, likely a worse user experience, a huge maintenance overhead, and so much surface area for bugs. Not to mention the black hole that would swallow trucks of cash in terms of development time. Even simple, very purposeful apps are hard to design well. And so many of these features are insanely complicated, even if you don’t realize it. My Plex media library is currently 70TBs of movies and tv shows and it works flawlessly with about 15 active users. I’m very happy with that.
- marderfarker2 5y ago
  I’d rather the app be a master of one than a jack of all trades Plex is very good when it comes to “just works” for media consumption. That “just works” experience (API enrichment, artwork sourcing, device verification etc.) isn’t easy to maintain.
  - harrisi 5y ago
    That's totally fair. I also definitely agree that IJW is difficult. And people want different things, and have different ideas of what "It Just Works" means. I was just curious about what about the previously mentioned requests were unreasonable.
- oefnak 5y ago
  Ebooks, photos and emulators? In my opinion they don't belong in my cinema app.
  - bacchusracine 5y ago
    Technically photos and emulators have been a part of the whole for quite some time now already. The media center is evolving and games are a part of what people have begun to expect to be able to access as part of their ten foot interface. eBooks? Now that is where I too question things. I don't know the use case where being able to read eBooks from the television is desirable. It certainly doesn't meet my definition of shared entertainment, which is something that media centers are intended for. They're media, yes, and they can be organized, sure--but is there a common use case for reading from the large screen? Unless one is disabled, I really don't see one. However if looking for a better merge of Kodi and gameplaying I cannot recommend Batocera enough. It has a large retrocomputing (emulation) capability and also supports many DOS games and Windows games via dosbox or wine and has recently added Steam integration. On the media side of things it can be configured to automatically load kodi and seamlessly transition from Kodi to the Emulation Station frontend. There will be some configuration but once configured it has in my experience generally stayed configured well and can be a set and forget type of appliance if you take the time to organize your games and media and then leave it alone after scraping. Also it's been one of the easiest configurations I've done in a long time. I encourage everyone to look into it.
Jaepa 5y ago
I have to agree. Most of this can already be done by something like JellyFin. But once you start branching into understanding podcast, emulators, comicbooks, & personal photos, you're no longer talking about a single app. If your goal is organization, there are plenty of other tool specific to the individual purposes. If your goal is consumption kodi can server as a launcher to other applications. Adding the functionality is techincally possible but would require addons.
JeremyNT 5y ago
On the other hand, there are open source options for most of this stuff. Jellyfin probably gets you about half of the list, and you can set up dedicated software for much of the rest with a little effort. It's interesting that the parent expects this to all be a single piece of software. Is this a generational thing? It's the opposite of the "do one thing and do it well" philosophy I grew up on. I like Jellyfin a lot but I actually sometimes feel like it tries to do too much.

No. Your expectations from one piece of software are completely unrealistic.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

bane 5y ago

Why?

amitport 5y ago
Every feature seems simple by itself, but considering the overall scope and the maintenance effort, you will need dozends of people working full time on this. (I worked at such a very for profit media tech company)
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Because people want a massive piece of software for free and "expect it". I mean we would all love to have what you typed out there but it would be a massive effort and not likely to happen anytime soon. Jellyfin and Calibre do a lot of what you have there but probably not even the majority of it and certainly not flawlessly
patrickk 5y ago
The scope gets bloated and the app unfocused. Most people wouldn’t read eBooks or comics from a big screen interface for example, but use a dedicated app for that. Keeping a cinema app primarily focused on video means it is leaner and meaner for the majority use case.

harrisi 5y ago

Is this sarcasm? I don't mean any disrespect or negativity, I just don't understand. I'm not familiar with this space, but I don't see why the aforementioned expectations are unrealistic. The only issue I can imagine is big media companies strong arming a player in this space (which I assume is what happens to existing companies mentioned). There's nothing technically impossible mentioned.

9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
More features == more complexity, likely a worse user experience, a huge maintenance overhead, and so much surface area for bugs. Not to mention the black hole that would swallow trucks of cash in terms of development time. Even simple, very purposeful apps are hard to design well. And so many of these features are insanely complicated, even if you don’t realize it. My Plex media library is currently 70TBs of movies and tv shows and it works flawlessly with about 15 active users. I’m very happy with that.
marderfarker2 5y ago
I’d rather the app be a master of one than a jack of all trades Plex is very good when it comes to “just works” for media consumption. That “just works” experience (API enrichment, artwork sourcing, device verification etc.) isn’t easy to maintain.
- harrisi 5y ago
  That's totally fair. I also definitely agree that IJW is difficult. And people want different things, and have different ideas of what "It Just Works" means. I was just curious about what about the previously mentioned requests were unreasonable.
oefnak 5y ago
Ebooks, photos and emulators? In my opinion they don't belong in my cinema app.
- bacchusracine 5y ago
  Technically photos and emulators have been a part of the whole for quite some time now already. The media center is evolving and games are a part of what people have begun to expect to be able to access as part of their ten foot interface. eBooks? Now that is where I too question things. I don't know the use case where being able to read eBooks from the television is desirable. It certainly doesn't meet my definition of shared entertainment, which is something that media centers are intended for. They're media, yes, and they can be organized, sure--but is there a common use case for reading from the large screen? Unless one is disabled, I really don't see one. However if looking for a better merge of Kodi and gameplaying I cannot recommend Batocera enough. It has a large retrocomputing (emulation) capability and also supports many DOS games and Windows games via dosbox or wine and has recently added Steam integration. On the media side of things it can be configured to automatically load kodi and seamlessly transition from Kodi to the Emulation Station frontend. There will be some configuration but once configured it has in my experience generally stayed configured well and can be a set and forget type of appliance if you take the time to organize your games and media and then leave it alone after scraping. Also it's been one of the easiest configurations I've done in a long time. I encourage everyone to look into it.

Jaepa 5y ago

I have to agree. Most of this can already be done by something like JellyFin. But once you start branching into understanding podcast, emulators, comicbooks, & personal photos, you're no longer talking about a single app. If your goal is organization, there are plenty of other tool specific to the individual purposes. If your goal is consumption kodi can server as a launcher to other applications. Adding the functionality is techincally possible but would require addons.

JeremyNT 5y ago

On the other hand, there are open source options for most of this stuff. Jellyfin probably gets you about half of the list, and you can set up dedicated software for much of the rest with a little effort. It's interesting that the parent expects this to all be a single piece of software. Is this a generational thing? It's the opposite of the "do one thing and do it well" philosophy I grew up on. I like Jellyfin a lot but I actually sometimes feel like it tries to do too much.