New install of RC - my observations

Help and Support
1

Been using Raspbmc for a couple of years.
Gave the OSMC RC build a spin today. Here are some of my observations.

Used the Linux / openSUSE installer to install onto my SD card. All went very well and is a much easier process than that of Raspbmc.

Put the card in my Pi and booted up. Took a few minutes while it showed “installing”

Once completed and after a couple of reboots it booted to a very small screen. Apparently it defalted to “desktop” rather than 1080p.

Although I configured wireless during the installing stage a window popped up stating that there was no network connection.
I could select from wired or wireless - so I clicked on wireless and saw a screen with all the aps nearby. Clicked on my wireless SSID and access point screen went blank. I waited about five mins but nothing happened so I rebooted and it again told me there was no network connection.
So I repeated the above process and selected my access point and this time it allowed me to enter my password etc.
Clicked apply and it populated the screen with the gateway address etc. . . but still stated “no internet access”
So I rebooted and went into network and it still stated no internet access.
Rebooted again and repeated the process and could see that this time I did have internet access.

Went in to smb settings and entered my network details. Then into “Video” and added an smb share for movies from my NAS drive. All went well and it scanned in my movies.
Went in again to add my TVshow folder but when clicking on add >smb it stated that the network location did not exist.
Tried playing a movie and it played fine so I knew it could see my drive.
Tried again to access but still the “does not exist” message.
Rebooted and this time got not such message but my NAS drive was not visible. Waited for five minutes to see if it would populate with my NAS but it did not.
Tried plaing a movie and it played fine so agian I knew it was seeing my NAS.
Rebooted again and this time it could find my NAS dive and was able to add my TV folder.
Now time to add my music which is also on my NAS. Had to go through the same painful process as above for the TV folder but after two to three reboots was finally able to add my music and scan.

Next was to add in some video addons.
This is where I just got completely stuck. No matter what I do if trying to install the youtube addon (or any other for that matter) with the OSMC skin I can see the "downloading 0% message and then nothing. Switching to Confluence I can see the Downloading 0% message and the spinning “working” wheel but still nothing is added from the Kodi repo.
Did a force refresh on the repo but this did not help.

So as I can’t get past this - I have gone back to Raspbmc (for now).

Will give it another try in a couple of releases time to see if things are better for me.

It did seem like a nice piece of software - just a little bit buggy for me to use just yet.

edit: also - could not get Yatse to work on my smartphone with it either - despite my best efforts. Just kept getting the message “Kodi offline”

2

Kodi defaults to the boot resolution of the Pi (called DESKTOP in the Kodi settings since Helix) which in turn defaults to the “native/preferred” resolution communicated by your TV using EDID over the HDMI cable.

So the Pi starts up in your TV’s preferred resolution. Was the TV definitely on and switched to the correct input before you booted the Pi ? If not that can cause the Pi to boot in 640x480 by default.

If it was on and on the correct input you may have either a faulty HDMI cable or the TV sends strange EDID data. The model number of the TV would be helpful information here. I assume you were able to select the correct resolution manually though ?

This is a known and long standing bug in XBMC/Kodi for years now that we can’t really do anything about in OSMC - browsing to an SMB host by name is not reliable depending on your local network setup and what other Windows PC’s are on the network. Typically it will let you browse via workgroup and server name the first time, but subsequent attempts will say the location does not exist.

The solution to this is to allocate a static IP to your server either directly or by using a DHCP reservation on your router, and enter the IP address of the server when setting up an SMB share, rather than browsing by name. (I have to do this on Raspbmc and my Mac too btw)

Your remaining problems to me all sound like your Wireless adaptor is not working properly - both the difficulty connecting, and the messages saying no internet connection, difficulty installing addons etc. They are certainly not typical of OSMC.

We need to know what model of wifi adaptor you have to make any progress in that regard. Are you able to test with an Ethernet cable or is that not practical ?

3

Kodi defaults to the boot resolution of the Pi (called DESKTOP in the Kodi settings since Helix) which in turn defaults to the “native/preferred” resolution communicated by your TV using EDID over the HDMI cable.

So the Pi starts up in your TV’s preferred resolution. Was the TV definitely on and switched to the correct input before you booted the Pi ? If not that can cause the Pi to boot in 640x480 by default.

If it was on and on the correct input you may have either a faulty HDMI cable or the TV sends strange EDID data. The model number of the TV would be helpful information here. I assume you were able to select the correct resolution manually though ?

TV was definitely on before booting.
TV is an Orion DNX39-3BP
Never struck the issue in Raspbmc and did not upon reinstallation of raspbmc.
I know this isn’t much help but I can only report what happened

This is a known and long standing bug in XBMC/Kodi for years now that we can’t really do anything about in OSMC - browsing to an SMB host by name is not reliable depending on your local network setup and what other Windows PC’s are on the network. Typically it will let you browse via workgroup and server name the first time, but subsequent attempts will say the location does not exist.

The solution to this is to allocate a static IP to your server either directly or by using a DHCP reservation on your router, and enter the IP address of the server when setting up an SMB share, rather than browsing by name. (I have to do this on Raspbmc and my Mac too btw)

I’ve always had the IP address reserved via mac in my router.
Never come across the problem in raspbmc and reinstalling raspbmc today did not strike the problem at all

– After I got raspbmc set up again I decided to have a play and try instaling OSMC again on a different sd card I have - just to see if it was just a bad installation.
This time around I did not get the wireless problem. I did strike the nas share not available again but this time only once.
Also, I was able to instal TV addons.

So it seems a large part of my previous issues may be down to a bad installation (I downloaded a new image rather than use the one I had)

The display did default to “Desktop” again - but this was easily adjusted.

The only problem I seem to be having now (as I did with the prev install) is that when the Kodi goes to sleep after a period of inactivity it seems to also shut down the wireless adapter - and does not wake it again when the pi gets woken up. The only way to reactivate the wireless adapter is to reboot.
The wireless adapter is a Planex GW-USWEXTREME. It’s worked flawlessly for me while being used in Raspbmc.

Is there a setting somewhere in OSMC / Kodi that is shutting down the wireless adapter?

edit: hmmm . . . just been looking at the OSMC settings addon for the wireless adapter and it states that it is “connected” yet if I go into Kodi > settings > sys info > network it states . . .
Link: connected
IP address: 192.168 . .
Gateway: 192.168. . .
Internet: Not connected. Check network settings.
??